Ruben Toledo

Before I even knew who he was, I was obsessed with the artwork of Ruben Toledo. The obsession began with the arrival of the Nordstrom catalog to my house, for which Mr.Toledo would do the cover art and drawings inside. I would thumb through the catalog twice: once to look at the clothing, a second to look at Mr.Toledo's sketches. When I would go to the doctors with my parents, I would look through fashion magazines such as InStyle, looking solely for a Ruben Toledo illustration wether in an advert or to accompany an article:

I always enjoyed looking at the sketches of these glamorous creatures. These women were who I aspired to be. I was going to be one of the well dressed, uber fabulous women in the Toledo sketches.

(True story: As a child, I lived vicariously through my Barbies, and was obsessed with the Fashion Avenue collections , because they looked most like the clothing in the Toledo sketches.)

To this day, any time I get a catalog or mailer from Nordies,  I save them. And besides being on my to read list, one of the reasons I bought all of the Nina Garcia books in the Borders sale was because Ruben Toledo did all the illustrations for the books. They are simply amazing.