A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted a bleached denim jacket. Then I realised they were anywhere upwards of £50. So I made my own using bleach and a £10 jacket I got from a charity shop. It was a pretty easy project and I’d been planning on doing it again for a while but I just never got round to it. When I was sent this black denim shirt* from New Look, I figured it was the perfect chance to whip out the bleach.
There is countless ways to customise a denim jacket or shirt with bleach. You can dip dye, tie dye, acid wash, bleach and dye, stone wash or just randomly spritz and bleach. They’re all pretty simple and the hardest part is not forgetting to use the dog towels and accidentally ruining your parents towels. Last time I went into the project with little idea of what I wanted and went ad hoc with the bleach. As much as I love the effect, I didn’t want to do the same method for this shirt as darker denim comes out a little different!
I decided to go for a stone wash affect using an empty spray bottle filled two parts bleach, one part water. To prepare the shirt, I fully drenched it as bleach works better/ stronger on wet fabric. As this was the first time I’d technically washed the shirt, I did notice some colour leaching out in the water – I’d recommend washing the denim first in the future to ensure any residual dye is fully out as it will get in the way of the bleach.
Once the shirt was wet, I began spraying it all over with the bleach solution. I started with a fine spritz and slowly built up the layers. It took around five minutes for the bleach to develop so until that time I was going in blind.
Occasionally, my fine mist turned into a water gun which left a few prominent marks – to try and combat this, I built up the amount of bleach sprayed around each area to blend it in. I did panicky a little when I saw the colour it was turning too but carried on with a semi-panicky stricken look. 
Once I was happy with the bleached areas, I rinsed the shirt of bleach by soaking it in a bucket of water and pouring out until the water was no longer murky, then rinsed it for five minutes under the shower head. Then I popped it into the wash alone. I also ran an empty wash afterwards just to be on the safe side!
After the initial wet bleach colour scare, I’m actually pleased how it came out. However, if I could re-do the project, I’d spray the bleach from further away to prevent the bleach splotches. I do have further plans for this shirt to combat these though. I want to do a second layer of bleach to get some areas even lighter and make the edges more evenly stone washed, and then distress some areas with an emery board for a frayed look. I’m also tempted to cut it so it’s cropped; the fabric is a lot thicker than normal female denim shirts so this could easily be used as an outer jacket and I think it would look cute cropped.
What do you think, is this something you’d do to your denim? Or not really your cup of tea? Let me know!
