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| Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, who has combined her passions for painting and fashion to remarkable effect. | |
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Decorating Hotel Cipriani
Isabelle de Borchgrave’s enchanting collection of historical costumes, recreated with paper, have dazzled the world over—and now they are wowing guests at Hotel Cipriani in Venice, says Jean Bond Rafferty.
Venice is an island of dreams. Painters and poets, writers and film-makers have been inspired by its shimmering splendours. For Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, Venice has provided a canvas as well as inspiration. And what a canvas—the Hotel Cipriani at the tip of the Giudecca. For almost 30 years, Isabelle has invented landscape murals, stencil motifs from nature to architecture, frescoes in Tiepolo style and seascapes à la Turner that dance along the walls and even across the ceilings of the legendary hotel’s rooms and suites.
Painting is Isabelle’s passion. Inspiration always comes via a series of watercolour sketchbooks of whatever catches her eager eye: a lonely garden rose, a Marrakech fountain, a windswept beach. “When you sketch, these are the things that stay in your mind. That’s what inspires a collection,” she explains. But fashion was an early love, too. Right out of art school, she designed hand-painted clothes for a Brussels elite that included members of the royal family.
Combining her two predilections led to a colossal ongoing project, a collection of historical costumes made of paper that is handpainted by Isabelle as dress fabric lengths, and then put together by Canadian theatrical costume maker and restorer Rita Brown. Called Papiers à la Mode, the 3-D faux fashion fantasy became a must-see museum show, exhibited in France, England (the V&A), Canada and the US (Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology), as well as in six Japanese cities.
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