NEW YORK — Designer Isabel Toledo and her husband, artist Ruben Toledo, have always bucked convention.
During a discussion with fashion historian Jessica Glasscock Tuesday at Parsons The New School for Design, the Toledos shared the fits and starts of their careers. Toledo Studio was founded in 1984, when the couple said they had $5 in their pockets. The pair met in high school Spanish class in West New York, N.J. He immediately eyed her as a potential wife, but she wound up falling for his brother in art class. However, the art she fell in love with was actually the work of Ruben Toledo, not his brother. “So she had the wrong Toledo,” he explained.
Except for an internship and her current post as creative director of Anne Klein, Isabel Toledo’s life as a fashion designer has been without the safety net of a large organization.
Her artist-illustrator-sculptor husband followed a similar path. His first job was selling photographic postcards of his wife at Fiorucci, where he met Andy Warhol and scores of other artistic types. To a degree, the decision to start a signature apparel collection was one of happenstance.
“Basically, we needed to make a living and Isabel had this talent sewing,” her husband said. “So I took four or five dresses from her closet and went to Henri Bendel and a few other stores and sold them. When I got back, I said, ‘OK, we need to make six of these and 12 of these.’ Neither one of us had worked in fashion. But I was a salesman in a store so I knew how to sell clothes.”
The moral for the mostly freshman audience: “You don’t need much of anything to start other than an idea and enthusiasm,” he said. “There are a million ways to do it and your way is the right way.”
Toledo said he and his wife never set out with any clear-cut parameters. “We started in a much more naive way. We didn’t have an idea what a career was. We didn’t label ourselves. I didn’t know if I was a fine artist or a fashion artist. I totally encourage being naive in that way.”
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A tireless sewer since a babysitter taught her the basics at the age of eight, Isabel Toledo said the way things work has always intrigued her. The corner hardware store fascinates her more than any fashion boutique, and she is “constantly taking things apart.” Interning at the Costume Institute — under the tutelage of Diana Vreeland for a stretch — allowed her to indulge in true dissection. “I used to restore a lot of old costumes and could see the workmanship that went into those garments,” she said.
Once Toledo Studio launched, she exercised her own ingenuity, creating unusual pieces such as the Packing Dress in 1988 and the Hermaphrodite in 2002. The latter will be featured in “New York Fashion Now,” when it bows April 17 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Mode Museum in Antwerp and other museums have been more inclined to recognize her work than the fashion press. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum honored Toledo Studio with the National Design Award for fashion design in 2005.
Given the couple’s freethinking approach to design, it’s understandable why Isabel Toledo stopped holding fashion shows in 1998 in response to how showmanship was becoming fashion’s driving force.
That has since changed, and Toledo’s runway show last month for Anne Klein marked her return to the catwalk. But just the prospect of working for Anne Klein was such a shock that “I don’t think the first phone call was even answered; we didn’t think it was real,” she said. “But I have to say they were daring and very forward thinking to pick me. I’m one of the most hands-on people in the industry.”
Ruben Toledo told the aspiring designers there’s something to be said for late bloomers. “A lot of our friends who had early success as designers have struggled,” he said. “Stay in your own little bubble as long as possible. Culture, art, design and all that is a like a big stew and we need you to come with a new ingredient.”
In response to a student’s inquiry about developing a diffusion line, Isabel Toledo said, “That would be great. Eventually, I would like to do that. What I wouldn’t want to see myself doing would be to just do the same thing [I’m already doing] cheaper.”