I’ve been seeing so many distressed jeans lately: whether it’s Sincerely Jules in totally cool ripped up jeans or Shalice Noel’s Instagram feed with lots of different ripped up jeans, I’ve been heavily influenced. Rather than fork out a fortune for a beat up pair, I took a cue from Geneva over at A Pair and a Spare and decided to make my own distressed denim jeans!
1. First, I bought an inexpensive pair of black skinny jeans from Forever 21. Because I wanted the rips to look distressed, I went with an X-acto knife rather than scissors.
2. Next, I marked a line at each of my knees.
3. I folded the jeans with the pant leg’s seams together. When I went to cut I only went as far as the seam–don’t go any further. I also added a little rip here and there to the top of the major rip.
4. Next, I also wanted a ripped looking cuff. I simply went right above the hem and cut it off.
5. I wanted the front of the pant leg to be a little shorter than the back. Here, I pulled the front hem over the back one and cut. Be careful so as to not cut that back hem.
Now I’ve got the distressed denim look for a fraction of the cost: the jeans were US$12 and the X-acto knife was US$3. Not a bad deal at all!
While I made my own with a pair of black skinnny jeans from Forever 21, I found some distressed denim all ready for you if you wanna skip the DIY:
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