Chanel Jacket DO-IT-YOURSELF

It can be rather surprising what sort of inspiration you may get when you flip through a monthly issue of a fashion magazine. And with that inspiration in mind, sprinkled with a variety of beads & sparkles, you may be even more surprised with the fruit of your inspired mind. Allow me to illustrate:

If any of you happen to subcribe to the Harper's Bazaar (March 2010 The Fashion Issue), you may have stumbled across some well presented advertisements by various designers. The One by CHANEL, in particular, had caught my eye. I don't really believe in the so-called "Love at first sight" phenomenon but seriously, this is one advert that made me change my mind (just a little). These photographs were, and still are, truely inspiring and it exhibited the detailings on the embellished pale tweed jacket very clearly.

Above- Front page of advert

Above- Back page of advert

With this picture in mind, I then embarked on a mission to find a similarly coloured & textured jacket and tranformed it into something that would be truly unique and elegant without splashing out thousands of green dollar bills.

I cannot believe my luck when I spotted this grey pink tweed jacket from a French website as I surfed through the internet. It has the exact colour, texture and shape I was looking for. The jacket was a real bargain too as it was on sale at the price of £19 (As I was saying, I cannot believe my luck) See below for close-up pics:

Above- Front of jacket. Note the fake pockets created just by a single horizontal band of fabric on each side.

Above- Back of jacket

Above- Note the frilly edges along the jacket

When one is truly inspired & motivated, it can be even more surprising, the amount of junks/items in your home that you may eventually find useful. Above is a photograph of two really cheap necklaces I bought from Primark for about £1-2 each, ages ago. As you can see, I was in the process of demolishing and dismantling it into pieces.

Many times, I find that improvisation can be fun and actually can save you a significant amount of cash. Above is a photograph of a packet of crystal beads which was meant for wedding decorations (£0.75 per pack) which I had also disassembled just for the beads!

Detailed buttons are an instant "wow" factor you can give to any dull outfits, be it a jacket, a shirt or a skirt. These were picked up from the Hobbycraft store in town.


These were a couple of pretty buttons which I bought from Hobbycraft. They reminded me of the camelia, the iconic flower representing Chanel.



With all the relevant materials available, I started beavering away with my new task which = LOTS and Hell LOTS of sewing!! Below are a series of photos to demonstrate the "before & after work being done" appearances:

Below are a more close-up photos. It's nice to have a variety patterns when it comes to assembling the beads and crystals. See the details below:

So, this is the end product. However, despite completing the sewing on the tweed jacket, I felt that it was not entirely complete. To complete this, I added some fine touches to the final look and in order to achieve this, I went to town again this weekend to look for a white long sleeves shirt. This was subsequently revamped.

For just a mere £2.50, I picked this plain white shirt from Primark store.

Only with some simple accessories, namely a set of black buttons, white chiffon broad ribbons and jet black velvet ribbons were used to revamp the plain boring white shirt, to make it look like this:

Be inspired & Be happy!

But don't get drunk like this one!