Mallory Hagan.

Join Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan for her official New York Homecoming Celebration at The Fashion Institute of Technology’s Haft Auditorium, for drinks and a show aptly called “Here She Is.” Tickets are $75 in advance and $100 at the door—which does not guarantee a photo with the comely Ms. Hagan that you can Instagram, but true beauty is never free. No word yet on whether the last Miss America from New York, Vanessa Williams (remember what happened to her crown? Google “Vanessa Williams nude”), will show, but “stars of stage and screen” are promised.

The Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 West 27th Street, (212) 217-7999, 7pm-12am.

In the first half of the 20th century, there were more than one hundred thousand Jews living in Iraq. Today, we estimate that there are about 12. Their legacy lives on at the Kubbeh Project, a pop-up restaurant that serves Jewish-Iraqi comfort food. The Kubbeh Project will be tucked inside the Zucker Bakery in the East Village until March 21.

The Kubbeh Project in the Zucker Bakery, 433 East Ninth Street, (646) 559-8425.

Why did you decide to do this show?

It seemed to me it would be very interesting for a New York audience to get a show which looked at the full range of Japanese fashion now. The introductory gallery will remind everybody what was so earth-shattering about '80s fashion. ... And then the big gallery looks at the whole panorama, high fashion, new designers, street fashion, subcultural styles, men's wear ... really cool men's wear is coming out of Tokyo. Everything that goes together to make Tokyo one of the world's most exciting fashion cities.

'Earth-shattering?' Can you talk about why Japanese fashion had such an impact in the '80s?

In the early to mid-'80s, avant-garde designer fashion, principally by Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and  Yohji Yamamoto, absolutely transformed the world of fashion. At that point, Western fashion was quite body-conscious and colorful, and suddenly you have these kind of Amazonian models striding down the runway in flat shoes. And they are wearing clothes which are ... quote-unquote oversized or asymmetrical and black, or, as I say, dark, dark indigo. And this caused tremendous controversy and enthusiasm. It was just really a revolutionary moment and ultimately it became completely integrated into fashion.

How did it influence designers outside of Japan?

Other avant-garde designers and even high-fashion designers, like at Chanel, would start exploring deconstruction as a way of investigating how clothes were made and unmade. It was a very exciting sort of alternative image to fashion.

What's different about this exhibition?

I really wanted to mix it all up.

There have been a few shows focusing on Japanese fashion, but mostly they have either done the big names of avant-garde fashion who emerged in the '80s or they have been little looks at street style.

There's a handful of looks showcased-Forest Girl, for example. What do they look like?

Well a Forest Girl look is very much ... It's interesting, it's very sweet. It's somewhat hippie-ish. It's involved with inspiration from the idea of the Black Forest and Eastern Europe. Some of the clothes are new clothes; other times, Forest Girls will put together a look made of a combination of new and vintage clothes. There will often be details in lace or aprons. And soft cloth bags as opposed to prestigious leather handbags. Mostly flat shoes. Then you have something like the Princess Decoration style that's lots of pink. ... It's highly decorated with all kinds of accessories. And then you have something like a Shibuya ... more kind of trendy teens.

What about the hugely popular Gothic Punk Lolita look?

There's a whole range of styles. Some are more gothic punk, some are more gothic Lolita, some are more punky, some are more kind of occult-looking. 

Are the Lolita and the Princess Decoration personalities? Like how in America we'd say, "that person's a punk."

It's like a style tribe, exactly. Those are like punks and goths in the West who have a style tribe, or hippies in the past, or mods in the past. Young Japanese people have really enjoyed this concept of style tribes.

What is it about Japanese culture that has allowed all this to evolve?

Japan is the first non-Western country that's had a really major radical impact on global fashion. I think that their history, the way Western fashion was introduced, sort of from the top down, from the Imperial court down, [had] an impact. But even as far back as the 11th century, before a regular pattern of style change had emerged in Europe or anywhere else, [there] was already a kind of fashion sensibility in Japan. The concept of being up-to-date was really important for aristocrats at the court.

What about in Japan today?

There's a sense that, within Japanese culture, the ephemeral, the changing, the up-to-date, the fashionable has tremendous deep-seated appeal. Plus, the sort of ingrained other ideas of uniformity and conformity to dress codes for who you are in society all seem to have merged to create a culture that is very fashion-forward and also very demanding about high quality.

How is Japanese fashion manifesting itself in American street fashion or pop culture? I remember Gwen Stefani's Harajuku girls.

That's one example-a lot of young people know what Harajuku is. I think that fashion is a part of visual culture, like anime and like contemporary art. And Japanese culture certainly had an influence on international art and international interest in anime and graphic novels and so on.

Some of what we see is more subtle. Like designers will go over to Japan and ... they will come back and maybe incorporate elements into their collections, which we wouldn't necessarily recognize as 'oh that's from Japan,' but the fact [is] that Western designers love to go to Japan because it's such a fashion fix.

Any specific examples?

People like John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld are all designers who have gone to Japan and have admired Japanese contemporary fashion culture. When I was in Japan last time, I ran into Jeremy Scott in a used-clothing store, and you know, we were just trying crazy stuff on and going on about how fabulous the Japanese fashion culture was.

