A Beloved Belgian Design Fair Bets Big on New York City

The scene outside the Water Street Associates (WSA) Building in Lower Manhattan this morning buzzed with activity as VIP hours for Collectible neared. Movers in hard hats hoisted crates out of cargo trucks cramped into the Financial District’s narrow alleys as designers nervously guided them into service elevators. Stylish aesthetes spilled out of Ubers and whisked through scaffolding to queue behind the velvet rope. The moment, albeit somewhat chaotic, seemed to signal the excitement stoked within New York’s independent design sphere when the Belgian fair announced its stateside expansion six months ago after seven successful editions in Brussels, where it debuted to much fanfare in 2018. There, the fair had established a key presence as a closely watched platform for emerging designers to showcase their latest zany one-offs—and for discerning collectors to source their next piece of statement furniture. 

Previous editions of Collectible focused primarily on European exhibitors, but co-founders Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg, who both have fine art backgrounds, were itching for a change of scenery. New York City’s reign as one of the world’s most robust collectible design markets—as well as its thriving ecosystem of makers, designers, collectors, and galleries—made expanding there a logical next step. And when the duo saw the cavernous, light-filled spaces in the WSA Building, a hotbed for the downtown-cool creative set sporting tenants like Luar, Ghetto Gastro, and Bode, it was a done deal. “We were excited by how it resembled the iconic Vanderborght Building in Brussels,” the duo said of the historic venue and Collectible’s longtime home. That afforded them just six months to bring this new fair to life, meaning they needed to figure out a whirlwind of complex logistics in a tight time frame. 

Does that make the end result feel a tad frenzied? Perhaps, but that’s beside the point. New York’s design community has been yearning for a fair specifically geared to 21st-century collectible design, and were eager to learn how they could participate. Such an outlet was missing after the like-minded Collective Design’s unexpected closure in 2019, preceding the pandemic that halted all fairs. “Many galleries and designers we met kept telling us to set up Collectible in New York City, as there were no other events similar to ours,” the duo said. The idea stuck, and now Collectible seems well-equipped to fill that gap and provide a long-overdue platform for New York makers, designers, and gallerists to again share space in a convivial setting. 

Debehault and Vaisberg enlisted design advisor and curator Emily Marant as the American offshoot’s creative director. She organized the fair into four sections and four curated spaces geared toward international and local galleries, emerging studios, vanguard makers, architects who dabble in furniture design, and even a sartorial-inspired section in a nod to the rapidly approaching New York Fashion Week. One of her biggest challenges was respecting that New Yorkers have a certain way of doing things. “It’s funny because we’re all foreigners, so we’re kind of new to this game,” Marant told me during the VIP preview. “It’s a good position, starting something with a fresh eye. Things kind of emerge and come to us.”

Trusting the process yielded an abundance of mind-bending work that showed how participants have been pushing their practices to new heights. For his first collection in five years, design’s resident rule-breaker Fernando Mastrangelo decided to venture into lighting. He wielded crystal resin into a trio of hand-sculpted luminaires that convey the shapes and textures of icebergs, harkening back to early collections that emulate the cool blues of Patagonian glaciers. The Mexico City multi-hyphenate Sofia Elias furthered her foray into furniture with a grouping of exuberantly colorful foamy chairs that evoke sugary frosting. Try sitting in them, and they gently collapse into a cushioned pile that may comfort or make the spine tingle. Ben Willett, meanwhile, previewed pieces including a ‘70s-style MDF chair finished in a shimmering lacquer under his newly launched namesake brand.

Elsewhere in the fair, styles, eras, and regions converge. Emma Scully Gallery is prominently displaying rugs that textile powerhouse Madeline Weinrib made in collaboration with poet, actor, and artist Rene Ricard, who died two weeks before the first rug was finished. “He sent little snippets of his handwriting to the weavers and they went back and forth until we felt the weavers understood every detail of his writing,” Weinrib says, intent on not rushing the process. “We’d work very intensely, and then stop until he felt like working again.” Similar dialogues unfolded at Belgian gallery St Vincents, which traveled across the pond to give interior designer Michael Hilal carte blanche to curate a booth that bridges the sensibilities of both countries. It places a never-before-seen sofa from his award-winning Big Sur collection alongside pieces by Brian Thoreen, Studio Kuhlmann, and EWE Studio in a calming fantasia. 

Some may question why Collectible expanded to New York during Armory Week instead of in May during NYCxDesign, the city’s month-long celebration of the design industry anchored by ICFF and WantedDesign. Marant has a simple explanation—it’s apples and oranges, and Collectible intentionally eschews brands. “It takes a village to support a community,” she says. “We’re very different, but we all know and respect each other.” Plus, staging a fair concurrent with Armory Week captures the eyes of international collectors, who are shuffling between the Armory Show, Independent HQ, Volta, and a smattering of gallery exhibitions throughout the week. In this space, Collectible has an edge as the week’s only dedicated design fair.

So far, that strategy seems to be working—Marant noted that attendees from Turkey, Russia, France, and the United Arab Emirates were all present during VIP hour, and the enthusiasm in the room was hard to ignore. “That’s something we didn’t know or anticipate. The community really welcomed us, and that was what helped us believe that we were doing the right thing, even if it meant putting up the fair in six months.”

All images courtesy of Collectible.