Upcycle your old Summer Dress and Shirt

When I started repurposing, I realized that upcycled tiered dresses were one of the simplest things to make. Here is a short tiered dress I upcycled from an old summer dress and a shirt.

My first exposure to tiered dresses was in 2017. It was this amazing one shoulder dress that my cousin had made for her brand and it did its rounds with me in Paris in the summers that year.

Since then, I’ve been a fan of tiered dresses. Moreover, it matches my style, which has become more and more relaxed over the years.

Garment 1: Summer Dress

Summer dresses are casual, light weight dresses worn when it’s warm and sunny. They are typically sleeveless and have a wide neckline.

Almost everyone I know loves and owns summer dresses. So, if yours is old or unusable now, upcycle it to make a new one.

There are shocking statistics about single wear summer dresses that were expected to be bought in the UK last summer (2019) (50.3 million ‘throwaway outfits’, £2.7 billion spend – Source – Censuswide ). We hope to see a considerable drop in this number as a result of Covid-19.

Why did I upcycle this?

This dress belongs to my sister. Where she lives now, this is not considered appropriate clothing.

Moreover, it is too short and skimpy to be donated there.

The option was either to wait and wear it on some holiday, or make it wearable in the current scenario.

Garment 2: Cotton Shirt

Cotton shirts are a wardrobe staple! I love them, especially the oversized ones. But if we are not careful about the quality when we purchase it, they might become unwearable sooner than later due to wear and tear.

Why did I upcycle this?

The stitch of the shirt was not strong and the hem at the bottom opened out.

The darts at the back opened too.

The color faded over multiple washes.

How did I upcycle a summer dress and a shirt?

The summer dress had an elasticated upper waist. I cut it below the elastic to make a crop top out of the upper part.

I cut the bottom of my shirt straight and attached the bottom of the dress to it.

You can choose the length at which to cut the shirt or the skirt tier as per your style.

I kept the shirt long and the tiered skirt short.

This project resulted in an upcycled tiered dress that falls straight and is very comfy.

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It also gave me a new crop top that I can wear under my denim shirts or as is.

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Fashion Fact:

Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. An estimated USD 500 billion value is lost every year due to clothing that’s barely worn and rarely recycled. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. As well as being wasteful, the industry is polluting: clothes release half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean every year, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles. Microfibres are likely impossible to clean up and can enter food chains. |Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future (2017)|