The Unofficial Second Life® Fashion and Shopping Blog

I sometimes forget just how mood-altering a drug Second Life can be. Take this past week for instance - in RL, it appears that my home town has decided to start importing our weather directly from Ireland. Though I’d like to say that it doesn’t affect me, I can’t deny that my mood quickly started to get gray, dreary, and soggy like the weather. But that was before Aden Breyer of Aden dropped a folder of hair on me to try out. The minute I did, I was snapped out of my funk.

Can you see why? There’s something just so darn fun about Aden’s hairstyles, my dour mood never stood a chance. This style is called Sarah, which I’m wearing in Hazel. It’s a basic pony with some long bangs falling forward, parted above your right eye. The ponytail itself has a great fullness to it, and there are some flexi strands woven in to add to the realism. Yes, it seems like every hair designer on the grid sells a ponytail hairstyle, but this one from Aden just works for me. The overall look is just so flirty and young, it’s quickly become my favorite ponytail style.

I think I’m also becoming addicted to this style, named Annyka. I typically shy away from really long hairstyles like this in SL, because the prims always seem to fall into your shoulders or trunk unless you’re standing just right and don’t turn your head. Well, Aden solves this problem by dividing the style into two attachments - there’s one shoulder-length traditional hairstyle that attaches to your skull, just like normal prim hair. But there’s also an extension attachment that goes on your spine attachment point, that makes up the strands that fall over your shoulders and down your back.

The upshot of this two-attachment construction, which I’m seeing more and more hair designers starting to adopt, is that no matter how you turn your head the longer strands stay put and don’t do weird things with your body. Because nothing kills a look like the end of a strand of prim hair sticking out through your stomach like something out of Alien, does it?

One word of caution - it may have just been my avatar (I’m a little on the short side), but I had to adjust the individual prims of the spine attachment a little. As sold, there were a few prims that poked out of weird places on my avie, like my cheek. It’s not difficult to fix in any event, but if you’re averse to moving prims around, you might want to check out a demo first before you buy.

Finally, if you’ve ever wanted to take your Girl Power fandom to new and scary heights, Aden has a line of hairstyles that are modeled after the five Spice Girls, as well as famous hairstyles worn by other celebrities. I am not a Spice Girl, nor do I ever aspire to be, so instead I went with the style I’m wearing above, called Rhianna. Presumably it’s named after the beautiful singer, and it does in fact resemble a style I remember her wearing at one point. And, since I haven’t gone anywhere recently without my umbrella (…ella, …ella, …ella), well it just seemed to fit.

My only real issue with the Aden stores is the lack of color demos. I typically like to see a texture rezzed on a prim before buying, because no matter what it always ends up looking different than on a vendor. You can work around this problem by picking up one of each of the style demos Aden has out, that should give you a fairly good sampling of the colors that are available. But it would make things a lot easier if there was a way to get a pack of a single demo style in all available colors, as is done at most hair designers on the grid.

You’ll notice that below, I have listed links to more than one SLurl location within Second Life. Aden’s distribution of hairstyles among its several locations is somewhat idiosyncratic, and some locations seem to have slightly different selections than others. For example, most of the celebrity hairstyles seem to be concentrated at the store on the DollyRock sim. If you go to a particular location and you don’t find what you’re looking for, I’d recommend trying at least one other. Chances are, you’ll eventually find something you like, and maybe even something that will get you out of a funk.

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If you were to take a random sample of the hair worn by women in Second Life, I bet you’d find that one kind of hair is vastly under-represented. No, I’m not talking about the hair on your naughty bits, though that does tend to be under-represented in SL too. I’m talking about curly hair.

The curly hair on your heads, you perverts.

I’m not sure if it’s just a grid-wide conspiracy against curly hair, or if the constraints of traditional prims have just made it easier to make hair that is straight. But whatever the reason, if you’ve decided that your ideal self absolutely must have curly hair, for the most part you’ve been out of luck. And if you specifically wanted curly hair that doesn’t look like you’ve just been the victim of a bad 80’s perm job, then you’ve really been out of luck.

