Isabel Toledo, Designer of Dress Worn by Michelle Obama, Bucked Fashion Orthodoxy – Wall Street Journal

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Ms. Toledo, who died of breast cancer Monday in a Manhattan hospital at the age of 59, bucked trends and industry orthodoxy to forge her own path, often at the expense of commercial success. That made it all the more surprising when Mrs. Obama chose to wear an Isabel Toledo creation.

“We couldn’t believe it, especially since Isabel had been such an underdog and so ignored,” said Paper magazine co-founder Kim Hastreiter, a longtime friend and champion of the designer. “It was the best revenge.”

Ms. Toledo avoided runway shows. Her small, independent label released collections on her own schedule. She served briefly as creative director of Anne Klein, designed a special collection for Lane Bryant and collaborated with Target on a collection.

Commercial success eluded her, but other designers respected her craftsmanship and artistic integrity. The designer and her husband, Ruben Toledo, received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for their work in fashion.

Born in Camajuaní, Cuba, on April 9, 1960, Maria Isabel Izquierdo arrived in the U.S. as a teenager. She, her parents and two sisters settled in West New York, N.J. Her father operated machines in a textile factory and later opened a clothing shop. Her mother assembled airplane-ignition locks.

On the first day of high school in West New York, she met Ruben Toledo, also of Cuban descent, in Spanish class, he said. Mr. Toledo would become her artistic collaborator. They married in 1984.

As curious teens, they fell into New York’s downtown-artist scene during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Joey Arias, a performance artist, cabaret singer and drag artist, who was a longtime close friend of the two, said he first met them at the hot-spot fashion store Fiorucci, where he worked as a salesperson at the time.

The three soon lived together in Mr. Arias’s Greenwich Village apartment, where Mr. Toledo, an artist, would draw, and Ms. Toledo, who began sewing as a child, would make clothes.

Ms. Toledo, who attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design but left to intern for Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, made clothes for Mr. Arias to perform in, including a “man bra.”

“I found this thing, an underarm sweat protector harness that’s worn under a sweater,” Mr. Arias said. “Isabel saw this and said, ‘Give me that.’ She deconstructed it and fashioned a new one. And thus created the ‘man bra.’ ”

Mr. Arias used his connections to give Ms. Toledo exposure, including the club Danceteria, where she held a fashion show. Ms. Hastreiter started going to her shows after co-founding Paper in 1984.

She met Mr. Toledo while he was a salesperson at a store called Parachute, where she was soliciting advertising for her new magazine. “He was telling me he had this girlfriend who wants to be a designer and she loves shoes,” Ms. Hastreiter said.

After the couple were married, Mr. Toledo invited Ms. Hastreiter to the Times Square apartment they had moved into to have Cuban food and see Ms. Toledo’s collection.

“Ruben did all the talking, Isabel was cooking beans and rice,” Ms. Hastreiter said. When Mr. Toledo pulled the clothes his wife had sewn out of her closet, “I couldn’t believe it. It was very avant garde.” Ms. Hastreiter featured Ms. Toledo’s work prominently in Paper magazine, which was a must-read for cool downtown types.

André Walker, an avant-garde designer coming up in the 1980s, became aware of Ms. Toledo through Ms. Hastreiter. “I’m almost sure Kim told me I should come to a show I was sure to like, and it turned out to be Isabel’s,” he said. “It was the kind of unimaginable elegance and experimentalism of cut integral to everything she did.”

They clicked. Ms. Toledo would try to teach him pattern-making and fashion history. “They were so aware and conscientious, never hesitating to ask how they could help.”

Julie Gilhart, a fashion consultant and former fashion director at Barneys New York, said she discovered Ms. Toledo through Paper. She met the designer while a buyer at Neiman Marcus, visiting the Toledos in their apartment-cum-studio, where Ms. Toledo made rice and beans and showed her “all these beautiful lingerie pieces,” including the man bra they made for Mr. Arias.

When she moved to Barneys, Ms. Gilhart brought Ms. Toledo’s collection to its new Madison Avenue location in 1992. She called Ms. Toledo one of the core designers Barneys embraced.

“Isabel was one of the warmest, welcoming women I have met, but fiery sometimes,” Ms. Gilhart said. “She knew what she wanted, and there was no compromise. She was a perfectionist.”

“She fell in love with sewing and making things as a kid; this love and fascination grew into her career,” said Mr. Toledo. “And on a practical note, when we were married, we needed to make a living. I took Isabel’s own miniwardrobe right out of her closet,” showed it to a few retailers, “and got orders for our very first delivery that day.”

In 2012, when her autobiography, “Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion,” was published, Ms. Toledo told CNN she was more about design than fashion. “I love to engineer a garment. To make this thing work, to make it stand, to make this sculpture work. I get all enthralled if I have to come up with: How do I sew this cloth? What am I saying with the fabric? It’s nothing to do with, ‘What does it look like?’ ”

Ms. Toledo is survived by her husband and two sisters, Mary Santos and Anna Bertha Izquierdo.

Write to Ray A. Smith at [email protected]