Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens presents Pret-a-Papier. The Exquisite Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, an exhibition on view through December 30, 2012.
Inspired by the rich history of fashion represented in European paintings, famous costumes in museum collections, and designs of the grand couturiers, Isabelle de Borchgrave has turned her passion for painting toward the recreation of elaborate costumes – crumpling, pleating, braiding, and painting the surface of simple rag paper to achieve the effect of textiles and create the illusion of haute couture.
By reconstructing dresses from key periods in fashion history, Prêt-à-Papier presents a range of styles from the late 17th to the early 20th century. Isabelle de Borchgrave deftly crafts a world of splendor in trompe l’oeil. Cutting, gluing, and painting with imagination and exceptional mastery, she creates the illusion of lace, brocade, delicate silk, and sumptuous embroidery.
The costumes of Tsar Peter the Great and Empress Josephine, works inspired by designers Mariano Fortuny and Charles Frederick Worth, and a recreation of Hillwood’s own The Countess Samoilova will occupy not only the Adirondack Building but key places within the Mansion.
A painter by training and by passion, Isabelle de Borchgrave turned her talent for trompe l’oeil to the paper sculptures that reinterpret and recreate almost 300 years of fashion. With fashion historian, Rita Brown, she created Papiers à la Mode, a collection of costumes in paper and paint that offered a fresh look at fashion history. Her collections that followed included an immersive dive into the 19th century Venice-inspired line from Fortuny, a look at the famous figures of I Medici, and a study of the Ballet Russes, whose playful figures and saturated colors nod to her love of the Nabis movement. De Borchgrave’s name is also readily associated with the world of design. – www.hillwoodmuseum.org