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Sketches from the exhibition, "Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion" at the Fashion Institute of Technology through April 18th. (courtesy FIT) |
| Isabel, whose clothing has often been likened to architecture,
admits that there are similarities. "I always thought I could
have been a construction worker," she says. "I look at everything
that way." by Noel Millea "As a child, I used to sit underneath my grandmother's sewing machine and be totally obsessed with the way it worked. I thought it was so beautiful," remembers Isabel Toledo. "I was always inspired by machinery, bicycles. I took everything apart to put it back together again. That's my interest--how things are put together." Toledo, who is internationally recognized for her work as a fashion designer, has collaborated with her husband, artist Ruben Toledo, for 12 years. Explaining how her designs come into being, she says, "We talk about something, a feeling I have, and then he starts putting it down on paper like shorthand. It's a conversation." That unique working relationship is documented in a series of notebooks currently on display at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. The exhibition, "Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion," which runs through April 18, also includes clothing handpicked to represent the designer's various preoccupations--from engineering to the interplay between construction and materials--as well as Ruben's exquisite paintings, sculptures, and mannequins. Isabel, whose clothing has often been likened to architecture, admits that there are similarities. "I always thought I could have been a construction worker," she says. "I look at everything that way." |
Keywords:
Fashion, art, Toledo
