Ruben Toledo was born in Havana, Cuba in 1961 and plays multiple roles: painter, sculptor, illustrator, fashion chronicler and critic, and surrealist. He has designed mannequins, store windows, award statuettes, scarves, fabrics, dishes and carpets. He has painted murals, portraits, album covers and barns.

He has created witty and incisive illustrations for the top fashion magazines and journals from around the world, including The New Yorker, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, Paper, Visionaire, Interview and The New York Times, and he is the illustrator of Nordstrom’s national designer ad campaign. Toledo’s work has been on exhibit throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He is the author of Style Dictionary, a collection of his drawings and watercolors. His collaboration with his fashion designer wife, Isabel Toledo, was the subject of both a book and a museum exhibition titled “Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion” at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where they both reside and work. Ruben Toledo recently completed his first film — an animated History of French Fashion entitled Fashionation.