DIY: The Rorschach Inkblot Jacket

Home for the holidays and then some, I was leafing through clothes I had left in Manila in search of something salvageable. When I found this plain white denim jacket that I had not once worn, I set out to make something beautiful out of it.

white denim jacket by Topman

When the photos from the Dries Van Noten Spring 2011 show came out, I knew those Rorschach-esque ink-blotchy shirts dear old Dries sent down the runway were fairly feasibly DIY-able.

Dries Van Noten Spring 2011 (via GQ.com)

But for this project, I wanted a more literal interpretation of this inkblot test psychologists use to detect underlying thought disorders, so I pulled up photos of Rorschach's original tests for inspiration.

card no. 2 from "Rorschach Test – Psychodiagnostic Plates" (via Wikipedia)

I wanted to do something symmetrical like Rorschach's cards, but not quite. As for the color palette, I was subliminally inspired by the Rajo Laurel dress my mother wore on New Year's Eve, which featured mixed black-and-white prints contrasted with color blocks of bright green:

color inspiration: mixed-print jersey dress by top Filipino designer Rajo Laurel

Here's how I did it:

I drew up a rough sketch of where I wanted to plant the blotches.

I then lined the entire jacket, torso and sleeves, thick with newspaper to prevent the ink from blotting through to the back.

I took a couple of shades of marker refill ink, the strongest ink available in the office supplies store,

and went to town with the ink in a medicine dropper: dropping ink-bombs from about two feet above, and painting graceful ink-blobs on contact. I then heat-set the stains with a hair dryer (not pictured).

But the blots were not as sharp as I had hoped for them to be, and the green ink was a little on the lifeless side, so I decided to accentuate the print with dabs of zesty grass green acrylic.

I squeezed a bit on a paper plate, and added a few highlights with the best paint applicator: my fingers.

The paint dried a deeper, richer color and here's what came out of the jacket:

DIY Rorschach inkblot jacket. (Look closely and tell me what you see.)

And here it is worn:

DIY inkblot jacket, Gap shirt, gray pearl necklace, Louis Vuitton belt, tailor-made trousers, Number (N)ine shoes

Details:

The necklace is a long strand of gray Philippine pearls, the belt is my brother's, now bestowed upon me, and the watch is a Cartier Roadster on navy alligator.

Though they took many a painful and frigid weekend in New York to break in, these Number (N)ine monk-strap flat creepers have become my current favorites. The pair in ever-versatile beige suede seem to bring that much-needed dark Japanese-ness to every outfit.

my wearable psych-test-cum-painting up close

When our family chauffeur saw the jacket and remarked that the pattern seemed to have a meaning he couldn't figure out, I knew my job was done.