Designer Isabel Toledo Dies

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The designer Isabel Toledo has died today at age 59 in a Manhattan hospital, as confirmed by the New York Times. With more than a 30-year career in the world of fashion behind her, the Cuban-American artist was famous to many for designing the dress Michelle Obama wore at the presidential inauguration in which her husband Barack Obama became president in 2009.

According to her husband and creative partner, Rubén Toledo, the cause of death has been breast cancer.

Married for more than 30 years, Isabel and Rubén met when they went to the same institute in New Jersey and the last time we interviewed the couple they assured us that sparks flew between them. There are no secrets. It is the pure magnetism of love. Even when we don't see it, love conquers everything. We respect each other's differences. This creative friction always causes sparks to come out,”she explained in the interview two years ago.

The designer emigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1961 as a teenager and attended the most prestigious fashion schools in New York, Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design. Shortly after, even before finishing my studies, I already had the support of the best stores in the Big Apple, such as Bergdorf Goodman.

The dressmaker was renowned for her passion for geometry, her alternative and always independent spirit, and her unique vision of fashion and the fashion industry. “I'm not very interested in fashion, I just love design. Design is very different from fashion,”he explained in an interview with CNN. "So design lasts forever, it's like an engineer, I love building a garment."