Paper Dresses by Isabelle de Borchgrave

Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave working in collaboration with leading costume historians and young fashion designers, use sheets of paper to create these incredible garments.

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She forms her masterpieces of elaborate dresses by painting and manipulating the paper. Her artworks inspired by rich depictions in early European painting or by iconic costumes in museum collections around the world.

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At first glance, her creations seems made of expensive materials like silk, pleated cotton and damask, but in reality, her 18th century-inspired garments are made of common pattern paper.

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She sometimes uses much thinner paper for lace and other fine materials. She ususally paints it with acrylics, but she also uses ink and other types, depending on the desired effect.

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Isabelle painstakingly glues every “seam”, crumples, irons and fluffs paper to make it look like real lace and created buttons out of tiny rolls of paper.

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Before starting work on a project, she does extensive research to avoid any mistakes in fashion history by checking a collection of about 4,000 books to find every fashion style in history and make sure they get everything right.

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With the help of three stylists, she tries to create a pattern, and sometimes has to interpret certain designs, such as the backs of dresses, caps, and shoes, which aren’t visible on documents received from museums.

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After they create a prototype model of the certain dress they’re aiming for, Isabelle paints the paper and, along with her team, starts crumbling, tearing, and folding the paper. Making the dresses, along with accessories like wigs, shoes, bags, jewelry, takes between four and eight weeks.



Check her website: http://www.isabelledeborchgrave.com/