The vintage/worn look has never been so in. Everywhere you look, you can find a pair of distressed jeans, cut offs, tees, and even tights! While many people opt to ‘distress’ their clothing themselves, many retailers and designers have caught on, and started to make their new clothing look not so new.

LnA Clothing’s ‘Oversized Thrashed’ cotton tee ($88, singer22.com) is a great example of a great distressed tee. Its not overly distressed, but its still keeps up with the trend entirely. LnA (right) has a great selection of affordable clothing that are always up to date with the latest trends. The tees (pictured above) from LnA are some of the best I’ve seen for the distressed look.

For cutoffs, both shorts and skirts, Victoria’s Secret (left), Abercrombie, and Diesel are great for these staple summer pieces. For jeans, nobody does it better than Diesel. Diesel believes that denim should be dirty and vintage, and that is exactly what the distressed look calls for. To get this look, many people leave their clothing out to be ‘weathered’ on a clothes line for a week before wearing it. But for Renzo Rosso and the designers at Diesel, the worn look created an entirely new campaign, encouraging people to ‘be stupid’. The short version of the story is that the ‘dirty’ treatments and washes they now do on their jeans were at first a mistake. Each pair of Diesel jeans is hand made, and the details are all done by hand with a sand paper tool. However, when one pair of jeans accidentally frayed and ripped, an entirely new jean look was born. Therefore the ‘be stupid’ campaign encourages the idea that some of the best ideas root from mistakes. The Diesel jeans pictured below are two of the brands most popular jeans, the ‘Matic’ for women, and the ‘Viker’ for men.

But not everyone can afford or justify buying clothing that has ‘holes’ in it. So why not take an old piece of clothing, say a t-shirt or some old denim, and try distressing it yourself! Be ready for some screw ups, but have fun with it! Here are some helpful tips:

- The easier way to make something look older is it wash it a few times.  This will fade both the color and soften the fabric by removing the sizing. If you have a back yard, leave it outside to weather for a week in the sun, wind, rain, whatever.

- You can use sand paper on the area of wear: Knees, elbows, seat of pants.  Look at an old outfit to know where to wear.  It’s at the knee and below. Start with a coarser sand paper, then finer grades further out.

- Fill a whole pocket full with something heavy, like pennies, and leave to hang for a few days.  This stretches the pockets out.

- Get a wire brush like the kind used for taking paint off walls.  Run this across the garment.  It will snag and tear the fabric for some holes and rips.

- Use less soap when washing, this will keep some of the dirty look with it (or better yet, don’t wash at all).

The distressed look isn’t for everyone, and can be done completely wrong. There is a fine line between keeping up with a trend and looking like you just rolled out of a garbage bin. Its important to remember that sometimes less is more, and never wear something with a massive hole in it or more than one distressed piece of clothing at a time. Check out these celebs that have done it right:

From left to right, top to bottom: Amanda Bynes, Robert Pattinson, Nicky Hilton, Cameron Diaz, Miley Cyrus, Ashley Olsen, Beyonce, Kellan Lutz, Shenae Grimes, Megan Fox, Ed Westwick, Ashley Tisdale, Kristin Cavallari, Lauren Conrad, Nicky Hilton (again), Audrina Patridge, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Kristen Stewart, Rachel Bilson, Gisele Bundchen, Megan Fox (again), Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, Elle MacPherson, Miley Cyrus (again), and Victoria Beckham.

*meg

01 Jul This entry was published on July 1, 2010 at 03:51. It’s filed under CANADA, Celebs, Fashion, Men's Fashion, MH Blog, MH Style Tips, Movies, MTV, Music, shopping guide, style spotlight, Television, Toronto, Trend Alert and tagged MegHibberd. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.