Inside the soothing Brussels apartment of a local fashion entrepreneur

When Michèle Bogaert, founder of multi-brand fashion boutique Icon in Brussels, tapped interior designer Merijn Degraeve to collaborate on her new home, there was only one thing she considered non-negotiable. In the L-shaped apartment, housed in an early-1950s building in Sint-Pieters-Woluwe, a municipality in the green belt surrounding the Belgian capital, the fashion entrepreneur wanted no trace of fashion. She envisioned her home as an escape from work.

Instead, the apartment, named Residence Michelle, was to become a personality-infused amalgamation of the furniture and art collections that Bogaert shares with her partner Frederik, and their blended family’s needs and tastes, infused with Degraeve’s knack for combining modernist precision with eclecticism. ‘We both love a layered design that builds over time,’ he says. ‘It was definitely a joint effort.’

Putting their minds together led to an integration of ideas. Degraeve says that they never said a ‘hard no’ to each other, and the contrasting materials and objects in the home reflect that balancing act. Campanelli Rosso marble clads the bathroom. A similar earthen red hue of lime lines the kitchen, where Bogaert opted for an enclosed, galley-style space where she can retreat with her coffee and look out over the city. The stainless-steel kitchen module from Italian brand Abimis, customised with white lacquered fronts, shares the space with a white oak cabinet, harmonising natural and industrial materials.

In the living and dining areas, herringbone wood floors form the foundation of spaces punctuated with extroverted pieces of Italian design. Two ‘Quaderna’ tables by Superstudio for Zanotta become one large family dining table – the first sparking a search for a second original model after an alternative proved to be a different height. An ‘Atollo’ lamp by Vico Magistretti and a ‘Utrecht’ chair by Gerrit Rietveld for Cassina form a dialogue with a gold-tone, Memphis-inspired shelving system. Nearby, a figurative wall-scale painting by Sanam Khatibi brings in colour and narrative detail, as does a small-scale 17th-century Pieter Van Lint artwork.

The family doesn’t really watch TV, they say, preferring to read and listen to records in a living room geared toward connection. In that spirit, conversation-starting art pieces dot the apartment, such as a Tony Matelli painted bronze masquerading as a sapling in the hallway, or a Lucas Blalock photograph of canned sausages.

The slower living that Bogaert craved – disconnected from fashion’s relentless pace – was honoured by Degraeve’s design interventions. The hall’s rounded corners signal a deliberate softening and a seamless flow into the intimate primary bedroom, which was transformed from a narrow, practical space into a more indulgent footprint. One of the biggest changes that Degreave made to the original layout was to open the bathroom to that bedroom and integrate a walk-in closet for a ‘hotel suite feeling’. The space curves gently along a rounded wall, anchored by a vertical ‘Tekiò’ lamp from Santa & Cole, and includes a make-up nook framed by upholstered cabinetry panels.

When Bogaert wants to retreat at home, away from work’s busy calendar, she needs no better invitation to go inside.

The Inside Story is Wallpaper’s regular interior design series. For more, explore the modern Indian aesthetic of Coimbatore home, or an artist’s Manhattan apartment