The Guardian in a 2015 interview.“At that time you could ride the whole subway system for a nickel, so each week I would take a different section of New York — Chinatown, Yorkville, Harlem, Greenwich Village,” she told the outlet.She continued, “And I really fell in love with the Village. The Village was where I started to poke around antique shops and become enchanted with all this old junk.”Apfel studied art history at New York University before transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.