How to Dress Like a Sea Creature

Raise your hand if you have ever found yourself at the back room of an antique shop surrounded by a group of grizzled, thick-booted folk singing a rousing sea shanty? If you aren’t raising your hand and still feel yourself to be a nautical spirit, than follow these few tips to at least look the part. You never know, you might set a new fashion trend.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Tattered bedsheets (old sail)
• Weathered shirts and pants
• Loose rope netting
• Small nautical objects or fragments of patterns
• Bright-colored galoshes/boots
• Emerald jewelry
• Hairspray
• Sewing Machine

1. Since you have spent your formidable years growing up by or in the sea, you should look wind-blown and worn. Mess up your hair into odd, chunky shapes.
2. Rip up tattered bed-sheets into strips. Sew these together to form either loosely fitting pants or a skirt using either pre-existing sewing forms or your imagination. If you don’t have much confidence in your sewing skills, start with a base of faded, more ordinary clothing. Once you rip up the bedsheets, sew pieces of it down to the existing materials. Shoot for ragged and messy.
3. Cut up pieces of the net to serve as adornments to your existing clothing or to be worn over the top. For instance, you could cut a head-width hole into the net and slip a section down over your neck. Modify according to your taste.
4. If you have nautical-themed objects or materials, now is your chance to use them. Tie them to look threads on your netting. This is what you have “gathered” over your travels, so be creative and tell a story.
5. Add whatever emerald green and deeper blue accessories to your existing assemblage. Once you have everything together, don’t be afraid to rip it up further. Remember, you are wearing the remnants of sails and a ships miscellaneous cargo.