By Ellen Gilbert 

Photos Courtesy of The Toledo Archives

"I have never seen two other people with so close a symbiotic relationship." - Valerie Steele

They’ve been described as “fashion’s two-for-one couple;”  “creative alter-egos” who enjoy a “poetic partnership.”   What’s love got to do with it?  Everything. Now in their early 50s, Isabel and Ruben Toledo have been in the fashion/art/design business for nearly 30 years, and their work just gets more intriguing: beautifully executed, completely original, and, as a rule, quite unexpected. Their lives—how they look and dress, and the atelier where they live above their studio—seem to intersect seamlessly with their work.

The Toledos, who were both born in Cuba but grew up and met in West New York when they were in ninth grade, are mavericks. They typically opt out of the annual, three-ring circus known as “Fashion Week” in New York City; it was probably no coincidence that the two took off for a trip to Paris on Thursday, September 4, the very day that this year’s Fashion Week in New York opened. Calling for more artists and fewer businesspeople, Isabel worries that up and coming designers are being distracted by the commercial side of the fashion industry.

Their own experience was, in a sense, ideal.  “I think we were never aware of a mainstream,” observes Ruben. Early in their careers, he says, their exposure to “the interlocking worlds of art, fashion, music, theater, nightlife, and commerce” in New York City during the 1970s made an indelible impression on both of them. Players in this “frenzy of intellectual cross-pollination” included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Halston, Lena Horne, Diana Vreeland, and Klaus Nomi. This gestalt approach to life seems to inform whatever the Toledos are up to.

THE YELLOW OUTFIT

Well-regarded for years, the Toledos hit the public relations jackpot when Michelle Obama wore Isabel’s now-famous lemongrass yellow wool lace shift dress with matching overcoat to President Obama’s first inauguration.  “This was a glorious gift from the universe for me,” she reports. I have always believed fashion is what time looks like, and on that historic day in 2009 I was woven into history itself.”

The Toledos’ work ethic, sheer productivity, and the fact that English is not their first language all help mitigate against thoughts one may have about her being a little over the top in her effusiveness about the experience. Isabel still sometimes refers to herself as a “seamstress,” rather than a “designer,” since “the seamstress is the one who knows fashion from the inside.”  The Toledos, though, have become media stars; a recent New York Times article breathlessly reported on Isabel’s daily beauty regime, and numerous magazine articles have detailed where they live.

HOMESPUN

The Toledos still have a hands-on approach to publicity: there are no “have your people call my people” exchanges.  Signing themselves “I and R,” they personally responded to each call or email in preparation for this article, and these highly imperfect transmissions had a certain charm. The bios they forwarded were largely unformatted and rife with typos, and the random capitalization of certain words in the text suggested their ideas about the important stuff: Ruben “is a painter, sculptor, illustrator, surrealist WIT and fashion critic;” and “ISABEL TOLEDO was A DESIGNERS’ DESIGNER WITH AN UNDERGROUND CULT FOLLOWING” until the Michelle moment.

This down-to-earth accessibility may have something to do with the fact that although they are typically associated with haute couture and rarified art circles, Isabel has designed for popular labels like Lane Bryant, Target, and Payless Shoes.   “Good design can be interpreted at any price point,” she says.  “Fashion may be the most democratic of all the art forms, because we all have to go through the ritual of dressing ourselves every day.”  Some of Isabel’s bon mots appear at the end of Roots of Style, a 2012 manifesto written by Isabel and charmingly illustrated by Ruben, with the subtitle Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion.  Other publications associated with the couple include Fashionation and Fashion Dictionary, both exuberantly illustrated by Ruben. Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out is a gorgeously illustrated coffee-table size book that celebrates Isabel’s awards (a National Design award from the Cooper Hewitt Museum and a Couture Council award for Artistry of Fashion, given by the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology) and documents the Toledos’ story.

