Iris Apfel

Iris Apfel was known as a textile designer within her field for decades. But it wasn’t until The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of her wardrobe in 2005—13 years after she retired and well into her 80s—that she achieved broader recognition as an influential tastemaker.

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Julienne Aisner

A former teacher and scriptwriter, Julienne Aisner was running a Paris film company when the Nazis occupied France. The 43-year-old Aisner was recruited in January 1943 by an SOE officer to rent apartments for arriving SOE agents, welcome them to Paris and provide them with false documents—identity cards, ration cards, and work permits—that she obtained.

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Marie Webster

When she published her own book, Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them, in 1915, the country’s first book dedicated to quilt history became a bestseller. It also helped legitimize quilting as an art and as an important topic of scholarly research.

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Norma Shirley

Jamaican chef Norma Shirley built a reputation in the U.S. serving “New England food with Jamaican flair” at her Massachusetts restaurant in the late 1970s. But as she told Essence magazine, “It’s my dream to open another restaurant in Jamaica where Blacks would be the majority clientele.”

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