Isabel Toledo

Designer known for geometric details in her creations. Considered one of the 100 most influential figures in the fashion world, Isabel Toledo has been defined as a radical classic fashion designer, for her influences of geometry, simplicity and high level of couture in her creations.

Born in Cuba in 1960, she moved, at a very young age, to New Jersey where, at school, she met her current husband and inseparable work partner, also Cuban Rubén Toledo.

Multidisciplinary artist, Rubén is at once a painter, sculptor, illustrator, fashion chronicler and critic. He works from sculpture to drawing, from mannequin design to window display design, and has created ingenious and incisive illustrations for media such as The New Yorker, Vogue, Paper, Visionaire and The New York Times. His drawings of 100 Postcards of 100 Cities of the World are part of Louis Vuitton's travel guides.

Together with him, Isabel was to create a powerful and lasting creative tandem of art and fashion.

After her studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design, Isabel trained with the legendary Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Since 1984, Isabel, a "cult figure" according to the New York Times, designed and exhibited in her Manhattan studio, two collections a year, but in 1998 she decided not to follow the dictates of fashion weeks and create her collections at her own pace.

That same year, the Toledo couple was the protagonist of an exhibition called Toledo-Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology museum, which featured their work as the subject, for their years of collaboration in design and art. This exhibition was later displayed worldwide in different museums, universities and galleries.

Between 2006 and 2008 she was creative director for Anne Klein's Designer Collection.

The name Isabel Toledo went from being a well-kept secret among fashion connoisseurs to becoming an internationally known name when Michelle Obama chose one of her designs at Barack Obama's inauguration as president: a dress and coat ensemble in yellow lace, which went around the world.

Together with her husband, Isabel has won prestigious fashion awards, such as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, in 2005, or the Fashion Visionary Award, founded by Eleonore Roosevelt to promote design in the United States, in 2006.

Her pieces are found in some of the best stores in the world, such as Barneys in New York, Colette in Paris or Ikram in Chicago.

COLLECTION
The new collection of designs is shown hidden among a selection of archive pieces. True to her idea that fashion is an ephemeral experience that lives within an atemporal and graphic geography, the fluctuations of style compete for attention and emerge in a thousand details each season creating new silhouettes. The final equation of fashion is composed of the sum of all its parts, an accumulation of details gathered to contribute to the description of the new feminine spirit.

Isabel created an autobiographical book: Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion in which the designer has written with enormous tenderness about her memories, including her upbringing in a small town in the Cuban countryside; about her family and her husband, and her struggle to never abandon her dedication to pure fashion.

Among her clients can be mentioned figures such as Agnes Gund, Demi Moore, Jennifer López, Madonna, Raquel Welch, Sigourney Weaver and Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned of Qatar.

In an interview with Vanidades the Cuban expressed: "I was born and raised until I was 8 years old in the city of Camajuaní, province of Las Villas, Cuba, near the mountains, and there I learned to 'see' color," she recalls fondly of her childhood. "It was a small city, and when the sun reflected on the roofs it created shadows and a haze that, as it cleared, showed me the color that was behind it. I remember it perfectly! My father had a hardware store and my mother helped him. We were three sisters, and my mother's family made shoes. I still remember her choosing leathers for the peasants' boots. I could tell, just by looking at it, if a shoe was Spanish or Italian. I inherited a lot from her because she was a great example and because I deeply admire the brave women of her time." Isabel was included in the Best Dressed List, and was characterized as a natural and very cheerful woman.