Once upon a time, in Paris, Jo stood in a swanky cashmere shop next to an extraordinary-looking woman with huge glasses, over-sized costume jewellery and more style in her little finger than most of us have in a lifetime. She looked like ‘someone’, but Jo couldn’t figure out who she was.

All that became clear when Iris Apfel became a celebrity for… well, just being incredibly stylish at a somewhat advanced age. (She spent years in the textile business and amassed an absolutely world-class collection of designer clothes and accessories.) And oh, we salute her for it; we think we all need to ‘be more Iris’ and get joy out of the clothes we wear – and yes, we plan to keep on wearing make-up and lipstick forever, just like Iris.

Iris recently celebrated her 101st birthday and is clearly having the time of her (gloriously long) life. And cleverly, Ciaté London have signed her up for a limited edition cosmetics collaboration – not just make-up, actually, but some rather fine accessories in the form of an Iris Apfel Hand-Held Mirror/£18, and a hot pink Makeup Bag/£13, adorned with Iris’s fabulous face. (We can think of several people we’d like to give this to, for Christmas.) The bag, FYI, is free when you spend £50 on the collection.

The make-up creations echo what Iris wears herself – a woman who puts on make-up every day, for herself as much as the public who now stop her in the street pretty much everywhere she goes. (She’s been the subject of a fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we highly recommend the documentary, ‘Iris’ – which you can watch via Amazon Prime, here.)

The Creamy Gloss Lipstick comes in three colours – the more ‘Iris’ of them are the Hot Pink and Orange Red shades, each £18. Highly-pigmented, they’re glossy and nourishing, while packing a highly pigmented punch. (Click here for a rather wonderful video of Iris applying her lipstick. How fab to have a make-up tutorial from a 101-year-old!)

Eyeshadow Palettes/£19, are almost worth buying for the names alone: Accidental Icon, and More is More, Less is a Bore, each with four shades and a fifth wet-and-dry formula that can be used as eyeliner, or for a ‘pop’ of lid colour. The first of those palettes features Iris’s trademark bright blue eyeshadow/liner, but the second is pure neutrals and super-wearable. Both feature an image of Iris on the lid, too.

There are also Nail Stickers/£13 – but we need to be quite a bit ‘more Iris’ to embrace those. Working on it, though…!

Iris, you’re a total #inspo…

£13-19 – buy here

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