Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I like to pretend that I have loads of money to spend on clothes and browse fancy online boutiques. Even if I never end up buying anything (read: 99.5% of the time), I love looking at the pretty pictures and getting fashion inspiration. One of my favorite websites is FreePeople.com. Their look is very bohemian–earthy, flowy, and hippie-esque. Every time I visit I end up drooling over the photos and wishing I was married to a wealthy Italian prosthodontist so I could afford to buy every single item in the shop. That, and build a massive treehouse mansion with my own personal library. But that’s going a bit too far, isn’t it?
The point is that yesterday I was browsing Free People’s new arrivals when I happened upon this tank top:
Now, I love fringe. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve just always been afraid to wear it in public, fearful that I will be a) mistaken as a biker chick or b) worse, a cowherd escaped from ancient Mesopotamia. When I saw this tank top, however, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could pull it off. The problem, as always, was the price tag. No way was I paying $78 plus shipping costs for a flimsy tank top. But what if I could make something similar myself?
I’ve had this oversized Radiohead t-shirt since Christmas break, when I bought it from Urban Outfitters thinking that it would drape on me with the graceful carelessness with which it draped on the stick-thin model. As you can see from the above picture, it ended up making me look like I was wearing a pillowcase. Because of this, I never wore it, which was a pity because it’s such an awesome design. So it was the perfect candidate for my experiment to replicate the tank top by Free People.
After quite a bit of scissor work, this was the finished result:
Behold the fringe!
I’m quite proud of myself for how well it turned out, especially since I didn’t follow a tutorial and was acting completely on impulse. Absolutely no sewing was involved, and the entire project only took about an hour to complete. I only wish I had taken pictures during the transformation process so I could post step-by-step directions on this blog. Let me know what you guys think!
Filed under: Arts and Crafts, Photography
WOW.
Now I want to make clothes like this. SO badly.
This is sheer brilliance!!
Wow! I’ve never been a huge fan of the fringe trend myself, but I have to say that is some truly awesome work! And you look amazing in it, so you shouldn’t be afraid to wear fringe ;)