What does the death of a 102-year-old “geriatric starlet” have to do with you?

Iris Apfel, a New York society matron and interior designer who late in life knocked the socks off the fashion world with a brash bohemian style that mixed hippie vintage and haute couture, found treasures in flea markets and reveled in contradictions, died on Friday at her home in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102.

If you are 55, 60, or even 70, you’re 10 years younger than Ms. Apfel when calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles.

Our key takeaway: you are never too old to be creative and take an industry by storm.

She was tallish and thin, with a short crop of silver hair and scarlet gashes on lips and fingernails, a little old lady among the models at Fashion Week.

For decades starting in the 1950s, Ms. Apfel designed interiors for private clients like Greta Garbo and Estée Lauder. With her husband, Carl Apfel, she founded Old World Weavers. The Apfels sold their company and retired in 1992, but she continued to act as a consultant to the firm and to be the otherworldly woman-about-town, a soaring free spirit.

A powerhouse at 80

In 2005, --at 83—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, facing the cancellation of an exhibition and looking for a last-minute replacement, approached her with an audacious proposition: to mount an exhibition of her clothes.

In 2011 –at 89—she went on national television, selling scarves, bangles and beads of her own design on the Home Shopping Network.In 2016, --at 92 – Ms. Apfel was seen in a television commercial for the French car DS 3, became the face of the Australian fashion brand Blue Illusion, and began a collaboration with the start-up WiseWear. A year later, Mattel created a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll in her image. It was not for sale.

As she turned 97 in 2019, she signed a modeling contract with the global agency IMG.

We salute Iris Apfel, creative until the end.