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‘Three-dimensional illustration in yarn'
Under the name Miss Blackbirdy, Merel Boers graduated cum laude from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam just last year. She describes her graduation collection, A Journey to Miss Blackbirdy's World, as an escape from reality. And that augurs well. Immediately after graduating, she won the BLVD Fashion Award 2006 for this delicate, graphic collection.
Boers (b. 1981) works from her illustrations sketchbook, and when drawing her little black-and-white flowers and personally invented female characters she is equally happy whether working on paper or on fabric. She is adept at transforming refined fashion illustrations into contemporary fashion. For example, her drawings return in a playful manner in her fragile garments composed of black yarn.
In 2006, Boers was short-listed for the national Lancôme Colour Designs Award, winning the Dutch award in the Modern Femininity category during the January 2007 edition of the Amsterdam International Fashion Week for a quintet of enchanting but also extremely seductive dresses. Originally from the small town of Heemstede in the Netherlands, Boers is competing in the international finals of the Lancôme Colour Designs Award in Paris in May 2007.