I’m proud to admit it: I’m a total sucker for bloggers and influencers. One might think with all the work we do here at Fast Horse that you’d become skeptical or unamused by #sponsored posts or the millionth picture of a “But first, coffee” label, but not me. It’s just opened my eyes to more pretty pictures, impeccable lighting and the visual satisfaction of a flat lay. When the Adidas Superstars train came through? I jumped right on. When my #roominspo feed filled with pics of clean, crisp walls? I painted everything in my room white. When Gigi Hadid posted a pic in a choker necklace? I bought three. You see the pattern.
Well, a few months ago my roommate and I made our first trip to Dallas for a weekend of exploring and hanging out with friends. Between the drinks, barbecue and sightseeing, we sent our guy friends to the bar and sprinted into a few of the local boutiques for some retail therapy (shocking, I know). There they were: the exact up-cycled rocker t-shirts with perfectly destroyed hems and the sassy lace-up front donned by Hailey Baldwin. We had to have them.
We were pumped to bring our digs back to the less-trendy suburbs of Minneapolis until we looked at the price tag. $108 for a cut-up, glorified T-shirt. Is this how my mom felt about my destroyed Hollister jeans in middle school?
We left Dallas, sadly without our rocker shirts in tow, but determined to put our crafting skills to use and make our own.
So here I am, putting on my wannabe-influencer hat, and making a DIY lace-up T-shirt tutorial.
What You Need
Step 1
Lay out your shirt and trace out your v-neck. I didn’t cut this one as low as some of the other pics, but you can make it however you’d like.
Step 2
Apply trim to edges of the shirt, either by gluing or sewing it. I used a tape fabric adhesive which made it super easy.
Step 3
Place the metal eyelets where you want them. I used a piece of loose-leaf paper to make sure they were even on both sides. I then used a permanent marker to mark where the eyelets would go
Step 4
Cut small holes where you marked the eyelet spots using a scissors.
Step 5
Push the bigger side of the eyelet through the holes, and using the eyelet starter kit, hammer the other side in to secure.
Step 6
Hard part is done! Now just take whatever string you want to loop through and thread it through the eyelets. The cool cording I wanted to use didn’t fit ?, so I just used more of the trim I had purchased.
Step 7
Embrace your inner influencer: Put on your new shirt, find some good lighting, apply a VSCO filter and voilà!
We had fun playing around with different T-shirts, trims and random metal things we found at Jo-Ann Fabric. And at the end of the day, we made 3 different shirts for a total of $40. Boom.