Isabel Toledo Musings on Style
Friday, February 6, 2009 at 12:31 PM 
Image courtesy Isabel Toledo via People
Paging through the February 9 issue of New York Magazine, our eye was immediately caught by a photo and great quote from one of Mrs. O's Inaugural designers, Isabel Toledo.
NY Mag: Michelle Obama wore your clothes to the swearing-in. Have you met?
Isabel Toledo: "Just once. And I have to admit, I hugged her and thought, 'Let me see ... what size?' She's got an amazing torso and long, beautiful arms. She's like a spider."
In turn, this reminded us of one of our favorite passages from Nina Garcia's, "The Little Black Book of Style", illustrated by who else, Ruben Toledo, Isabel's husband.
In the same way Isabel Toledo's account of how she chose the lemongrass color and unusual Swiss wool lace for Mrs. O's Inaugural look thoroughly charmed us, so too, did her broader musings on fashion and style for a Q & A session with Nina Garcia.
From "The Little Black Book of Style":
Q: What is the secret to buying and wearing a strong shape?
A: The secret to wearing strong shapes is body language - a woman has to be comfortable in her own skin to make strong shapes work for her. Once you know yourself and understand how to use your body language, clothes with shape can enhance your graphic presence and help to project your own personal style.
Q: What is your secret to mixing the practical with the fantastical?
A: This is the essence of style for me. How you mix opposites and rearrange realities to get at a deeper truth. I love the practical and build everything around it first. Fantastical just happens when you are open to it and can evaporate just as quickly. It has been my experience that from the fantastical, often the practical is born.
Q: Who are some of the most stylish women you know?
A: I adore the classic generations' sense of ageless style. Maria Felix, Louise Bourgeois, Iris Apfel, Anna Piaggi, Louise Nevelson, Frida Kahlo - they have all shown us that an independent and confident sense of yourself is what it is all about. Diana Vreeland, who I had the fortune to intern with at the Costume Institute at the Met, had that gift all through her life - the joy of living and dressing up or down for any challenge. We had the same shoe size and she would insist on trying on my picks that I found on Canal Street. The curiosity and enthusiasm is a real gift and the reward of a fertile mind and an open spirit - that is what fuels fashion!
So how has dressing the First Lady on the most historic of events affected the designer? When speaking to WWD, Isabel's husband Ruben, described the aftermath as "Obamathon". For lucky Buckeyes, Isabel Toledo will visit the Kent State Museum in Kent, OH on Feb.19. The museum houses the largest collection of images of her work, remnants from an exhibit in 2000. The rest of us will be able to listen in via NPR.Isabel Toledo in Outfits
Reader Comments (18)
NY Daily News with a photo collection of Michelle hugging people is calling her, "the new Princess Di" because of her ability to touch people,emotionally and physically.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/galleries/michelle_obama_hugs_it_out/michelle_obama_hugs_it_out.html#ph10
The Obamas are having a "Date Night" tonight...which is the cutest thing that I have ever heard in my entire life. Anyways, they are going to see the Alvin Ailey dance company, at the Kennedy Center, which is a relatively formal occasion so I cannot wait to see Michelle all glammed up:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/tonight-is-date.html
I am really curious if other Presidents have ever been this much "out and about." I am too young to remember what the Clintons were like, and the Bushes certainly did not leave the White House often. It is awesome that they do though. They are staying out of the bubble.
Well, the Clintons had a very different dynamic in their marriage didn't they so who knows whether they went on dates.
I just hope the Obamas continue to be vigilant about security with all this out and aboutness.
'A fertile mind and an open spirit'- that's what the Obamas bring to the White House. I love their idealism in such a cynical world
You know, one of the things that's not being discussed much that I think is highly relevant is that while she's making fashion cool for the masses and he's making government cool ... together they're making marriage and family cool.
That, I think, is a very good thing. It's truly lovely to see a happy nuclear family in the White House, and it's even more lovely that these are people that the country actually *cares* about and a family the rest of the country might actually emulate.
t'other Mrs. O, you're exactly right! I've seen some news pieces about the Obama's "making marriage cool again," so it does seem to be the case.
The other thing it does is encourage lots of people to get out and do things -- in this economy, it's too easy to hunker down in our homes. A little fun during stressful times is a good idea, and if it gets people to spend a little money on restaurants, movies, etc. then it helps the economy, too.
That is the most charming illustration - thanks for sharing.
I have admired the Toledo's for so long. Their dedication to craft, their integrity, unpretentiousness chic and inspiring joy of life make their 'newfound' success all the more deserved and sweet.
t'other Mrs. O,
You are so right! They make family cool. They make parenthood cool. They make marriage cool. They make being a grown man who hungers for his adult wife and not young girls cool. Men are encouraged to be adolescents in our culture. Barack is a MAN and he makes facing adult responsibilities chic. He will do more for so-called "family values" than all the rhetoric in the world because he makes it seem fun to be a family man.
Hmm Cute drawing but if thats suppose to be our first family, she may want to buy a few colour pencils in a darker shade
I agree with Kay. It is reprehensible that her illustration "whites out" the first black family. Why? Is black not "sophisticated" enough for Ms.Toledo? President Obama looks like a turn of the 20th century European or American dandy.
