“I would say visual art really inspires my style. Specifically cartoons. I really love fantasy and magical worlds. I also really love layering things that are similar colors but different textures or patterns. This outfit is completely thrifted. I’m really trying to look like a forest and the creatures that inhabit it lol.”
“I thrifted this dress last summer and I immediately I wanted to wear it on the first school day in fall. I like the dress because it is colorful and a but crazy.”
Cyber goth dress + my favourite way to make patches
I thrifted this dress a couple of weeks ago for £1. I believe it started life as some sort of costume, possibly a sexy firefighter, but the fabric is really good quality cotton, and I thought it had some cybergoth potential with the yellow and reflective bits. I also really like the metal fastenings.
I already had a high-viz coat in my wardrobe from when I used to go bicycling more often, so I was able to steal more reflective bits from that. Not yet sure what I'll do with them, probably cut interesting shapes and glue or sew them on. Photos with and without flash.
And then yesterday I got a half meter of cotton fabric for £1 which is an almost exact colour match, so I can make some stencilled patches.
I already had fabric paint at home, so this entire outfit has only cost me £2! Cybergoth clothing is usually super expensive.
There are lots of tutorials for making stencilled patches on YouTube, (@rattusrattus3 has some excellent ones) but I lack patience and don't like cutting out intricate pieces, especially for lettering, so I had the idea to use alphabet stickers. You can pick these up really cheap from your local pound shop or dollar store depending on where you're from. I think mine were 40p a packet.
Stick them to your fabric, use fabric paint and a sponge, then when you peel the stickers off you'll have the words in relief. You can go thicker than I have here to make the surrounding area totally opaque, but I like the edges being messy and faded out. These are both song titles from cyber/industrial bands that I like.
Here are some other examples that I've done in the past. These were all done with pound shop spray paint which isn't ideal for fabric, but it's cheap! You'll also get more of the original fabric colour showing through with this kind of paint, which is nice.
If you're using black fabric, gold or silver paint will generally work better than white. These are all Devin Townsend song lyrics.
The only negative to this method for some people may be that the letters will be very uniform, but I like that. And if you want to you can space them irregularly to break things up a bit. Or you might be able to find more interestingly shaped alphabet stickers than I did!
[Video description: A 20 second video showing the process for embroidering a brown wool coat with green to look like it has moss on it. The first shot is the finished product, then a shot showing materials used, and several shots of french knots being pulled tight. The final shots are a wide shot of the finished product, followed by two close up shots of the embroidered areas. The embroidery is two tones of green in a bunch of little knots clustered together. /end video description]
I had such a good time making this. There was some damage to the lapels so I decided to do some visible mending!
“I’m wearing a thrifted jacket from a flea market in the UES, thrifted shorts, a Uniqlo shirt I chopped up, boots from New Rock, and Prada glasses. When I get dressed I ask myself what my animal crossing character would wear and use that as my baseline source of truth.”
”I am wearing a wedding dress and on top of that my own screen-prined t-shirt. The hat and the bag are both thrifted and the cast is from HUS. I don't like the idea of gendered clothing and I am inspired by that. I also enjoy different repairing styles and in my outfit both the shoes and the bag are hand repaired. Also I enjoy getting angry looks from conservatives.”
An autumnal ootd with this nice linen dress - I altered the neckline to suit me better and added a cute velvet ribbon tie!
Everything but the flowers are thrifted - the dress is pre owned from ebay, the shoes, bag, chain, pendant and tiny gold bracelet are all from local charity shops.
I'm especially pleased with my chain and phaistos disc pendant- found in different places at different times, but both have real gold! Should I do a post of my thrifted jewellery treasures?