20th June 2020
STREET FASHION AT HOME: DIY DENIM WITH OUR LEE MENSWEAR DESIGNER
Lee caught up with our very own Menswear Designer, Radar, to see how he was exploring DIY street fashion at home. Read the interview here.
With restrictions slowly lifting we were recently able to reunite with our Lee Menswear designer Radar and chew the fat on how he got through his days at home in isolation…which as a it turned out were quite productive. Mastering the art of Osso Bucco and hitting the ran track aside, Radar spent a lot of his time customising our upcoming Lee Spring 20 range. He spent his days applying his craft to bleaching denim to their original colour, sewing together denim tote bags and customising a leather jacket.
Read on for some tips on how you can DIY your denim and apparel to create your own original and customised street fashion.
What’s got you through isolation? Any handy tips?
Keeping in touch with friends and family on the reg. Even if it was a simple check in on your mates to see how they were, it was something that got me through and I’m sure they dug it too. Also Instagram face story filters the ones where you can super impose your face onto a popstars.
Give us a brief rundowm of your 3 customised Lee-i-sewlation outfits
1. Baby’s Wearing Blue Jeans Outfit
This outfit is a combination of current Lee products from Spring 20 (out soon, I hope). The jeans are the new Straight 80 fit for Lee Men’s in Azure Blue wash – stay tuned for these! The shirt is also from the upcoming Spring 20 range which is a Worker Shirt in Midtown wash, but I customised it by dip bleaching it back to the griege colour white. I left some areas non bleached in the denim blue colour for some subtle contrast.
I also manage to sew some denim tote bags and stitched some Lee labels that I had lying around, one of the denim tote bags was also bleached back to the griege base colour so that it has the same effect as the shirt.
2. Back in Black Outfit
This outfit is a combination of Lee products and customised garments. The jeans are black selvedge worker style pants I’m working on for a future range and I’m also wearing a Lee Spring 20 tee which is the Lee Denim Tee in washed black which will hopefully be in stores soon.
The leather jacket is a customised, hand painted and hand studded jacket. Each stud had to be drilled through then threaded by hand and with over a thousand studded spikes. I’ve also painted the title of my favourite Japanese anime AKIRA which was one of the most nostalgic awesome film I saw as a kid. This was painted with acrylic paints with fixative.
3. The Tiger King Outfit
The Overalls are these amazing white Lee vintage canvas overalls from Japan, that our womenswear designer Ash and I picked up on one of our inspiration trips last year. The hoodie is a customised bleached out Lee hoodie that was originally black. The bleach reacted with the black dye which made it turn orange!
The way the hoodie was sitting in the bleach made it have this mottled effect with highs and low lights throughout it. Stoked how this turned out but very unexpected.
Your top 5 isolation movies?
La Haine
City of God
Honey I Shrunk the kids
O brother Where art thou
Dirty Dancing
Spinal Tap
Your top 5 isolation jams?
Beauty & Essex – Free National, Daniel Caesar & Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Not like them – Kllo
Falling Thunder – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
Julia Jacklin – Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You
Fuck the World (summer in London) – Brent Faiyaz
Besides these three epic outfits what’s your biggest achievement in lockdown?
I was never much of a runner before, but when isolation restrictions were put in place and all you could really do outside was essential exercise, I tried to take up running.
I would start off with short distance runs of 2kms which almost killed me, but little by little, week by week I managed to build up and recently ran 20kms at a pretty good pace of 4.50 min/km. I really want to hit the 3km mark under 10mins though.
I also learnt how to cook Osso Buco with Polenta and roasted vegetables! Housemates loved it so I’m pretty stoked!