Longevity

Farewell to a fashion icon

/ edebock / 5 Comments

I usually only post about fashion on Fridays, but I didn’t want to wait a whole week to acknowledge yesterday’s passing of one of fashion’s most colourful personalities. 

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American fashion icon, Iris Apfel, famous for her eclectic style and her oversized glasses, was 102 years old! Born on August 29, 1921, Apfel was renowned for her irreverent, eye catching outfits mixing high end fashion with flea market finds and oversized costume jewelry and always, those big, round, black-rimmed glasses! 

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Apfel was an interior designer and an expert on textiles and antique fabrics. She and her husband, Carl, who passed away in 2015 at age 100, owned the textile manufacturing company, Old World Weavers, and specialized in restoration. Their work included projects at the White House under six different American presidents. 

In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City hosted an exhibition about Apfel called Rara Avis, Latin for “rare bird”, and that she most certainly was! The museum described her this way, “An American original in the truest sense, Iris Apfel is one of the most vivacious personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design, and over the past 40 years, she has cultivated a personal style that is both witty and exuberantly idiosyncratic.”

Apfel never stopped working. She modelled for Vogue in 2018, the same year Mattel made a silver-haired Barbie in her name. The following year, at age 97, she landed a modelling contract with IMG Models. “I’m a total workaholic, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be a cover girl in my nineties,” she told The Times of London, but cover girl she was several times over. At age 99, she curated a line of home products for Lowe’s and partnered with Zenni Optical to offer frames in her favourite eyewear shapes and styles. She also teamed up with Etsy to offer “Iris Apfel’s Fashion Favorites” on the online marketplace.

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Here are just a few of the words of wisdom that Iris Apfel offered about fashion and style…

“Fashion you can buy, but style you possess. The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. There’s no how-to road map to style. It’s about self expression and, above all, attitude.”

“Everybody should find her own way. I’m a great one for individuality. I don’t like trends. If you get to learn who you are and what you look like and what you can handle, you’ll know what to do.”

“People should try to personalize their own outfits. It gives them a chance to be a bit creative and then they don’t look like everyone else. I think the biggest fashion faux pas these days is looking into the mirror and seeing somebody else. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to know who you are.”

“I say dress to please yourself. Listen to your inner muse and take a chance. Wear something that says: “Here I am!” today.”

“I’m not pretty, and I’ll never be pretty, but it doesn’t matter. I have something much better. I have style.” 

Yes, Iris, you most certainly did! 

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A day to remember!

/ edebock / 8 Comments

On December 1, 1923 my mother’s baby sister, Norma Pearl Raby, was born. On Friday, we had the privilege of celebrating her 100th birthday! What an amazing milestone!

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Auntie Norma and I have always been close. In fact, she often told people that I was the daughter she never had! For several years I’d been telling her that I planned to be at her 100th birthday party and I was only half joking as I knew that she’d had an aunt who lived to almost 103.

Auntie Norma has lived in Jasper, Alberta since 1953 and is now the town’s oldest living resident. Always active in the community, she lived in her own home until the age of 97 when she moved into the Alpine Summit Seniors Lodge. On Friday, the lodge staff went above and beyond as they prepared for her very special day. They set up and decorated a table in the common area for our family celebration and served us a lovely lunch. The table decor included photos from throughout Norma’s life and the pièce de résistance of the meal was the amazing cake baked and decorated by a member of the lodge’s kitchen staff!

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For most of her life, Auntie Norma was robust and physically active. In fact, we went hiking with her when she was 87 years old! Over the past year, however, she has become very frail. Now virtually blind and confined to bed or wheelchair, her once sharp memory has started to fail. She has good days and bad, but Friday was a very good day! Although she sometimes goes for days without eating, she had absolutely no problem polishing off two pieces of that delicious chocolate cake!

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She was alert and attentive as numerous residents of the lodge and visitors from the community came by after lunch to wish her a happy birthday. Her body may be failing but her sweet spirit and her sense of humour are definitely intact! It was such a privilege for Richard and I to share her special day with my cousins (or perhaps I should say my brother’s from another mother), Norma’s two sons and their partners.

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Now back home, my heart is full as I look back on such a wonderful day and consider how fortunate I am to have had this special lady in my life for such a long time!

Book of the month – July 2023

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Breaking The Age Code

Becca Levy, PhD

Screenshot 2023-07-14 at 10.05.53 PMHow would you like to extend your life by 7.5 years? According to Dr. Becca Levy, Yale professor and leading expert on the psychology of successful aging, you might be able to do just that!

Breaking the Age Code is a fascinating book that could literally revolutionize how you think about aging. Levy’s premise is that our age beliefs, what we think about older people and about getting older, influence how we age. She presents both factual evidence and interesting anecdotes showing that having positive age beliefs results in better physical and mental health in our senior years and actually extends life expectancy. This makes sense when you consider that having positive age beliefs promotes physical exercise as well as social and intellectual engagement and diminishes stress.

Unfortunately, we who live in North America and Europe are constantly bombarded with negative age beliefs. Even saying that someone is having a “senior moment” suggests that there is truth to the all too commonly accepted stereotype that our brains inevitably deteriorate as we get older. In reality, people of all ages experience these momentary memory lapses and there is tremendous variability in how our brains function as we age.

Breaking the Age Code presents us with easy-to-follow techniques for shifting our age beliefs from negative to positive. The first step involves becoming aware of our own age beliefs as well as recognizing the ageism that is so prevalent in our society. The book is also a call to stand up against ageism and its negative effects.

Not only is Becca Levy one of the world’s leading experts on aging and longevity, but she’s also a wonderful storyteller. Her book is both informative and inspiring and would be of benefit to readers of all ages, those who will be old someday and those who already are.