Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out

NEW YORK — When Michelle Obama wore the now famous “lemongrass” dress and coat ensemble to her husband’s inauguration, no one was more surprised than designer Isabel Toledo.

“I only got to know it with everybody else, when I saw it on TV, which was really a beautiful surprise,” she shares with New York magazine’s fashion director Harriet Mays Powell.

But hers is not an overnight success story.

While Isabel’s career in fashion design spans over 20 years, she still considers herself a “seamstress” and remains relatively obscure among the public — until that fateful day.

Before she broke into mainstream consciousness, she had made a name for herself in the fashion community. Touted as the “designer’s designer,” more widely known designers Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein and Narciso Rodriguez consider themselves huge fans of her work.

Early on in her career, after her first fashion show in 1985, Vogue declared her “a great new talent,” followed by numerous honors, capped by the Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion in 2008.

To celebrate her achievements, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology launched an exhibition of her work titled “Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out.” The mid-career retrospective shows approximately 70 iconic looks from the mid-1980s to the present, including pieces from her highly praised 2007-2008 collections as creative director of Anne Klein, plus mannequins and drawings by husband and artist Ruben Toledo, with whom she closely collaborates.

Unlike most designers, Isabel doesn’t sketch. Her designing philosophy is all about how she feels. The fabrics give her emotion, and her ideas evolve as she manipulates fabric and cuts patterns. It is her husband, Ruben, who puts her ideas onto paper.

“I think of it as fashion from the inside out,” she says. “I can describe a feeling to Ruben, and he’ll sketch it.”

Personally, my exposure to the couple’s work was limited to what I had seen at Barneys and in Vogue. It was during the exhibit that I realized the depth and magnitude of Isabel’s vision.

The installations were organized around several themes that characterized the designer’s body of work. Organic Geometry, for instance, refers to Isabel’s ability to combine the intuitive with geometric forms. Suspension refers to jersey and taffeta dresses that hang effortlessly from thin cords of fabric.

I was particularly blown away by Manipulated Surfaces, which examines how Isabel treats fabric to enhance structure or solves a technical construction challenge.

In Diamond Draped Bodice Dresses, lightweight jersey is given structure and form through Isabel’s “patchwork” technique for ruching. This involves pleating or fluting small pieces of fabric, then sewing them together to create a highly elaborate and nearly invisible “patchwork.”

Her Broomstick Librarian shirtwaist dress—a standard Toledo silhouette—was designed during her tenure at Anne Klein. Undyed silk pongee was thoroughly soaked in water, tightly twisted around a pole, and allowed to dry before being unraveled. When Isabel’s husband, Ruben, accidentally spilled paint on one dress, Isabel decided he should go ahead and hand-paint all the Broomstick dresses.

A close favorite, Shadow, uses lace as a prevalent material and examines the interplay of the transparent and the opaque. Other sections include Liquid Architecture, Shape, and Origami, where designs that began as simple shapes have become three-dimensional “sculptural” garments.

While each section is different from the other, the common theme that runs throughout the exhibit is that none of her clothes involve traditional construction. Patterns, silhouettes, use of materials, and methods of draping are all highly experimental.

Experimental as it is, she seamlessly marries the conceptual with the commercial.

“Isabel Toledo is proof that an American designer can do conceptual work of international significance, yet with the kind of humor and pragmatic cheekiness that is distinctively American,” says Vogue editor Sally Singer.

“At the heart of her work is a love of American sportswear, but not sportswear in terms of separates that can be mixed and matched. It’s sportswear in the sense that these are clothes that function.”

As for the dress and coat that pushed Isabel Toledo into the spotlight, I saw them up close, but behind glass casing.

First Lady Michelle Obama graciously lent the ensemble she wore on Inauguration Day to the exhibition.

This is the first time the sheath dress and matching coat are on public view, so if you get a chance, see them before they get shipped off to the Smithsonian.

The exhibit ends Sept. 26.