Digital Pages "Missing Happiness"

Concept Board

Fabric and Collour Board

Line up

Range Plan

Portfolio Presentation Pages

Starting the Collection

Line up in process.

Fabric Research

First Fabric Research

Design Development

Sleeve Design Development

Design Development Using Fabric Manipulation on Stand

Shirt Design Development

Tops Design Development

Working on the Proportion of the skirt

Design Development

Stand Work to define the proportion of the coat.

Silhouette Exercise

Research

Missing Happiness

Gabriela L Haacke for Isabel Toledo

I am proposing an approach where I am using Isabel Toledo’s philosophy of DRESSING EMOTIONS.

“MISSING HAPPINESS”      is a collection in which I will demonstrate a TRANSACTION from a DARK and HEAVY moment to a LIGHT and FLOWING status of COMPLETENESS.

This transaction will be represented throughout the use of fabrics, silhouettes and techniques of fabric manipulation that are part of Isabel’s style and signature.

 Stand Work to inspire silhouette.

 Getting Inspired with the 'Circule Dress'.

Designer Research: Isabel Toledo

Isabel Toledo

‘’ We, the people, decide what is style. This is the most empowering aspect of fashion.’’

Isabel and her family moved from Cuba to New Jersey when she was 8 years old. She learned how to piece clothes together, sewing her own school outfits. She mention in an interview that at young age, she used to be very skinny and tall and she didn’t like the away the clothes that were out there to buy, looked on her.

                             “I didn’t think I was going to be a fashion designer . . .

                                         but I knew I was good with my hands.” 

WORK

Isabel attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in NY and studied ceramics and costume design at Parsons School of Design (NY).

In her early adulthood, she worked as intern as an antique-clothing restorer at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was at that point that she gained the passion for ‘fashion inside out’.

Working fixing the garments for the exhibitions at the MET, she learned that every designer had their own signature, their own way to build their garments.

Isabel Toledo for Anne Klein at NYFW Fall Winter 2007.

For more than 20 years, she worked quietly, earning her space and respect and establishing herself as a very creative designer who shied away from the mainstream.

Although she has now taken a much more prominent position in the industry, Toledo continues to work as she always has, in a fabulously airy multilevel loft in, New York, alongside her husband and long-time collaborator, the illustrator Ruben Toledo, her childhood sweetheart.

Isabel Toledo Fashion from Inside Out Exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NY, 2009.

INFLUENCES

Her creations brought together her love for the French designer Madeleine Vionnet, American influences (where fashion is thought of first in terms of comfort), and her Cuban roots where elegance is primordial.

“The Cuban part of my life is probably what introduced me to my senses." she explained. "It's how I look at things, the object and the contrast of colour. 

The women — I had many Aunts — I was very comfortable in a women's world."

SIGNATURE PIECE

At the Inauguration Day in 2009 in NY, when First Lady of the USA, Michelle Obama  wears a lemongrass-yellow garment, by Isabel Toledo, made of Swiss wool lace, was the day that Isabel’s name became part of history.

Not only putting her on a world stage, the moment also represented Isabel's appreciation for fashion in relation to history.

CUT AND CONSTRUCTION

The patterns for Toledo’s ready-to-wear are as complex and precise as blueprints; terms like “liquid architecture,” “suspension,” and “origami” have been used to describe them. Viewed on the body or on a mannequin, a Toledo garment swoops and folds in beautiful ways.

Despite the technical rigor of an Isabel Toledo design, the end result is typically soft and feminine, alluring because of its depth and dimension; “Romantic Mathematics” is the evocative term she has used to describe her designs. “Don’t just sketch an idea,” she often say to students . “Think about it in the round, build it, work it.