The Unofficial Second Life® Fashion and Shopping Blog

As CronoCloud mentioned, as sort of a last goodbye to the blog we’re sharing with everyone a few of our favorite things we’ve found during our time in Second Life. While I haven’t been around as long as some of the others here, and I don’t have quite the inventories they do, I have run across a few things that I can’t live without.  (Turns out that CC and I made some of the same selections… what can I say, she has great taste!)

First, a couple dresses. The one on the left is from Marly’s, it’s a delightfully polka-dotted, full-skirted number called Spanky’s Spots, and I’m wearing it in Sage. I have soft spot for just about anything retro, but what really endears this dress to me is that it was my first real fashion purchase in Second Life. Just under a year ago, I was wandering the Retrology sim and desperately holding on to my first 300 Lindens, when wham… I knew I had to have this dress. From that point on, I was a goner. Thanks, Marleen, I’ll pay you back one day…

On the right, a much more recent purchase. Even though I rarely have the occasion to wear ball gowns in SL, I still have a hard time resisting buying them, especially when they’re as beautiful as the Miss Hathaway gown from ICING that I’m wearing here. If you happened to catch Anne Hathaway’s gown from this year’s Oscars, you know exactly what the inspiration was for this dress, and how amazingly well Miko Omegamu duplicated the look with this design. The primwork in the bodice rosettes alone makes this gown worth every Linden.

Since my job here at Linden Lifestyles was to focus on hair, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of my favorite styles. I have gushed about the hairstyles that are sold at Aden before, including the Sarah ponytail pictured on the left. But it’s worth repeating here that this really is one of the best ponytails on the grid. I find myself going back to it every time I need a casual look.

On the other hand, sometimes you need something more formal, and my favorite for such occasions is the Vivian style from ETD. As you know by now, ETD is my first love when it comes to hair textures, no one else does a mahogany shade like Elikapeka Tiramisu. The Vivian style is an elegant French twist updo, and as someone pointed out in the comments to my ETD review, it weighs in at a very stingy 37 prims. I reach for Vivian whenever I’m looking for something elegant but also want to do my part to fight lag. (Then again, those prim savings might be outweighed by the rosettes on my gown - which you can see in better detail in this closeup.)

When I talked with Salome about joining Linden Lifestyles, I told her that I don’t do nudity. Well, that’s out the window now, isn’t it? It’s for a good reason, though - I’ve stripped down to show off my shape, which no, you can’t actually buy for yourself. But if you are looking for a little help with your sliders because you can’t get your shape exactly how you want it, I’d recommend doing what I did and contacting Zada Zenovka of Shapes by Zada. In addition to selling various pre-made shapes, for a price Zada will work with you to create a custom shape. Zada has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of SL skins and how they interact with body shape, so you can be sure that your new shape will work with your skin of choice.

Finally, I wanted to highlight my eyes, which are the Light Blue eyes from Miriel and are the only eyes I ever wear. All of the eyes Miriel Enfield sells are superbly drawn, they range from natural colors to exotic, and they come in two sizes, but I really don’t need such options. I haven’t been able to get over these captivating blue ones from the day I first saw them. Plus, as we’ve noted before, Miriel’s vendors are set up to let you choose whether you want copy permissions or transfer permissions on your items, which is a big step toward greater consumer choice and something I hope finds wider adoption around the grid.

Okay, I guess that brings me sadly to the end. In the short time I’ve been on the staff here, I’ve come to realize just how amazing the readership of Linden Lifestyles is, and I will miss you all. If you feel like dropping by my personal blog, Second Life, First Person, I would love to have you all over for a visit. Until then… it’s been great fun, and an honor to squee along with you!

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So, I make this post bitching about a few of my beefs with the current state of glitch pants on the grid. The next day, I get a couple of IMs which, while gently worded, basically amount to: “we’re already working on this problem, bonehead.” From two of SL’s top designers no less. Shows what I know.

For those of you who think I do nothing but stare at my crotch all day, the above photo will certainly be your Zapruder film frame of proof. On the left is the jacket/underpants layer for the Blaze Sonatina dress and on the right is the jacket/underpants layer for the Simone! Tiffany dress. Both are (obviously) cocktail dresses. But note how the glitch area for the shorter skirts are lingerie-friendly instead of the Mormon magic underpants we’re used to getting stuck with. The Blaze underlayer is a bit more finished and detailed than Simone’s, but in both cases, I’m happier than Paris Hilton at a press junket to see the effort being made.

Tiffany comes in about twenty different colors and has a charming prim bow on the front waistline. I’m not 100% sold on the cascading satin skirt texturing effect in black and suspect I might like it better in different colors or possibly with a second skirt layer to lend some additional reality, but it is consistent through the skirt and looks much more natural outside of extreme close-up. There is always a compromise for texturing between close-up and reasonable distance, so I think this is the best tact to take for dresses like these where you’re much more likely to be looking at them from a slightly zoomed out club scene than, say, a close-up intimate setting. The bodice of this cute little number is smokin’ hot and the rest of its shining points (movement, style, etc) are the top-notch stuff you expect from a Simone dress.

