If all that you knew about Isabel Toledo was the elegant lemongrass yellow ensemble that Michelle Obama wore to her husband's inauguration, don't miss the exhibition of her couture fashions currently on view at The Museum at FIT.

Toledo, who is often called "a designer's designer," is something of a cult figure and, very definitely, an iconoclast. Her last runway show under her own label was in 1998. Since then, her clothes have been available only through high-end retailers like Barneys - except for a brief period in 2007-08 in which she created a ready-to-wear line for Anne Klein.

Left: Woodgrain dress and jacket, Spring/Summer 2008, photo: William Palmer. Center: Double Tier Pagoda Dress, photo: William Palmer. Right: Donna dress, Fall/Winter 1994/95, photo: Reuven Afanador.

Instead of producing a "brand," she creates what she calls fashions "from the inside out." "I never thought of myself as a designer," she says. "I'm a seamstress. I really love the technique of sewing more than anything else. The seamstress is the one who views fashion from the inside! That's the art form, really-the technique of how it's done."

And the show is all about her various techniques of transforming gorgeous fabrics into objects of desire. The exhibition is divided into 7 sections, with titles that allude to her process, including: Origami, Fluid Architecture, Organic Geometry, Suspension...you get the idea, but you have to see the clothes! What is so surprising about her designs is that their shapes are derived from something she senses, an emotional response, if you like, to the material at hand.

Her husband, the noted illustrator and artist Ruben Toledo, is her collaborator. "She sees in 3-D," he says. "Her mind is like a computer." As she begins to construct her vision, she and her husband engage in intense discussions. He sketches her ideas; she drapes and pins fabric on a mannequin; he sketches some more; she modifies the work in progress; he sketches the finished design.

The illustrations become important documents, communicating her ideas and construction details to the pattern makers. For anyone who sews, seeing this show will be a revelation, as the pattern shapes for many of the garments are included in the form of black-and-white diagrams. But how the shapes become incredibly deluxe garments is touched by the designer's magical eye and hand.

The names of some of the outfits surely tell more about the designer than her formal, almost prim appearance reveals: Twister gown; Silk Crotch jeans; Triple Slash Centipede dress. But amazingly, there are styles suitable for every age, every social strata and every occasion. One of my favorites was the Car Fin coat and skirt. Made of a Chinese red fabric, the jacket had Cadillac-like fins defining the trailing edges of the sleeves.

The exhibition, curated by Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears, and designed by Charles B. Froom, offers an incredible amount of information without burying the viewer alive in details. The small gallery that includes the introduction, as well as Michelle Obama's inauguration ensemble, is wrapped on three sides by an illustrated timeline, starting with Isabel Toledo's first commercial designs from 1984. The photographs, by the likes of Reuven Afanador, Todd Eberle, Jason Schmidt and more, show the consistency of her vision over the years.

The main gallery's high ceiling provides space for what amounts to a canopy of Ruben Toledo's illustrations. Executed on 6-foot-high scrolls that divide the room into three sections, in monochromatic palettes of black/gray, red/brown, blue/gray, the lively drawings show how women would actually be while wearing the clothes displayed on the mannequins below.

Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out continues at the Museum at FIT through September 26^th. Fashion Institute of Technology, Seventh Avenue at 27^th Street. 212.217.4558. Please visit the website for information.