Isabelle de Borchgrave

Isabelle de Borchgrave (Brussels, 1946 – Brussels, 2024) was a Belgian artist best known for her trompe-l'oeil paper sculptures and garments. Born Isabelle Jacobs, she left school at 14 and studied at the Centre des Arts Décoratifs and later at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. After a brief spell in advertising, she made clothes for friends and moved into interior design, fabrics and accessories before setting up her own studio.

Her turning point came after a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1994, when she began designing paper costumes. Her major collections included "Papiers à la Mode", made with the Canadian costume designer Rita Brown and covering three centuries of fashion; "Mariano Fortuny", set in 19th-century Venice; "I Medici", with Florentine figures in Renaissance dress; and a tribute to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The 1998 exhibition "Papier à la Mode" at Mulhouse was a breakthrough: thirty life-size outfits that toured France, the United States and Asia, growing at each stop.

Her works ranged from a headdress shaped like a caravel worn by Marie Antoinette to oversized roses for a John Galliano show for Christian Dior. She recreated Jackie Bouvier's wedding gown for the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston and, in 2004, made a painted paper dress for Queen Fabiola of Belgium. She worked on large sheets of paper at a linen-covered table, and her pieces have been shown at the Fortuny Museum in Venice, the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and Hillwood in Washington, D.C. Her legacy lies in showing that painted paper could be treated as a serious medium for fashion and sculpture.