Can you talk about current Japanese designer fashion?

One name which is emerging as an important young designer is the brand name Sacai, and the designer's name is Chitose Abe. She had worked for Comme des Garçons, and then she set up her own company ... another brand, Matohu, is also very interested in exploring the influence of traditional Japanese aesthetics. People in the West, if they are fashion people, will have heard of Undercover by Jun Takahashi ... He is interested in exploring the ugly as well as the beautiful. ... I bought a blouse from Undercover. From a distance, it looks like it's a floral print, but if you look at it closely ... you go, 'Oh my God, it's like little vampire mouths with little sharp teeth!' It's so cool.

What do you want people to take away from the show?

I hope that it will open people's eyes to the fact that there is this fantastic fashion city full of cool stuff that they may have never seen before. I regard it as being almost like a virtual trip to Tokyo.

editorial@observer.com

Community Board 5 just announced a housing clinic which it will hold on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at the Fashion Institute of Technology at 6 p.m. Housing experts will be on hand to discuss a multitude of issues: senior/supportive housing, rent-stabilization, 80/20 housing and condo/co-op conversions.

Community Board 5 is a pretty professionally run board, so bring all your questions and concerns and ask away. And you don't need to be a resident of the board's district: All New York City residents are encouraged to attend.

Council member Dan Garodnick is slated to deliver the opening remarks, so if you want to lob him a few questions be sure to be there.

F.I.T., 227 West 27th Street, Building A, eighth floor, Feb. 28, 6 p.m.

-Matthew Grace

The Real Estate ain't no traffic expert (unlike the folks over at the D.O.T., which endorsed the plan), but we'd sure be happy to see the street running in front of our own building closed down. Who wouldn't?

Anyhow, we digress.

Ms. Brown says in the letter, "We now believe it makes good sense to defer the Commons project until the rest of the plan has been completed," which confirms our suspicions that the commons project is far from dead. Most likely F.I.T. will spiff up the block with its new projects, and launch a massive P.R. campaign to get the locals on its side before trying again.

Community Board 5 originally sent out an e-mail saying that F.I.T. "is no longer interested in the implementation of this project." We dutifully posted that here, although F.I.T. director of media relations Brenda Perez said the schools was merely pursuing other projects in its master plan before approaching the commons proposal again.

Curious, The Real Estate decided to take a walk in the sweltering heat to check out the school's new dorm building at 406 West 31st Street, right off the Lincoln Tunnel. It's a work in progress, as the photos here show. Slated to be completed in August of next year, the 320,000-square-foot, 15-floor building will have 493 suites for 1,100 students, doubling the school's current housing. F.I.T. bought the building for $48 million in 2004, and the renovations will cost $64 million.

Another part of F.I.T.'s master plan is a project called "C-Squared." This interesting project will face 28th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, and will function as an extension of the school's Marvin Feldman Center (also known as building C--get it?). This six-story, 50,000-square-foot textured-glass extension was designed by architects Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (SHoP) and will cost $25 million, and it'll include a fifth-floor atrium.

Hopefully, the new building will unite the disparate styles of the school's various buildings on the block. While not exactly an eyesore, the current F.I.T. campus is a wee bit cacophonous in its various architectural styles.
—Matthew Grace

Most recently, in May of this year, the school ran its plan past Community Board 5, only to be defeated in a full-board vote. Opponents of the plan, including neighbors and community activists, claimed that traffic would increase substantially if the street were closed (a dubious claim, according to pro-commons folks, not only because the school already severely restricts traffic on 27th Street, but because of numerous studies showing that traffic actually decreases if automobile traffic is restricted; furthermore, when F.I.T. was trying to sway the board, Manhattan D.O.T. Comish Margaret Forgione was on hand bolster the school's case).

Nevertheless, the commons plan is dead for the time being, evidenced by Community Board 5's e-mail notification yesterday that F.I.T. "is no longer interested in the implementation of this project."

But try telling that to F.I.T.

Brenda Perez, the school's director of media relations, e-mailed The Real Estate today: "F.I.T. has deferred the commons until other projects in the college are completed. In addition to pursuing the commons, F.I.T. has been updating its 1995 campus-wide master plan, which will address the college's critical space shortfall. The original plan stipulated that the commons would follow the completion of other construction and renovation projects within F.I.T.'s existing campus footprint. The college has decided to follow its initial intention to pursue the commons once those projects are completed."

O.K., so they won't exactly be ramming this through again posthaste, but The Real Estate has a feeling that this will be coming up again sometime soon. Any bets we'll be seeing this again in 2006?

- Matthew Grace

Born one year and a day apart in Cuba-she in 1961 in the Cuban countryside, he in old Havana in 1960-the couple met in West New York, N.J., just across the Hudson. It happened one day in Spanish class at Memorial High School, Mr. Toledo recalled recently over coffee at Ms. Toledo's Fifth Avenue studio.

