How to Rip Jeans

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Mitra Chester, and I'm at the Deluxe Resale Shop in Eugene, Oregon, and I'm going to show you how to achieve a ripped or a torn, slashed look with your denim or jeans. So this is an example of, a pretty extreme example, of kind of a rip or a slash look for jeans. And we're going to take a pair that I've done some techniques on this one side, and show you how they're accomplished on this side. So it's pretty basic, there are basically two ways to achieve a ripped or a slashed look on jeans and one of them is to cut slashes or to actually rip them. The most important thing to remember when you're doing either of these to get the frayed look is to wash them and dry them afterwards. You're really not ever going to achieve this look unless that's done. So keep in mind if you're trying to accomplish this and wear them out one night that you have to do that before you're able to wear them and have the frayed look. So the first thing I would recommend you do is actually put your jeans on and mark with some chalk in the mirror where you would want the slashes or rips to be with some chalk, and make sure you mark the length and width and the placement on your body where you want them to be. Then you can take them off and once you have that, down here you're going to rip or cut them a little bit less than your ideal, ultimate goal length, because when they fray they'll get a little bit bigger. So these were all done by cutting, ripping, I mean, honestly, it's going to end up looking about the same once you've washed them. But you're going to start, most people go for this kind of across, but you can also go for a lengthwise rip, and denim is mostly going to rip either way, but you want to be a little bit more in control of it. So you're going to take the placement with the chalk on there and cut a beginning hole with some scissors, and then you can then rip them lengthwise, or actually you might start it with the scissors down, or vertically, actually lengthwise is vertically, horizontally or vertically. That will give you your rip and then or you can just mark the chalk and cut it across. Again, the placement is very pinnacle, you want to make sure the placement's correct on your body. If you're trying to achieve a rip on the knee and you kind of think it's the knee but on your body it's not, it's going to look a little awkward. So then once you do this you can wash and dry them and it should look like this! Good luck!"