Over five years ago, I went on a “Blazer” spree, one of those blazers included the blue blazer featured in three of my style concepts, most recently Style Concept #68: “The Blues Throughout”. With my style journey over the past few years, a good blazer would always be my go-to, especially colored blazers. Nevertheless, at the age of 23, I needed a simple way to transform this blazer in a way that reflected my growth. Here’s a couple of ways to transform a garment/blazer to reflect your growth:

1. The Pairing:

Back in 2011, I was the biggest fan of  color blocking; thus, this solid blue blazer was perfect for a color blocking fusion. Nevertheless, in this 2016 interpretation of the blazer, simplicity in styling and colors were key for me. When exemplifying the growth in your style, if you can still fit a garment and still have the garment, pair it differently or streamline the styling to reflect your growth.

2. Switching Up the Blazer’s Features:

Another way to evolve a blazer/garment along with your personal style, is to switch up features on the garment. For me, switching up the buttons to parallel the more simplistic approach to style was essential. Changing garment features allows your garment to transcend trends in style, while your style transforms!

Oh how times have changed, the garments from five years are what I would wear to class. Most recent styling featured in Style Concept #68, is what I wore to lunch at Jardin at the Wynn

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The Behind the Concepts are curated arrangements of garments, purchase details, alternatives, and behind the scene details for items in The Joshua Gray Style Concept series.

The post Behind the Concept #68: How to Transform a Five Year-Old Blazer first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

Ever since the bleached tee craze resurfaced, I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to create my own tee that was sentimental to me. I finally found the perfect T-Shirt to join the “vintage” t-shirt trend lingering around the globe. Check out how I created “The Wolves” Shirt, tips on the Knot-Pattern, and the shirt’s sentimental value, below:

1. Selecting a Meaningful Shirt: My elementary school mascot was a wolf, so finding this T-Shirt set the tone for making this masterpiece of a shirt. When looking for a vintage tee, try to find a shirt that you connect with and/or has historical value to you!
   
2. Preparing for the Knot-Pattern: This method of bleaching all started when I could not find any rubber-bands or rope to tie my shirt for bleaching. Tying the shirt into not serves as a compelling method for bleaching the shirt.
   
   
3. The Bleach Soak: After you tie the knots into your shirt, lay the shirt in a bucket or sink, and pour 2-3 cups of High Premium Bleach onto the upper half of the shirt where the knots are located. Then, let the shirt soak for about an hour and then let it sit for the wetness to dry.
   
4. Washing & Drying: After the shirt sits for a  few hours (3-5) hours, untie the knots and throw the shirt into a washing machine to wash out the bleach. After the shirt is washed, let the shirt dry (air-dry or dryer-machine). And then it’ll be ready to wear!
   

Expectations: Hilariously, after I wore the shirt once, I noticed holes in the shirt. The bleach is capable of burning holes in the shirt or weakening the fabric, nevertheless, they add to the distressed vibe of the shirt!

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The Behind The Concepts are curated arrangements of garments, purchase details, alternatives, and behind the scene details for items in The Joshua Gray Style Concept series.

The post Behind the Style Concept #64: How to Create the Bleached “Knot-Pattern” Wolves Tee first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

Ever since releasing the Style Concept #62: Denim, Distress, & Personal Details, I’ve been wanting to share one of the main personal details in the concept: The Transcontinental Gee Petals Tee. Although I just gave the “transcontinental lettering and petal themed” T-Shirt that name, I’ve had this design for close to four years. The shirt has special elements, so go behind concept #62 and learn more about this tee, below:

1.Black T-Shirt: In designing the shirt, I wanted to increase the number of black pieces in my wardrobe and I wanted a stark surface for potential colors to contrast well.

2. Arabic-Inspired “G”: Secondly, I wanted to create a piece that was meaningful to me and aesthetically appeasing to me, which inspired me to go with an Arabic-inspired “g” as a standout for the shirt.

3. Flower Petal Transformation: For the petals, I used a picture of some petals that I peeled from a flower that I brought home with me from a University Formal in 2012. Then, I went on to enhance & add colors to the image.

4. Merge “g” with Flower Petals & Add Flat Metal Studs: In regards to the design that was submitted to Prisma Printing for the shirt, I merged the “g” and the flower petals image. After I received the shirt, I added flat metal studs.

Initially inspired by the Givenchy wave in the early 2010’s, this “Transcontinental Petals Tee” has always been special to me as it was a piece that comprised of my art, my designs, and my creativity. See why “Wearing Your Style” is so important in the Life + Style Message in Style Concept #62: Denim, Distress, & Personal Details!

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The Behind The Concepts are curated arrangements of garments, purchase details, alternatives, and behind the scene details for items in concept series. 

The post Behind Style Concept #62: Creating the Transcontinental Petals Tee first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

Style is a culmination of all of the experiences, values, perspectives, motivations, inspirations, and qualities that is then manifested in our fashion choices. As a part of this site, the Style Concept segment captures my daily style and incorporates styles or trend concepts to convey my style philosophy: 1) Use what you have, 2) Get what you can, and 3) Do what you do.

The “Behind the Concept” feature is the inspirational adjacent to the Style Concepts on the site. With each style concept feature, I will share  reflective, inspirational words that seemingly translate into my styling preferences of each respective concept. To accompany Style Concept #61, enjoy “The Importance of Mobility & Movement,” below:

Whether you prefer a more active lifestyle or a more tamed lifestyle, movement is inevitable. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.