"For me," Mr. Toledo remembered, "it was love at first sight. Totally. I was 14, still evolving. Boys bloom late. I was missing a tooth, and my hair was funny, but I knew that's my woman. No question."

Ms. Toledo smiled. Relishing the memory. For the uninitiated: The Toledos, rich in talent but not exactly rolling in commercial hype and profits, are heroes in the style world, especially to its younger constituents. Valerie Steele, who co-curated the F.I.T. exhibition, said recently that Ms. Toledo, whose women's clothes are sold at Barneys, is an artist whose designs are like "liquid architecture … Ultimately, it is Isabel's focus on the juxtaposition of material and sculptural shape that is her most original contribution to the art of fashion." Richard Martin, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, has written that Mr. Toledo is "the greatest fashion illustrator chronicling our time."

At the F.I.T. exhibition, the dance between her fashion and his art is immediately evident, a collaboration like that of two baroque lovers on a Saturday-night subway heading downtown. In person, the Toledos are very still. Their dance is verbal. He speaks in booming, masculine tones; her voice airs gently. They finish each others' sentences so seamlessly that if you close your eyes, they could be one person. "Our relationship is all about respect," Mr. Toledo said. "People think we're so alike, but, really, we're so opposite."

"It's respect for each other's opinion that sparks us."

"For instance, if I made a dress," he said, "it would be decorative, over-the-top nonsense. Isabel is pure and logical."

Isabel Toledo was 8 when her family came to America. Ruben Toledo was 6. "My biggest memory of Cuba is an emotion," she remembered. "An emotion for the light, the way the sun hit every color. Shadow. In New York, the first thing I remember is that bridge."

"The Pulaski Skyway," he offered.

"Intricate. Summer. The industrial feeling," she whispered.

In interviews, Mr. Toledo likes to describe himself as part Ricky Ricardo, part Salvador Dalí. Isabel, he said, is part Morticia Addams, part Frida Kahlo.

"I had an art class with his brother."

"He was a jock. I used to do his art homework," he said.

"Landscapes. Beautiful landscapes," she recalled. "I was amazed."

Ruben always drew, but never thought he should do it professionally "until she told me." Isabel was a quiet student, someone whose idea of a great afternoon was gardening, a passion for green things she continues now on the terrace of the couple's apartment-"an architectural Disneyland," he said-on top of a 19th-century building south of Herald Square.

She always sewed. Made clothes for her older sisters. "When I was able to make things for myself, I finally was able to express myself," she said. "I guess that was my first awareness of this thing called fashion." Years later, Ms. Toledo got into the design business when, one morning when she was at work as a restorer at the Costume Institute, Mr. Toledo went into her closet and took three of her designs to Bendel's and Patricia Field's. He came home with her first-ever orders. "I sewed for weeks," she said.

As teenagers in high school, their courtship consisted mostly of afternoon bike rides and his visits to her family's house. "I proposed marriage so early, so many times, I forgot about it. It took forever to get an answer. Until Isabel reminded me."

"Wait a minute. Does that offer still stand?" she asked a few years after they graduated from high school. They were commuting by day into the city. She was studying at F.I.T. and Parsons School of Design; he was taking classes at the School of Visual Arts.

"I missed him," Ms. Toledo said.

The wedding dress: Isabel and Ruben shopped for the lace she fashioned over a sheath of blue gauze. The Toledos, by their account, were married three times. "When Isabel finally said Yes to marriage after all these years, I called City Hall," he explained. "'How do you get married?' I asked. They said, 'Come to such and such an office.' So we told our parents. We got all dressed up."

"The rice and everything," she laughed.

"Drove to the city," Ruben continued. "Go up to this window in City Hall, and they say, 'Here's your permit. Come back next week.' I said to Isabel, we can't tell our parents we aren't married."

"And since they didn't speak English …" she added.

"We left town for our honeymoon. Came back. Got secretly married, and didn't say anything so our Catholic families wouldn't know we'd honeymooned in sin."

They drove to Niagara Falls. "Of course," Mr. Toledo laughed. "Where else?" The car they borrowed, "It was broken. So we couldn't turn it off, otherwise it might not start again."

"So we traveled around for, like, seven days?"

A month later, following their civil ceremony at City Hall, they had a church wedding. The Toledos did not write their own vows. They do not celebrate their anniversary, as they have three, they say. If they celebrate Valentine's Day this year, it'll probably be dinner in a neighborhood Japanese restaurant advertising a special lovers' prix fixe.

Then it's back to work. Recently, quite unexpectedly, choreographer Twyla Tharp wandered into the F.I.T. exhibition and, as a result, commissioned Ms. Toledo to design costumes for a ballet that will premiere next month in Miami. Ms. Toledo, who describes herself as "the oldest living young designer," will present her next collection on March 30, around the time that the Toledos will open a shop, called Isabel Toledo Lab, at 277 Fifth Avenue. In addition to women's clothes, the store will have men's wear by Ms. Toledo and objects for the home designed by Mr. Toledo.

"We value age here," Ms. Toledo said when asked what she and Mr. Toledo want to achieve by the time they are 100. "We'd like to be doing exactly what we're doing now," she laughed, "just easier."