"IT'S NOT WORK"

The Toledos want you to believe they’re having fun and you do.  They credit the veteran fashion observer Bill Cunningham with encouraging them just as they were starting out.  “’Kids, keep up your enthusiasm,’” he is quoted as saying, and it’s a philosophy they took to heart.  Isabel’s ever-evolving clothing designs continue to surprise and enchant observers, and Ruben appears to be something of a Renaissance man tackling many things at once and doing them all well: designing mannequins, store windows, award statuettes, scarves, fabrics, dishes and carpets, and painting murals, portraits, album covers and barns.  He has worked for the top fashion and design magazines, designed notebooks for Moleskine, and created covers for deluxe editions of Penguin classics like The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights. “The medium can really be anything,” Ruben observes.  “It’s the story that’s most important to me.”

The Toledos both talk about Cuba’s influence on them with wistful pride.  “We were both born in Cuba after the Revolution and transplanted to New York at an early, impressionable age,” says Ruben. “I think we have the best of both cultures in us.” Cuba’s warm sensuousness rubbed off on them, as did “the make-do attitude, which comes in very handy as an artist.”

“We became American overnight,” Isabel agrees, but adds “its funny how your heritage effortlessly shows through. It’s really embedded in your DNA.” Visionaire editor and friend Stephen Gan has described Ruben as looking like “a cross between Salvador Dali and Ricky Ricardo.” Isabel, he added, is ‘’a combination of Frida Kahlo and Morticia Addams.” A little less edgily, perhaps, Fashion Institute of Technology Museum Director Valerie Steele says that Isabel “looks simultaneously like a Spanish aristocrat and an artistic bohemian.”

The frontispiece of Fashion from Inside Out is an early black and white photograph of the couple in which they manage to look impossibly young, beautiful, and tenderly in love while also conveying a quiet sense of dignity and style. Their mutual devotion and admiration for each other is, if anything, stronger than ever.  “I’m always so curious what he’ll think,” Isabel said recently.  She describes Ruben’s style as “cunningly accidental.”  He is happy to explain that her work has been referred to as “liquid architecture” because of “the structural complexity of her patterns which morph into pure effortless movement on the body.”  However fanciful the design, though, “ingenious engineering” is essential.

“Spontaneity and improvisation are very welcome, but that comes naturally when you really focus on your craft,” says Isabel. “I am well aware that expert craftsmanship is achieved only by the act of doing and caring; it is not for the weak.” She describes her 30-years’ worth of design work as her “vocabulary.”  Ruben agrees, suggesting that by focusing and perfecting one’s craft it eventually becomes “instinct,” and that’s when “the forces of nature take over and introduce the inspired accidents into the mix. This is poetry in action.”

AFTER MIDNIGHT

Dancers in action were the highlight most recently when the Toledos provided the costumes and set designs for After Midnight, a Jazz at Lincoln Center revue of song-and-dance numbers from the Cotton Club era of the 1920s, featuring music by Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen and others.  New York Times critic Charles Isherwood noted the show’s “verve that almost captivates the eye as much as it does the ear. It will be a long time before Broadway hosts music-making this hot, sweet and altogether glorious again,” he added.

“Are you kidding me?” says Isabel when asked about the experience. “The show was a gift. Now we are spoiled forever.”  According to Isabel, producer Scott Sanders and choreographer Warren Carlyle (who won the Tony last year for Best Choreography) gave the Toledos carte blanche to visually create a universe inspired by the Harlem Renaissance.

“They did not require a historical period piece, but something brand new,” Isabel recalls.  “We started by inventing all the details of that world, including the cars, instruments, architecture and, of course the clothes and styling.”

The Toledos’ concern was not just with the look of the cast as a group, Ruben says, but with how each performer worked.  “Isabel wanted to ‘clothe’ their very gestures, to amplify their movements.  We watched every rehearsal we could possibly attend.”  It was a true collaboration: “Ruben sketched the performers’ motions and steps and caught the essence of their body language,” says Isabel.  “Each performer really did inspire my choice of colors and cuts.  Every member of this brilliant cast became an individual.”  Inspiration came from many sources, including, according to Ruben, “the city rumbling” 12 floors below their atelier.  “New York is jazz,” he says.  “Even the hem hitting your knees as you’re walking down the street creates a rhythm.”