"She had the courage to paint women's pain, which must never be revealed in patriarchal warrior societies. Yet she was true to her longing, as a female, to create beauty even out of an imperfect female body. Viva Frida! I visited Casa Azul, and everything I see and read about her still touches the deepest core of my feminine soul," said Gloria Bertonis, a fan of Kahlo.

Mirroring the comments of this art lover, artist Frida Kahlo's impact, female empowerment and artwork still fiercely resonate today -- and while her inner self went far beyond her exterior and her wardrobe, it's still fascinating to see how she kept onlookers guessing the character of this complex creature.

"Frida Kahlo wore her heart on her sleeve, though not the way one might think. In real life, as on the canvases of her many self-portraits, Kahlo used fashion to channel her physical and emotional insecurities into statements of strength, heritage, and beauty," according to Collector's Weekly, which was featured in News Taco. "Yet for nearly 50 years, her personal wardrobe remained hidden to scholars and fans alike, locked away shortly after Kahlo's death in 1954."

Sadly, Kahlo died young at the age of 47, and after her death, her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, began placing her most personal belongings into a bathroom at their Mexico City house.

When Rivera died in 1957, their home, also known as La Casa Azul ("The Blue House") became the Museo Frida Kahlo. However, before Rivera passed away he wanted to keep Kahlo's treasured things secret and from the public. So, he asked a close friend, Dolores Olmedo, to keep the room containing Frida's wardrobe locked for the next 15 years. Olmedo kept Rivera's wishes, but took the "request so seriously that she ultimately decided to keep the room sealed until her own death in 2002."

According to Collector's Weekly, during the last decade, the museum has finally been able to catalog and organize the bathroom's contents, which included hundreds of documents, photographs, and artworks, in addition to around 300 articles of clothing and personal objects -- from a pair of earrings Picasso gave Kahlo to her customized prosthetic devices.

In a joint effort, the museum and Vogue México teamed up to open the first exhibition of Kahlo's personal garments, "presenting her attire through the lens of disability and female empowerment, as well as her continued influence on fashion. The exhibition focuses on the ways Kahlo used her iconic style, often composed of traditional Tehuana garments, to project her feminist and socialist beliefs while also masking her debilitating injuries."

What's really fascinating is that there was a method behind Kahlo's fashion sense. For example, she didn't just choose any dress from Mexico; instead she specifically chose a dress that symbolizes a very powerful woman from the Tehuantepec Isthmus, a matriarchal society where women dominate the culture.

She donned colorful headpieces, European blouses and long skirts. Comparable to a doll, Kahlo always had "the basic construction of the Tehuana dress-adornment on the head, a short blouse, and then the long skirt-is the form she always built from, whether she was wearing a European skirt or a European blouse or a combination of both."

Famous artists have created contemporary interpretations of Kahlo's unique style that combined tradition with a contemporary edge -- from Jean Paul Gaultier, Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, the Welsch artist Dai Rees, and then the 2010 Givenchy couture collection, made by Riccardo Tisci.

Tisci's 2010 Givenchy couture collection was considered "the most extraordinary collection inspired by Frida, as if he had already seen the drawing of Las Apariencias Engañan ("Appearances Can Be Deceiving.") This drawing was discovered in her archive in 2004, and is actually the starting point of the exhibition. It displays the layers of her identity: She's naked wearing her corset and surrounded by the silhouette of the Tehuana dress, almost as a phantasmagoria."

Plagued by lifelong health problems, many of which stemmed from a traffic accident when she was 18, Kahlo shared her pain and suffering through self-portraits.

"I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best," she said.

She was one of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent.

Kahlo survived polio and entered a pre-med program in Mexico City with no intention of becoming an artist. After her bus accident, she spent over a year in bed recovering from fractures to her spine, collarbone and ribs, a shattered pelvis, and shoulder and foot injuries and underwent over 30 operations in her lifetime. While recuperating, she felt inspired to paint.

Her paintings, mostly self-portraits and still life were "deliberately naïve, and filled with the colors and forms of Mexican folk art." At 22 she married fellow artist Rivera, 20 years her senior. Their tumultuous yet passionate relationship "survived infidelities, the pressures of careers, divorce, remarriage, Frida's bi-sexual affairs, her poor health and her inability to have children."

"'I suffered two grave accidents in my life...One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego,' she said. The streetcar accident left her crippled physically and Rivera crippled her emotionally."

While she endured mental and physical anguish, Kahlo was a style icon in her own right.

"She was ahead of her time, and she understood dress and fashion and used it to build her persona and her identity. She was very stylish and sophisticated," Collector's Weekly noted.