In this interview, pulled from PAPER's September 2003 issue, PAPER editor interviews Isabel and Ruben Toledo on the marriage of art and fashion.
Ruben and Isabel Toledo make beautiful music together. After designing clothes for two decades, Isabel has become one of America's most-respected fashion creatives (who surely will end up in the history books). And Ruben's artwork (illustrations, paintings and sculpture) has become some of the most coveted and collected in the fashion industry and beyond. But what most people don't know is that they literally create their work together. Isabel feels a garment, tells Ruben about it, and he articulates it for her on paper. Ruben dreams of executing a painting, and Isabel mixes the colors he wants to see in it.
The Toledos have been married for nearly 20 years now. As children, they both immigrated from Cuba to West New York, New Jersey, where they met as teenagers. Isabel confesses, "Ruben visualized his wife at 13 years old and it was me. He had braces." Says Ruben: "She wouldn't look at me for five years, but she finally came around." And the rest is history.
I first met Ruben in the mid-'80s, when I visited a SoHo shop in which he worked. We ended up talking about shoes. He told me, "My girlfriend, whom I'm going to marry, lives in Jersey and has the best shoe collection. Oh, and she makes beautiful clothes. When we get married, I'll invite you to dinner." And one hot summer night there I was, sharing a Cuban meal with this lovely couple in their walk-up tenement studio behind Port Authority. For dessert, they opened their only closet and began lugging out stuff: Ruben's paintings and Isabel's clothes. I was floored by what I saw that night and have followed, collected and avidly written about their work ever since.
I've watched this brilliant couple struggle to remain independent for many years and eventually grow and achieve great success on their own quirky terms. Isabel sells only to private clients and a handful of stores. Barneys committed to the designer in 1993 and has sold her work ever since, developing a strong customer base. It also helped that the clothes were usually snapped up off the racks as fast as she could produce them. Not only have they seduced the fashion world -- who can't resist their style, elegance, fashion ideas and the hilarious spoofing of themselves seen in Ruben's artwork -- but they have gained enormous respect from those who count, from museum curators to major designers.
Julie Gilhart, women's fashion director of Barneys New York, says, "Isabel has a dialogue with a woman's body. She studies it on herself. She is her customer. The Toledos show how success can be achieved in a beautiful and different way. They are my gurus." Geoffrey Beene calls Isabel a "major talent," and claims "Isabel Toledo is one of the secrets of American fashion."
The Toledos had never been to Las Vegas, so I thought it would be fun to shock and inspire them by bringing them west on our fashion tour and interviewing them both about their work and careers. As these two are usually attached at the hip, one never without the other, I decided to separate them and speak to them alone about one another. We also asked both of them to produce a Las Vegas inspiration for the issue in their mediums. The results are fascinating.
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