Isabel Toledo's study of suspension builds on her investigation into the effects of gravity on clothing. She explores various distributions of weight and uses tension, torsion and compression as structural and esthetic elements. Instead of being hindered by the forces that make rigid structures vulnerable, she uses them to coincide with the shape and articulation of the body.

Pulling forces are found in the scarf, suspender, and pouch dresses. Despite their similarities, only the kangaroo dress is articulated around a single source of tension. Derived from the shape of a living organism, the front pouch is hung from a string anchored to the neck. The scarf dress also uses the neck as the main weight-bearing tower, but the radial attachment of the pouch is replaced by the parallel attachment of tucks along the center front. These multiple points of tension help fit the figure while distributing the weight of the dress. Tension is at the heart of many Toledo creations but not necessarily the single element of structure. The hermaphrodite dress is unusual in that it is entirely articulated by tension alone.

Twisting forces are at play in Isabel Toledo's spiraling tour de force, the caterpillar dress, in which a simple cut enables gravity to be evenly distributed along a helix. The dress rests comfortably on the body, while gathers distributed along the spiral fit and accentuate the female figure. Torsion and compression meet in the full-skirted matte jersey dress. From Isabel's action pattern series, this garment takes form only when the body collaborates with the cloth. The belt squeezes and directs the folds, enabling the cloth to spiral around the body while being suspended from the armholes.

More at ease in the three-dimensional art of draping than in flat pattern-making, Isabel finds inspiration for an inexhaustible variety of forms in the correlation between weight distribution, fabric and body.