Fashion designer Apfel’s wardrobe gets curated

The concept of legging boots was new to me. Shiny spandex stretching over a skinny leg from the waist to the bottom of a soled foot, all connected, seemed totally wild, but also logical. After leaving the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., all I could think to ask was, “Where can I get a pair?”

In the exhibit “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” the museum displays two pairs of these boots, as well as Apfel’s other designs and couture. Now 88, and always model-size, the former textile designer culled much of her clothing from sample sales and runway looks, as well as world flea markets and bazaars. As Apfel said, “I never bought to collect. I bought to wear.”

Even the crazier pieces, like a Scherrer coat made all of feathers that looks like something out of the Big Bird collection, or a Tibetan chest piece made into a pendant, look worn and loved, and some pieces are even slightly stained or wrinkled.

The Apfel exhibit is not the first of its kind—a similar exhibit, then called “Rara Avis,” ran at the Met’s Costume Institute in 2005, but the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibit is curated partially by the great lady herself, once described as a “geriatric glamazon.”

Indeed, the four rooms reflect a gaudiness that seems peculiar to Apfel herself, mixing high and low fashion, $5 bangles with a Nina Ricci coat, an antique Afghan tunic with Christian Louboutin’s. The display is often distracting—piped-in music overlays a strange, tacky set with random pieces of furniture and a confusing layout that makes the exhibit difficult to navigate.

While in 2005 the exhibit may have been reflective of New York City’s mood, it seems difficult now to justify such expensive tastes and the cultural conglomeration of “souk style” with European design. In many ways, the exhibit felt like watching a 1930s comedy of manners—looking into a life of decadence that is far removed from the observers and ultimately a sham.

Apfel wanted to create a cult of personality around her eccentric style of dress and collecting in the exhibit, but it ultimately felt shallow and inelegant, far removed from Apfel’s characteristic, chic style. This was mostly due to the exhibit’s layout, but also to what it represents: Apfel’s material unreality.

Though I took exception to the set and styling, I found the exhibit joyously absurd, an exercise in striving for the unattainable and also unmentionable—to gaze on the wealthy with longing and appreciation.

Collecting couture seems like a more useful endeavor than collecting art, but with fashion exhibits, both kinds of collecting come to the same end—a museum. Apfel’s style is one-of-a-kind, and reflecting that, the exhibit turns her life and her collections into a spectacle of fantasy.

Apfel is a paradigm of the fashion world, a woman who dressed herself like a piece of art, and in doing that, attracted the art world to her. The world looks beautiful from her signature insect-like glasses, and though her life is undoubtedly more complicated than the perfection and glamour the exhibit seeks to craft, all that persists are her clothes.