Welcome to the Jungle
What jungle am I talking about? I’m talking about the Jungle of Looks Axl Rose from Guns n’ Roses has been wearing over the years.
This man is the epitome of “I wear whatever I want”. During the height of Guns n’ Roses popularity in the 90’s, Axl frequently sported the plaid look. He either wore a plaid shirt or wrapped the shirt around his waist. He wore a kilt and even rocked plaid-ON-plaid. LOL, wow.
Fast forward to today. Axl’s fashion sense hasn’t changed much. He still a bit over the top in his fashion choices. Still rockin the plaid and the bandana. Ripped jeans and chains. I am all about it! At the last concert he wore this awesome blue bandana moto jacket. I can’t get over how cool it is. I mean, look at all that print mixing!
In 1992 GnR released November Rain. It is one my all time favorite songs. I think it’s truly a musical masterpiece. It starts off with the sweet piano sound in the beginning and ends in a wailing guitar. The whole song invokes feelings of love and anger. If a tortured soul had a sound, it’d be this. The video really helps bring out the greatness of this rock ballad, especially when Slash rips out a solo in front of the church with all his bad@$$ery. (BTW Axl is wearing a ridiculous Seinfeld pirate blouse for his wedding day in the video, and somehow it works…lol)
Fun Fact: The Viking and I are Guns n’ Roses groupies. (I’ve seen them 6 times) Our next concert is at Florida’s Hard Rock Live. The building is shaped like a guitar and the Hard Rock (in general) is super snazzy, so for this concert I wanted to sew/wear something special!
Here is my inspiration: Plaid skirt from Pinterest & Stephanie Seymour’s wedding gown from the November Rain video.
I haven’t done an upcycling challenge since my Peacock Dress, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to go wild. And I mean GO WILD! “We’re in the jungle, Baby!” I have to laugh because I’m totally not a rocker. My fashion sense is more girly than edgy…more vintage 50’s than 90’s. And my sewing is more finished than unfinished, so to sew something like this is a little off the grid for me, so to speak. But it’s all fun and games, so how ’bout it?!
Materials:
2 Plaid shirts
1 Pair of Jeans
An Appetite for Destruction
Here’s how I made my high/low mullet skirt:
First, I cut off the legs of the jeans and used the top part as a base. Boy was that difficult! I kinda wanted to keep them in tact since the jeans actually fit well. I’m pretty much the worst when it comes to upcycling because I’m afraid to cut! I measured about an inch below the pockets. There was really no rhyme or reason to my measurement.
The front hem of the skirt is the collar of the red plaid shirt. It ended up being insanely short so I added another panel to increase the length. I just HAD to use the pretty ruffle from the button placket! The directional change in the plaid panels really does it for me.
For the back: I cut off the back fabric of the two plaid shirts. Sewed them together across the top, turned them to the left 90 degrees. Using the bottom hem of the black shirt, I sewed a red sleeve. All three pieces created one panel, which was then gathered and pinned onto the hem of the denim skirt.
Since I wanted the plaids to go in different directions, I draped this on my mannequin to see how it would fall. It’s supposed to mimic the look of tying a shirt around your waist.
For the finishing touch, I added a skull/rose patch at the front hip and a Guns n’ Roses logo patch to the back pocket.
Everything was sewn with the seams sides OUT. I then cut into the seams to add to the distressed look. I put it through the washer to help bring out the fray. The end result is one of which you look like you walked through the shredder, lol.
Paired with my new Doc Martens (with roses of course!) I think it’s gonna be a pretty rockin’ outfit.
