Junky Styling: a manual for thrift-shop clothes-remixers

I've blogged before about London's Junky Styling, a clothing boutique that features original one-of-a-kind clothes made from hacking together thrift-store finds, salvaged textiles, and whatever happens to be lying around. They made my favorite winter coat, my best suit jacket, and my wife's wedding dress (stitched together from Alice-blue men's work-shirts!).

I just received a review copy of Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery, a book written by Junky's co-founders, Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager. The first half of the book is given over to Junky's improbable history, a business started by two young women who knew so little about tailoring that they couldn't produce patterns for their clothes, which meant that each piece they finished was one-of-a-kind. They're naturals, though, and have thrived in the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in East London. This section is lavishly illustrated with photos of their clothes over the years.

The second section is a detailed HOWTO for recreating several of their basic garments: a suit-sleeve scarf, a "shirt wrap halter top," a "fly top" and others, with copious notes about shopping for clothes to rescue and repurpose, instructions for unpicking seams, a glossary of textile types and strategies for working with each and so on.

Junky's tailors are makers, who dive in headfirst, make lots of mistakes quickly, learn and iterate and improve and surprise, and the book and clothes are infused with that heartening spirit. Makes me want to buy a sewing machine!

Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery (Amazon US)

Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery (Amazon UK)

• [redstarr]

  Sounds like a very cool book. I like to re-mix thrift store finds,too. It’s the perfect happy medium for me between hand-making pieces from scratch and buying ready-made stuff. I also recommend re-working thrift stuff as a great jumping off point for folks who want to get into doing some of their own sewing but aren’t quite ready for the completely from scratch approach. It’s not so intimidating to start with a skirt that already has the waistband and zipper installed properly and then change it up from there. I’m not skilled enough to sew a jacket from scratch and have it hang right, but if I have the basic shell of a jacket pre-made, I can do some really fun stuff with it.

  When I was in a band, I had a really hard time finding cool rock/punk/metal type stage clothes at a price I could afford. I live in a pretty rural area, so the stores don’t just have stuff like that on the rack.I could find some cool stuff online, but it costed a fortune. Plus, I’m not model thin, so a lot of the rock and roll type clothes on the market weren’t really made for a bigger girl. I made a few pieces by hand, but my favorite pieces were the stuff that I made from thrift store and yard sale stuff tweaked a little bit.

• [webmonkees]

  Cory: Really? you don’t have a sewing machine?

  Nothing quite like the accomplishment of patching a broken seam, and/or the first time you really get that $#*&# bobbin working right.

  I get lots of compliments on my thrift shop clothes, more than my more expensive regular ones. I leave out the ‘just paid a dollar for it’ fact while thanking them.

  That reminds me, I need to go over to the thrift shop and spend $5 on a stereo VCR and a manual typewriter. It’s half-off week! Junkhound, I am.

• [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

  I want that vest top. Badly. The question is, “Badly enough to actually sew?” Hmmmmmmm.

• [Bmud]

  Mmmm.. I’m looking for a manual typewriter too. And I like this. I’ve only had one chance at a sewing machine and I wasn’t using the right needle or something and couldn’t get it going. One day, I hope.

• [unruly katy]

  Love the deconstruct-to-reconstruct construct, always and 4ever. Lots of smart people doing it, too — the women of Preloved have been working that angle nicely for some fair while now (www.preloved.ca), for instance.

  I do wish more people did this sort of thing, I must say. Or just had fun in general with their clothing. I like looking at humans who have stye, a lot.

• [unruly katy]

  bahahaha! I like reading human beings who can correctly type the word “style” too.

• [Anonymous]

  Fantastic idea and brilliant, creative work. Well done all!!!

• [kidfunctional]

  Have to say I love my jacket from Junky, it’s the only piece of clothing I own that was tailored to fit me (and some functionality modifications made) and it’s lasted for years. They are a really friendly bunch as well.

• [Anonymous]

  I love to frequent the thrift stores and have found some really wonderful stuff. The trick is to go often!

  I haven’t seen this magazine linked so here goes….”Altered Couture”…..just really good, fun and beautiful stuff. I saw it at our library one day and checked out all the back issues. Now I’m a subscriber!

  http://www.alteredcouturemagazine.com

• [Rosie]

  I want that book! I love wearing quirky clothes, especially if I make them myself! I like modifying stuff…

• [Clifton]

  Did anyone else first read that line as “salvaged testicles”? That probably says something about my current state of mind but I don’t think I want to know what.

• [AGF]

  Ha! That’s cool – it’s pretty much what I do – except I remake things into theatre costumes. MMM value village shopping to turn into turn of the century clothes. I bet I’d like the book.