Ageless Like Them

Iris Apfel, 93-year-old style sensation:

• Have money.
• Make more money.
• Have a husband who couldn’t agree with you more.
• And helps make even more money.
• Don’t have children.
• Don’t have to run a household.
• Have decorating clients like the White House.
• Live at home in style till you drop, with a platoon of staff and two guys to help you walk.
• Have houses with enough room for everything you ever bought.
• Never stop shopping.
• The older you get, the more things you should wear at once.
• Never fewer than six mismatched colours, a dozen pieces of clothing and a couple of pecks of jewelry.
• When in doubt wear everything in your closet.
• Make sure those two guys are always available to help you walk.
• Don an orange monkey coat, clashing pants, shoes, hose, gloves, scarf etc., thirty hunks of unmatching jewelry, and eyeglasses that look like you’re wearing a gas mask.
• Have the balls to look people in the face and say: I have great style.
• Have the sangfroid to keep a straight face when they say it to you.
• Keep on keeping on having money.
• The nub: Plain and shameless with money at 93 is way better than gorgeous without.

• Have money.
• Float pictures of yourself at each decade saying “This is what 30/40/50/60/70/80 looks like.”
• Serenely but firmly ice anyone who says, “Uh-uh; this is just what Gloria Steinem looks like.”
• Don’t have children.
• Make more money.
• Give out or have acolytes give out that you and your hair remain preternaturally perfect solely because of genetics.
• Say you’re not against plastic surgery and would certainly go for it if you ever happened to need it.
• Make sure your nails are done when you make the feminist power fist.
• Lead the poor, but don’t live like them.
• Don’t date obscure/non-rich men.
• Don’t get married or if you do, keep it short.
• Don’t stop having money.
• The nub: Gorgeous with money at 80 is way, way better than gorgeous without.

• Have money, of course.
• Go into a profession that makes money.
• Marry a man who becomes president.
• And makes lots of money.
• Ignore what else he does.
• Distance yourself but don’t dump his valuable name when you go into politics.
• Make sure he’s there to wow your lady constituents.
• Make a virtue of shiny pantsuits.
• A strong confident female leader can show a bit of cleavage.
• Don’t ever have been a housewife.
• Don’t ever have been a full-time mom.
• But make sure your daughter finally fixes that hair of hers.
• If at first you don’t succeed in politics, try try try again.
• You can afford to, because apart from a campaign chest, you…
• Have lots and lots of money.
• Use the grandmother thing as political fodder.
• But never be or look anything like an actual one.
• Through genetics; money has nothing to do with it.
• The nub: Shiny pantsuits with power and money at 70 are way, way, way better than shiny pantsuits without.