IMHO the drawing is fine the way it is.....I can just imagine the comments if "color" had been added
"too dark"...."too light"....."well they aren't all the same shade"....."it looks like blackface"
Sometimes a drawing is just a drawing. Not everything is to make a political statement.
*I feel like I need to add that I'm African American so that my remarks aren't considered insensitive.
I will choose to disagree with you, Mrs. H.S. :)
I do think it is troubling that the trend has to always be to "lighten" people. The drawing is cute, I agree, but it is a distortion (and not an innocent one, for art's sake, say). These decisions are not innocent ones (I'm not saying they're necessary intentionally, but they reveal something about "beauty" standards embedded in the psyche).
Yes, the right side of politics always seems to hijack the 'family values' debate for some reason.
I think having the Obamas in the spotlight will help break down latent perceptions of black people in this culture eg. that they are all basket ball players, rappers, jailbirds, 'babymamas' etc. blah blah.
@Ruby - Yes of course the Obamas will help to break down those stereotypes and perceptions. What will help even more than they alone however, is the people they've put around them: Valerie Jarrett, Denise Rogers, Marty Nesbitt, etc. etc. All extremely successful, highly visible, wealthy, extremly highly educated. And oh yes, black.
If I may, I'd like to suggest that stylized artwork such as this drawing is intended to be an interpretation, not necessarily to reflect reality. If you look back at the pre-inaugural WWD sketches, many showed a pale Mrs. O. Others went to the opposite extreme and showed an 'angry' Mrs. O. Yet no one complained, because they were conceptual, just as this drawing is.
THAT SAID, the dichotomy of this sketch and the more real portrait of Mrs. O in the post above this (by Leslie Brown) is stunning. In that one, her face is given color. Yes, it's more realistic, not stylized like this one, but it shows how true artistic talent can capture the REAL person. Isabel Toledo's sketch is about the clothes, not the people wearing them. Thus, the fade-into-the-background skin color in favor of showing off the brightness of the clothes.
But, what do I know? :)
honestly, if I didn't know who this family was, I would have thought that this was a sketch of a white family. There is absolutely nothing in this sketch that represents their ethnicity. Nothing. the hair, the nose, the skin shades etc...all point the caucus mountain.
at the end of the day, it's not a big deal. BUT we have to be true to ourselves and stop with the "this is just art..."
When WWD first published its series of Inaugural Ball gown sketches, the general "white-ing out" of the figures in the drawings in fact led to much discussion about the fashion industry's relationship to black women.
For example on Slate.com, Julia Turner's "How Hard Is It To Draw Michelle Obama?": http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/12/03/how-hard-is-it-to-draw-michelle-obama.aspx
And on Michelle Obama Watch, "Look Behind the Sketches and Read Between the Lines" : http://michelleobamawatch.com/look-behind-the-sketches-and-read-between-the-lines
The comments were not being made in a vacuum. Only the previous Fall there had been a spate of articles on the disappearance of the black model from the fashion world. The New York Times had a feature article by Guy Trebay, "Ignoring Diversity, Runways Fade to White," on October 14, 2007, which took fashion houses to task. And on October 15, 2007, a post on Jezebel.com, "Where Are All the Black Models? Let's Start By Asking Anna Wintour," questioned editorial spreads in fashion magazines.
In some ways, Italian Vogue's "Black Issue," published a few months later in July 2008, was yet a further installment of the discussion.
I think that one of the most exciting things about Michelle Obama is not that she's interested in fashion, but that fashion is just ONE of the things she's interested in. For Michelle, fashion seems at times to be a professional tool and at others, a source of pure pleasure. . . but it never feels like the whole show. We are a long way from Jackie Kennedy, a woman who appeared defined by her sense of style.
It's ironic that the fashion industry, which managed in the space of 15 years to transform itself into one of the world's most racially backward (compare today to the early 90s, when fashion was exemplary) is looking to a black woman to save it now. Ironic, and perhaps hopeful, too. But if it follows Michelle's lead, fashion could learn to see itself as just one aspect of a more substantial and textured life.
Alsace, I stand corrected. I had not seen those discussions and you're right -- it was more of an issue than I believed. And people have a right to complain; there is NO reason why a woman of any skin color cannot have that color celebrated. Thank you for enlightening me.
Beautiful illustration and I do so appreciate the Toledos' work but Alsace and others are spot-on. Fashion presents one of the most glaring examples of institutional racism through its pathological exclusion of blackness. We brown-skinned people are supposed to simply accept that whiteness is a 'norm' and that we must accept that while we are allowed to be consumers of fashion, we aren't supposed to demand to see ourselves represented in it. There is *nothing* natural or inevitable about Eurocentrism; it's a vestige of racism. Ask yourself this--when was the last time you saw white celebs or political figures represented regularly with Afro-typical features and brown skin? You haven't. So then why should we see the Obamas and other people of color reduced to white skin and European features, even in a sketch. As Chicagoan aptly put it, "there is no reason why a woman of any skin color cannot have that color celebrated."