For New York expansion, Collectible fair’s founders bet on confluence of art and design

The Water Street Associates (WSA) building in New York’s Financial District has become a hotspot for new creative ventures, which may be why the Belgian contemporary design fair Collectible chose it for its New York debut. On 5 September the Brussels-based fair will take over two floors of the Financial District high-rise. “When we saw the WSA space, it was serendipitous,” said Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg, the fair’s co-founders.

They opted to launch the fair’s New York edition during Armory Week—an atypical move for a design fair, which is more likely to participate in New York’s Design Week in May. (The fair’s closest predecessor the Collective Design Fair, which shuttered after its 2018 edition, took place in spring.) Both of Collectible’s founders come from a fine art background—Vaisberg is a former director of the Independent’s European edition, and Debehault ran her own consultancy—and they saw an opportunity in the excitement surrounding The Armory Show.

“The energy in the city right now is amazing for design,” Debehault and Vaisberg said, adding that Collectible may have an edge as the busy fair week’s only design fair. She and Debehault started Collectible in 2018, hoping to bring functional art to their community of fine art collectors.

Many of the fair’s more than 100 participants this year are based in New York and around the US, as opposed to the Brussels edition, which typically consists mostly of European participants. “We had to set up a lot of things in a crazy short amount of time,” Debehault and Vaisberg said. To avoid the lengthy and expensive task of importing pieces from overseas, they opted to focus on exhibitors from nearby, as well as from neighbouring countries including Canada and Mexico. The co-founders said the time crunch was a blessing in disguise, giving them an opportunity to expand their network of local artists, dealers and designers.

Collectively curated

Collectible is split into eight sections, four organised under the banner of “Distinct” and four under “Curated”.The latter sections, each organised by an outside curator, include Post Post New New, designed by the team at WSA in celebration of their partnership with the fair; Architect ⇔ Designer, a showcase of pieces by architecture firms that have recently expanded their practices into furniture, organised by the New York-based design firm Studio Ahead;Curated, organised by Sonya Tammadon, which focuses on one-off pieces by major names in design including Charlap Hyman and Herrero, Nick Poe, and Rafael Prieto of Savvy Studio, who created a new wallpaper design for the occasion; and Fashion, which is helmed by the fashion editor and stylist Gabriela Karefa-Johnson and taps into the buzz of New York Fashion Week, which coincides with Armory Week. Karefa-Johnson’s selection focuses on the intersection of fashion and design, including studios that mainly work in fashion retail.

Under the “Distinct” banner are the sections New Garde, which focuses on emerging studios; Outdoor, which will feature sculpture, woodworking and a horticultural project; and the two core sections of the fair, Bespoke and Main, which foreground emerging designers and dealers such as Ben Willett, Emma Scully Gallery, Lyle Gallery Jack Simonds Studio.

As part of its expansion to New York, Collectible has brought on a director to lead its new YS fair, Emily Marant, who operated her own design studio for nearly a decade. Marant is excited to open what she believes is a new chapter for the city’s design scene. “We are giving a strong voice to younger designers and people in a way that a fair generally wouldn’t,” she says.

Vaisberg and Debehault are committed to making the New York fair an annual occurrence. As for where Collectible might expand next, the founders are looking closely at Seoul. “It’s a factory of amazing talents,” the co-founders say. “But let’s not go crazy.”

• Collectible New York, 5-8 September, Water Street Projects, 161 Water Street, Manhattan