You’ve probably seen them around...Grungy girls on the edge of prettiness sporting white tees with felt-pen Chanel logo scribbled across the bust. Yes. It did look cool, it was something fresh and it was a little bit political. By political, we mean it stuck two fingers in the face of haute rip-off couture, presenting a sign of the financial times with a double-crossed C. But predictably enough, D.I.Y designer has become a fashion fad in itself, rising from the ranks of home scrawling to companies cashing in on the trend. SUPERSWEET ponders the finer points of do it yourself haute branding...

Coco Chanel once said “A girl should be two things; Classy and fabulous”.

But in times of financial downturn, how does one remain fabulous on a less-than-shoestring budget? In an era where ‘it’ bags cost more than a kidney, and girls (not to mention gays) have been known to starve themselves for an overpriced piece of arm candy, it was only a matter of time before D.I.Y couture presented a counter-culture revolution.

And it’s a global repercussion. SUPERSWEET discovered teenage boys in Barcelona have been inking up their fingers just as fervently as twenty-something girls in L.A. Even deluded oldies living in the quaint English countryside think they’re cool enough to pull it off and have begun revolting against overpriced luxuries, armed with nothing more than a black sharpie and an anti-fashion snarl. The Chanel logo was first to appear on plain white Ts, vests and bags. What next? The YSL logo on Tesco carrier bags? Louis Vuitton scrawled onto Primark sweats? But is all this cool, ironic, political or just plain crap? You might say it depends on who’s doing it...

Even public figures with wads of cash are going D.I.Y. Lily Allen was spotted teaming a fake Chanel t-shirt with a coveted YSL bag. It smells to us like try-hard rebelliousness, since Miss Allen has no problem forking out for a designer YSL.  This kind of band-wagon mentality shifts D.I.Y into a dodgier dichotomy of fad or for-real. There’s a fine line, and who can tell them apart once the craze takes off ?

Predictably enough, we look out our HQ window and spot a girl in a t-dress complete with hand-scrawled Chanel logo. Should we be adopting said stance or avoiding it like the plague? Our advice, if you want it, is leave the bandwagon to its own dirty trail.

A few ‘fashion forward’ (shudder) companies have turned this fraud fashion into a dirty little money-making scheme, saving you the bother of making shirts in return for hard-earned cash. Defeats the purpose, no? Howl Clothing, started by a blogger from Manchester, sells faux-Chanel t-shirts through BlogSpot at £20 each. They come in 4 different styles, including one bearing the words “Si tu pisses partout t'es pas Chanel du tout” and one featuring it’s English translation; “Pissing everywhere isn’t very Chanel”, the well-known phrase reputedly seen scribbled across the men’s bathroom wall in the Chanel HQ.

Naco-Paris, the underground French designer gives an ironic nod to the fashion world by creating t-shirts boasting DIY-style scrawled slogans like “Fan Club Anna Wintour” and “Die-or Haute Couture”. He’s also the designer behind the famed “Karl Who?” tote bag, famously carried by the iron fist of Monsieur Lagerfeld himself. The shirts by Naco-Paris also feature non-recession friendly prices, selling for around £55! 

In which case, SUPERSWEET will leave you with the most succulent little piece of irony ever– if you can’t afford one of these statement anti-couture pieces, then just pick up a brush and do-it-you-fucking-self. 



Words: Tiffany Tondut and Navneet Gill