Exhibition in France honors the work of Cuban fashion designer Isabel Toledo

April 21, 2022

Cuban designer Isabel Toledo is the protagonist of the most recent exhibition on American design by SCAD, in southern France. The exhibition Love Letter, recently inaugurated, highlights the collaboration between the late artist—best known for creating Michelle Obama's inauguration ensemble—and her husband, Rubén Toledo.

Most of the pieces exhibited in the retrospective, curated in part by Christina Frank, are from the 2000s, published Vogue magazine, which interviewed Rubén Toledo about the exhibition.

"I am still mourning Isabel and the couple (that we were), the Toledos. That couple (is gone), so I am her custodian. I am here to work and make sure that her archives and her work remain relevant and important and are shared with the next generation," he stated.

For the artist, the curators "chose pieces that illustrate how Isabel's engineering and her intelligence in construction are always very evident elements."

"They are so perfectly made that you no longer had to think about them; you could almost wear them inside out, front to back, and they still work," he noted.

"Isabel allowed women to continue expressing themselves and [did the same for] herself. So I think that is the highlight. And the idea that we are using Isabel's quotes and some of my writings about Isabel; there are personal notebooks and sketch notebooks involved. We wanted to touch on how fashion, at its peak, and good design is more than engineering, it is also an emotion, and it is also related to personal relationships. It feeds both the heart and the mind," he stated.

According to Toledo, "Isabel always considered herself a seamstress first and a designer second."

"She always said: 'I am a seamstress,' and I remember she told that to Karl (Lagerfeld) and he told her: 'You are more than a seamstress, you are a dressmaker,' but her idea was that she was in service to herself and in service to women and to clients. There is a collaboration between the person who is going to wear it and you, but ultimately the seamstress, or the couturière, is in service to them," he argued.

Isabel Toledo: A Love Letter is open until June 10 at the new permanent fashion museum of Savannah College of Art and Design in southern France.

Toledo received during her career the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt and was nominated for a Tony for her work in costume design for the musical After Midnight.

Isabel Toledo, (Camajuaní, 1960-Manhattan, 2019) and her husband, artist and illustrator Rubén Toledo (Havana, 1961) were inseparable and collaborated in different artistic disciplines. They began their relationship at the New Jersey institute where they both studied and from then on they never separated. They formed one of the most original and beloved creative duos in New York.