Alva Review-Courier -

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Whether she is handcrafting a pearl necklace, building a ballet slipper or recreating the lacy ruff of an elaborate late Renaissance period gown, Isabelle de Borchgrave starts with the same surprising material.

Plain, white paper.

"All that is the same paper," she said, gesturing to one of her newer works, an intricate life-size reproduction of the gown, jewelry and headpiece depicted in Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens' 1610 painting "Portrait of Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess of Condé." ''Through the exhibition, even the shoes, you can see how paper becomes different. . It's not the same effect. You can see that you have leather, you have lace, you have satin."

The Belgian artist's intricate paper recreations spanning more than 500 years of fashion history are collected in "Isabelle de Borchgrave: Fashioning Art from Paper," on view through Sept. 9 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Oklahoman reported.

"It's completely different, it's unique, it's like nothing I've ever seen," said Oklahoma City Museum of Art curatorial assistant Jessica Provencher. "We want to diversify the exhibitions we show. . It's fashion, but it's also art."

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art co-organized the de Borchgrave retrospective with Artis — Naples, The Baker Museum in Naples, Florida; the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh; the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee; and the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida.

"We're very excited about the exhibition. It's traveling here from Belgium . and it's gone all over the country. We will be the only regional venue," said Becky Weintz, the OKC museum's director of marketing and communications.

The artist said she is proud to bring her work to Oklahoma for the first time with "Fashioning Art from Paper," which features 78 life-size, trompe l'oil paper costumes but totals more than 90 items counting accessories ranging from "straw" hats and shining crowns to compact handbags and dangling earrings.

French for "deceive the eye," trompe l'oil is a technique where artists use photorealistic details to trick the viewer as to the nature of the work. Some ancient Greek and Roman muralists were said to have created such realistic outdoor paintings that they fooled the local wildlife, while some Renaissance artists painted false frames into their work to give the illusion of looking out a window.

The retrospective brings together for the first time four different collections of paper costumes de Borchgrave has devised since she started working in her unusual medium nearly 25 years ago. In collaboration with Rita Brown, a Canadian-based theatrical costume maker, de Borchgrave created 25 life-size dresses drawn from paintings and garments for "Papiers à la Mode" ("Paper in Fashion"), which delves into 300 years of fashion history, from Elizabeth I to Coco Chanel.

"The World of Mariano Fortuny" showcases her renditions of the 20th-century fashion designer's signature Grecian-styled dresses and tunics; "Splendor of the Medici" pays homage to the Renaissance-era Florentine power players with de Borchgrave's most complicated paper recreations to date; and "Les Ballets Russes" captures the colorful fancies of Serge de Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who all designed for the legendary ballet company. To go with her eye-catching crimson fabrication of the gown, Ruben's original "Portrait of Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess of Conde" also is on view in the exhibit.

"What I loved and what I discovered when I was a little girl is all the detail. I was completely crazy about that, and I would like to do it. This is another way," she said, indicating her version of the gold-trimmed gown.

"After I use a big bunch of paper, it's a very inexpensive medium. If you make a wrong thing, it's not like you used paint on silk. It's paper. Inexpensive. You put it away, you put it in the garbage, and you redo it. And sometimes you go back to the garbage and you reuse the back of the paper. And sometimes you receive a present because there you have a new idea.

"Paper, it's a miracle. It's fabulous."

A lifelong artist, de Borchgrave was inspired to begin creating paper costumes after a 1994 visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

"If you love fabrics when you go to the museum and you see the collection of the Metropolitan . for me it's like a painting, it's a like a piece of art. And when you love that you want to try to understand it, how it's woven," she said. "My dress is not woven, but I can paint it like it is, give the spirit of it. ... I give the impression of fabrics. It's like your lace, if it's white it's not completely white, because you have all the holes, of you have all the detail. I can paint that in trompe l'oil completely, and you can see what it can be. It's a challenge . and when you do one, you want to do another."

Although a few of the lacy shawls draped over her Fortuny-inspired gowns are made from a sort of thin tissue paper, de Borchgrave said the majority of her works in the exhibit are created from painting, rolling, folding and otherwise manipulating the same ordinary white paper. But her meticulous costumes actually begin with thoroughly researching the original clothes she hopes to recreate.

"For the Ballet Russes (collection), I looked for a lot of costumes. I visit in Moscow, in St. Petersburg," she said. "After I make some drawings, after I put the paper on the table, I have to choose the color to give the effect. Sometimes it's more satin, sometimes it's like a felt . or silk. I look and I try to find the effect through the color. When I find that, I paint all the paper . and after, there are people who cut the paper and put it together. For sure, I am next to them because I have to decide if it's large enough or maybe too big or maybe too little. That's like haute couture for all the dresses you can see in that exhibition."

The Brussels native continues to find the versatile medium as well as the diverse history of fashion inspirational. "Fashioning Art from Paper" includes a series of 11 kaftans based on Silk Road textiles, but she said she hopes to continue to take her art along the ancient network of trade routes that connected East to West.

"I have a dream . but I need a lot of money for that because it's a huge work. But I have a fantastic project around 'My Fair Lady,'" she said, referring to the classic musical set in Edwardian London.

"The more you use the same medium, the more you find a new way to use it."

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Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com