“Those dresses had such capacity to amaze,” reflects Isabelle de Borchgrave on the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata.  “They were so beautiful that they became a powerful source of inspiration.  They gave me the desire to create.”

Viewing the work of Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco was like visiting the fantastic royal court of some imagined monarch.  The experience something between Alice falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland and a tour of the costume archives of the Metropolitan Opera.  Just arriving at the Legion of Honor, an austere neoclassical building, with its commanding view of downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, one feels regal.  You are being received by the Court of de Borchgrave.

Descending into a magical realm, at first I had no idea what I was seeing.  Even having read a few articles and seen photographs, it was not until I actually laid eyes on the work that it got to me.  First reaction: Total madness.  Obsession.  What could be driving this insane articulation of the history of costume?

From the height and frame of the mannequins to the trompe l’oeil jewelry, the detail of each of de Borchgrave’s pieces is taken to the extreme.  They are costumes from another time, if that description could cover it, but more exactly they express real feeling.  They seem to have personalities, very much like the 18th and 19th Century portraiture they are based on.   Period shoes, fabric draped, pleated, beaded, folded, ruched and embroidered – trims – each minute detail historically accurate.  But with a certain animated perfection of something sparkling and new.  Intermittently, a sense of the theatrical.  That newness is what gave them away.  They were all made of paper.

Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave (February 5th – June 12th) at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/legion/exhibitions/pulp-fashion-art-isabelle-de-borchgrave

By Matthew Kowles

June 28, 2011