Roots of Style Makes April 30 Fashion Night at powerHouse Arena

April 11, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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DUMBO — On Monday, April 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the powerHouse Arena, 37 Main St., fashion designer Isabel Toledo will be joined by her husband, artist Ruben Toledo, to discuss her autobiography Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion.

“When you’re an artist, you have no map to show you the right direction or safety net to catch you when you fall. You have to find your own vision through discovery, passion, and intuition,” Isabel Toledo says. She has earned a reputation as a fiercely talented and fiercely independent fashion designer and business owner. She is known for creating garments that encourage women to explore their unique fashion styles and personalities, and is one of the most innovative designers working today.

In Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion, Toledo discusses her artistic inspirations and the personal experiences that have shaped her work. She opens up for the first time about her early childhood in Cuba; growing up in West New York, N.J.; studying at Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons Institute; interning at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and living in 1970s New York with friends like nightlife fixtures Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi.

Toledo has been hailed as a “designer’s designer” by setting her own rules, like choosing not to show at Fashion Week. Toledo strives to create clothing that reveals something about the woman wearing it, and her innovative technique takes into account a woman’s anatomy, body language and even her way of moving.

Roots of Style includes illustrations by Isabel’s husband Ruben Toledo, a famous artist in his own right whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. With his whimsical and affectionate pictures, he transforms Isabel’s design concepts into fleshed-out illustrations, bringing her words and artistic sensibility to life.