BRUSSELS—Isabelle De Borchgrave, artist, colorist and fashion designer of all things beautiful has been designing home furnishings fabrics and other home products at popular retail price points for nearly 50 years.

A new poster line of her artwork is available through Soicher Marin and now she wants to launch a major retrospective of her artwork in America.

Most of her work has demonstrated a long shelf life in traditional, classic designs.

 She has designed tiles and then dinnerware for Villeroy & Boch starting in 1976; Gian of France for faience and more recently for Fabricut, a total of 40 designs and 200 sku’s, this artist in residence now lives in a 12,000 square foot studio that was a former parking garage made over into a beautiful, light filled space. At any one time, Isabelle has 10-15 young designers who work with her, turning paper into three-dimensional structures. “The design for fabric and fashion starts with paper and I have been working with paper since before I could walk,” she says. Paper patterns is the precursor to every garment made but Isabelle takes the paper pattern to the next level as a finished product you cannot tell from textiles. (It is the most amazing textile fakery you have ever seen!)

Consider yourself lucky if you are invited to dinner there because it is a beautiful experience with her long-time friends including her husband Werner who says he cleans her brushes but he is really the marketing mastermind behind her success.

Isabelle’s latest success is an extensive collection of fabrics for Fabricut (licensed through HB2) that seems to be selling well with a wallpaper collection planned for the near future. She has designed fabrics for P/Kaufmann, Covington, Boussac, Tricia Guild and Patrick Frey; carpets for DePoortere and linens for Libeco. She is also a friend with just about everyone who has made a mark in the textile world from artists, designers to manufacturers.

This year, she was part of the MoOD exhibition in more ways than one; she was on the tour list for journalists at MoOD with a cocktail party at her studio home. In addition to that, she has designed fabric collections for many of the MoOD exhibitors over the years, giving inspiration to the exhibition in the process.

Her unique niche in the market comes from her work as an artist who wandered into textiles but she is still painting and creating art from heavily crafted paper, something she has done since she was a child with just as much passion today as her she had in her younger days. 

The Brussels borne artist who’s family came to Belgium in the 16th Century designed a line of paper napkins for Casparo called ‘Mille Fleur’ that is still selling well, she says.

“You can build a collection in two hours at her studio—not two days—said a designer who works for Fabricut. Everyone raves about her studio with its extensive archives.

And what about retirement? Never, she says. “We took ten years off in the 80’s to raise our two adopted children; a son who is a 28 year old film maker and a daughter, 31, who works on websites and visual communications.