What Blaze has turned out with the Sonatina and Crushed Tube dresses is really a fascinating direction for a type of dress I don’t get to wear much. Tight-fitting tube dresses are a staple of RL fashion from couture catwalk to mail order boudoir and every Bloomingdales and Old Navy store in between. Until now in SL, due to the fact that the SL mesh makes our asses look like Homer Simpson after a donut glut these types of dresses were not really feasable. Most of them consist of biker shorts with a prim shoved on the front and the back to make a pretend form-fitting skirt. The illusion only works, by and large, if you stand perfectly still in the right lighting. As you can see, however, Blaze has taken a giant leap toward improving on this practice.

There are still some poses that will make this type of skirt look out of whack, but that’s true for all things prim. I’m not an itty-bitty skirt type girl, but if I were, I suspect that this would be a day of rejoicing.

I also suspect that following the Oscar and Grammy Award shows of the coming seasons, all those tight, tiny little nymph dresses are gonna get a lot more representation in SL. Wootle.

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Hey, everybody!  I’ve been on summer vaca for a couple months now, but I’m back and ready to start reviewing again.  Anything happen while I was away?  Wait… Salome did what?

I’m kidding, of course.  But before we pack it up this week, I wanted to get one more review out there, because I’ve been dying to tell everybody about Ornamental Life ever since a friend led me there several weeks ago.  The store’s owner, Shir Dryke, wrote a fantastic SL fashion blog - also called Ornamental Life - for about a year before deciding to switch to creating the fashion herself.  That experience really shows in her clothes - they’re creative and particularly well-drawn, but it’s obvious that Shir doesn’t take it all too seriously.  Just a look at the whimsical names she gives each of her designs will tell you that.

This is a tube top called Antonia Smiles and I’m wearing it in three of the available colors, named Dusk Butterflies (red), Under the African Sun (yellow), and Happy Clouds (blue).  It’s hard to pick one thing I adore most about Ornamental Life, but if I had to it would be Shir’s use of color.  Most everything is bright and saturated and really just pops off the screen at you, in the way that real clothes just can’t.  Yes, that means that the colors aren’t extremely realistic.  But ultra-realism be damned - we’re in a world where we can fly, after all.

Now, Antonia Smiles is a tube top, which I realize is a garment you can find loads of for free all over the grid.  There’s no getting around the fact that you’re going to have EMS when you wear it.  And I will freely admit tube tops are not the most creative when it comes to the lines of the garment itself.  Blah blah blah… with colors like these, who cares?  It also helps that, as with all of Shir’s designs, the textures of Antonia Smiles are extremely well-detailed and shaded.  If it’s wrong to love them because they’re tube tops, I don’t want to be right.

Call me crazy, but I like to dress appropriately for the RL season, even in SL, and this top called Summer Feels Wee fits the bill perfectly.  (I’m wearing Sprinkling Ocean.)  When it comes to layers, Ornamental Life is just fantastic - Summer Feels Wee, for example, comes with the bikini top as a separate piece from the sheer overlay, and both are on just about every layer you could want.  I’m glad to see more and more designers around the grid are making good use of SL’s layers, giving you pieces on multiple layers so you can have more flexibility in how you wear what you buy with your hard-earned Lindens.

Until recently, Shir focused her attention on creating tops, and that’s still the bulk of the inventory for sale at Ornamental Life.  But lately, she’s released some dresses, such as the Wings of Desire dress that I’m wearing here.  (The color is Blood Oath.)  I’m thrilled to see her branching out.  Wings of Desire comes with two prim skirt options, and while they’re both great I can’t seem to stop wearing the ballerina version.

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When I first blogged about Solange! Fashions almost two years ago, it was a modest little store mostly featuring top-drawer silks. There was a focus on texture quality that made everything on the shelves stand out, even if it wasn’t my style. These days, the silks and lingerie are still happily represented, but there is also a healthy and ever-growing assortment of casual and evening wear among her wares, and that devotion to texture quality remains absolute.

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This is the Mademoiselle, which can be purchased in long, short, or knee-length skirt versions, a pants version, or as the full set in different colors. I have a wee bit of trouble fitting Solange skirts, but then I have trouble fitting most skirts. Despite that, the corset and pants combo on this set is one of my favorite stand-by outfits - whenever I need to toss something on and go romping about the grid. I’m not generally a big paisley fan, but this silk top and corduroy skirt/pants combo just works. Besides, in purple the little Prince fan in me gets to squee and hum “Little Red Corvette.”

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As cocktail dresses go, the Allure has to rank as one of the best of the verse. Although available in several colors, I’ve seen the black and silver at concerts and parties galore, so I know it’s not just my favorite. The shading and highlights lend the perfect luster of silk without that over-the-top shiny sheen some designers overshoot to (I do not want my fanny to look like it’s coated in Crisco, thank you).

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Cute little cocktail dress runner-up goes to the Devotion dress with it’s rutched silk and scallopy skirt. Yeah, I’m partial to purple, what can I say?

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