Life progresses with each new day & life changes with each new day. With each day, you are given an opportunity to be better, do better, and live better; if you fail to take that opportunity, you subsequently move in the opposite direction of progression. If with the rising of the sun or the upcoming of your next breath, you have the opportunity to embrace the better of your next moment…there is no need to move backwards, in terms of progression.

Admittedly, there have been times within the past few months where days upon days would go by without the fruitful realization of productivity or progress in my life. Nevertheless, don’t let comfort and/or low visibility of progression discourage you from the better that you can acquire from day to day.

Moving backward or moving forward is a choice; furthermore, moving backward or moving forward is first a mindset. The various life experiences we encounter shape us; nevertheless, we can have an input on what they shape us into and where they move us to. Will we allow our experiences to move us upward and onward to our purpose? Will we extract the valuable lessons learned from the good times and hard times to apply in our “next” times?

Are you moving forward or backward?

The post Behind the Concept #61: The Importance of Mobility & Movement first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

Style is a culmination of all of the experiences, values, perspectives, motivations, inspirations, and qualities that is then manifested in our fashion choices. As a part of this site, the Style Concept segment captures my daily style and incorporates styles or trend concepts to convey my style philosophy: 1) Use what you have, 2) Get what you can, and 3) Do what you do.

The “Behind the Concept” feature is the inspirational adjacent to the Style Concepts on the site. With each style concept feature, I will share  reflective, inspirational words that seemingly translate into my styling preferences of each respective concept. To accompany Style Concept #60, enjoy “Braving the Cold,” below:

You’ll never realize your best without the test, you’ll never feel the heat of your success until you endure the coldness of your winter. Rather than despising the process of going through something in order to get through something, we must endure the process and brave the cold.

As a symbol of trying times, tribulations, or even those who try it, the “cold” and its accompanying effects is a fixation that is worth rising above, pressing forth, and pushing through to embrace the warmth of our next season. Assumingly, there are varying levels of “cold:” an individual’s cold may not pack as severe of a punch as another’s “cold.” Nevertheless, the warmth of a new season will embrace you, IF you endure, persevere, and brave the cold.

The post Behind the Concept #60: “Braving the Cold” first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

I believe style is a culmination of all of the experiences, values, perspectives, motivations, inspirations, and qualities that is then manifested in our fashion choices. As a part of this site, the Style Concept segment captures my daily style and incorporates styles or trend concepts to convey my style philosophy: 1) Use what you have, 2) Get what you can, and 3) Do what you do.

The “Behind the Concept” feature is the inspirational adjacent to the Style Concepts on the site. With each style concept feature, I will share  reflective, inspirational words that seemingly translate into my styling preferences of each respective concept. To accompany Style Concept #59, enjoy “Oneness,” below:

Oneness can be a difficult reality to manifest in your daily life and throughout your life journey. Oneness requires alignment, focus, focus, persistency, and efficiency in order for its fruition to entail significant impact in our lives or life journey. This phenomenon may take time to master and may take time to feel it’s operative waves in your life, but you will never feel it if you never piece together the parts of your journey and parts of yourself that you’d like to become one with; oneness ironically starts with one piece at a time.

1. Start by aligning the factors and facets of your life that you would want to become one with each other. Sort out the differences, see if they fit, but ultimately, give them time to fit and align with each other.

2. As you begin to identify the factors and facets of your life that you’d want to foster oneness among, begin to focus on ensuring harmony among those elements of your life. Be intentional with your desires and pursuits of oneness.

3. In convergence with alignment and focus, persistency will push your pursuits closer to efficiency and impact. Albeit hard and challenging, dedicate time to harmonizing the facets you choose to harmonize. Pushing through the challenges is what makes the champion.

Oneness will not be achieved as easy as putting together a monochrome outfit, but oneness is achievable, like a monochrome outfit, if you you envision it and then pursuit of piece by piece.

The post Behind the Concept #59: “Oneness” first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.

I believe style is a culmination of all of the experiences, values, perspectives, motivations, inspirations, and qualities that is then manifested in our fashion choices. As a part of this site, the Style Concept segment captures my daily style and incorporates styles or trend concepts to convey my style philosophy: 1) Use what you have, 2) Get what you can, and 3) Do what you do.

The “Behind the Concept” feature is the inspirational adjacent to the Style Concepts on the site. With each style concept feature, I will share  reflective, inspirational words that seemingly translate into my styling preferences of each respective concept. To accompany Style Concept #58: Mixing Prints & Textures, enjoy “Bringing it All Together”:

There are moments in my life where perplexities manifest when I think about how all of my diverse experiences & encounters will converge in harmony with the purpose of my life. In the past 10 years, diverse experiences have characterized my early journey in life–some that I knew would happen, some that I never imagined would happen, some that I anticipated, some that I feared would come and came true.

A major key to bridging all of your diverse experiences & encounters to the purpose and calling of your life is to BELIEVE that they all play a part in shaping, molding, or building your destiny. Mixing the prints of your experiences, the textures of your encounters, the colors of your engagements, and the arrangement of it all is made possible when you maintain confidence that each element will come to place to form your masterpiece of a life.

The post Behind the Concept #58: “Bringing it All Together” first appeared on The Joshua Gray | Live Grayter.