Isabel Toledo, designer who made Michelle Obama’s famous inaugural dress, dies

Isabel Toledo, the acclaimed fashion designer best known for creating the dress worn by Michelle Obama at her husband’s presidential inauguration in 2009, has died aged 59.

Toledo is said to have died from breast cancer, her husband Reuben Toledo says. She died at a hospital in Manhattan, New York City.

In an email, Michelle Obama told the New York Times what Toledo’s creation meant to her as she wore it:

“I knew that what I wore to my husband’s first inauguration would go down in history so I wanted something that would not only live up to the moment but would also stand up to the freezing cold of that January day.

“With her incredible creativity and masterful talent, Isabel designed a beautiful lemongrass outfit that I just loved. She more than met the moment — for that day and for all of history.”

Toledo told Interview Magazine in 2014. “My ideal happens to be diversity. I love difference. I love change.

“I have always believed in fashion for all – all ages, sizes, and styles accepted.

“I love experimentation and eccentricities. I like not knowing something and then discovering.”

Toledo was born in Cuba and emigrated to the US when she was a child. She met her husband, the artist Ruben Toledo, when they were both in high school.

As he told W Magazine in 2015: “I’ve known her since I was 13. She’s always been the most daring person visually. She would show up to school with the most adventurous asymmetrical haircuts and yellow and charcoal tinted eyes. Just the most incredible things that a 13-year-old ever saw.”

Obama may have catapulted Toledo to mega-fame, but her focus was often on clothing that could make regular women feel chic, working with brands like Payless and Anne Klein. In 2014, she debuted a line for plus-sized retailer Lane Bryant, saying:

“For me, it’s really important that women are given the opportunity to be eccentric… The liberty, the freedom, the right to be eccentric, to be their size, and to have the freedom or the opportunity to enjoy fashion at any size […] I can’t imagine not having that, so I feel a duty to provide it.”

Toledo worked as an independent designer, presenting her first collection at a New York nightclub in 1984 and going on to sell pieces in luxury fashion stores across the world.

“I’m not a fashion person,”  She told CNN in 2012  instead she loved to “engineer a garment. To make this thing work, to make it stand.”

Later, she eschewed the restrictions of the catwalk to produce new collections on her own schedule. She briefly held the post of creative director at Anne Klein from 2006-2007.