The New Maison Culture: Costermans Reborn
Frederick
Luxury evolves. The real kind, the kind that speaks softly yet shifts the way you move through a space. And in Brussels, one historic house is mastering this evolution with disarming elegance. Costermans, the legendary Sablon institution founded in 1839 and located at Grand Sablon, has stepped into a new era. Not by abandoning its heritage, but by recharging it with intention, energy, and the quiet thrill of discovery.
Walk through the doors of its listed mansion and you feel it immediately: the harmony between centuries-old craftsmanship and a very contemporary sense of welcome. Flemish masters coexist with the luminous finesse of 18th-century furniture; the iconic 1783 Chinese wallpaper: four rare panels painted with exotic flowers and birds, still anchors the space. Yet nothing feels frozen. Costermans today is alive: textured, curated, sensory.
Arnaud Jaspar-Costermans and his sister Valérie, the sixth generation guiding the house, are reshaping the gallery into what can only be described as a cultural experience. Not a shop. Not a museum. Something more intimate, more layered. A place where art doesn’t simply hang: it breathes, invites, connects.
The newly opened Café Costermans, discreetly tucked into the mansion’s inner courtyard, captures this shift perfectly. A calm hideaway in the creative pulse of the Sablon, it offers a moment to pause, sip, observe to inhabit the house rather than merely pass through it.
Soon, the ground floor welcomes AMI Paris, introducing a contemporary fashion voice into a building shaped by nearly two centuries of connoisseurship. It’s an unexpected pairing, yet perfectly coherent: Costermans is embracing the dialogue between tactile heritage and modern aesthetics.
Inside the gallery, the transformation continues: two redesigned floors – about 150 m² each – now host modular scenography thanks to fine-wood movable partitions. Exhibitions can shift, evolve, and adapt with the precision of contemporary curation. Old Masters by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Joos de Momper, Marten Ryckaert or Cornelis Biltius sit alongside exceptional 18th- and 19th-century European furniture, creating a rhythm where eras speak to each other.
This evolution positions Costermans not as a relic but as a cultural player – a space where ideas, aesthetics and generations meet with surprising ease. It’s a refreshing reminder that heritage can still feel vibrant, contemporary and unapologetically alive.
Some houses preserve history. Costermans lets you feel it and then, elegantly, invites you to step into the future with it.