This is the reason why I absolutely lost my mind when I ran into someone at a concert recently who was wearing this wonder of a hairstyle. By which I mean that I immediately began sending her annoying “where? where? pleeeeeeze tell me where” IMs until she gave up her source. (Yes, I know it’s a bad habit. Yes, I do it more often than I should. No, I won’t stop.)

Turns out my IM victim was wearing a ‘do called Page from Zero Style, I’m sporting it in Chestnut in the picture above. I’d been to Zero Style before and have always admired Rei Gully’s work with textured hair and alpha channels, but the Page simply takes everything to a new level. It’s a head full of layer upon layer of tight spiral curls that parts above the left eye and slightly covers the right. The movement on the prims is almost perfect, too - it’s got that slight bounce that curly hair will have, without it flying away on you with every move.

The prims on Page are textured so that you can see individual curled strands, it looks amazing from almost every angle. Yes, I said “almost.” Since this is textured hair, it’s subject to problems with alpha conflict, and at times when rotating the camera around the back of my head, I swear I could see through to my scalp. (I’ll also note that the conflict tends to happen more with lighter shades such as red - which is why I’m making a rare brunette appearance here.) But conflict problems were the rare exception, and you have to be looking very hard to see it - for the most part, this hair looks and moves wonderfully.

While at Zero Style, the Pompadour also caught my eye, I’m staying with the dark shades and wearing it here in Black. I’ve decided that I don’t wear enough messy hairstyles in Second Life, and messy is another thing that textured hair does well. The Pompadour is a beautiful mess with a bun in the back and also a crazy pile of hair up top. No, it’s not curly the way Page is, but there are plenty of curly wisps sprouting off the bun and hanging down around the face and the back of the neck.

If I had to critique anything about the Pompadour, it’s that it isn’t quite flexi enough. Except for a few long strands hanging down from the bun, none of the hanging prims move when you do. It’s a quibble, but it detracts a tiny bit from the realism of what is otherwise a very realistic-looking style.

I’ve reviewed two textured styles here, but Zero Style has a lot more than these, as well as traditional prim constructions too. There’s also a freebie style called You located just to the left of the store’s main entrance, available in eighteen shades which should permit everyone to find something that suits them. So if you’ve never made it by Zero Style, or like me you just haven’t been back in a while, I’d recommend a visit.

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Detours are something that I usually try to avoid, because they throw me off my intended path and keep me from getting to where I really want to go. But recently, a friend sent me a landmark to a store called Detour and I am very glad I followed it, because there’s some great, innovative hair to be found there.

I’m wearing Detour’s Sienna style, in Plum. I know you can’t see it from the picture, but I just adore how this hair moves - the long pieces are flexi and sort of floaty, so they swish as you walk. It’s very well-done and natural looking. The bangs are dramatic and cover your right eye, but who needs depth perception when you look this fantastic, I say.

The long hairstyles from Detour, including the Sienna, are all examples of what I call “textured hair,” for lack of a better term. The designer is able to make the movement of the hair so natural because the wigs are made up of layer upon layer of flat flexiprims, which overlap and float with the wind. This method of constructing hair is fairly new, at least to my knowledge, and differs from the traditional prim construction used by most hair designers, who typically use larger, cylindrical prims.

There is a drawback to textured hair, and it’s the reason I think you don’t see it more frequently. Because the construction depends so much on partially transparent prims, the alpha channels of the prims (in plain English, that’s what tells Second Life how transparent to make a texture) tend to conflict when the prims overlap, and you usually get flashing textures and other weird behavior you don’t typically want your hair to have. While there’s still a bit of alpha conflict with the Detour textured hair, it’s really minimal. I wish I knew how they did it, but I don’t. For now, my working theory is magic. Prim magic.

This is the Luna style, which I’m wearing in Burgundy. Here, you can see yet another advantage of textured hair - the designer is able to make individual strands of the hair a lot smaller and more wispy. I think the Luna walks very close to the line between wispy and stringy, but I love it anyway - it’s a completely different look than most hair you see on the grid. The strands that fall forward over your shoulders sit just right and have great movement, though I will caution you that they have the tendency to partially fall through the avatar mesh. So, if having your hair disappear into the twins is the sort of thing that bothers you, I’d suggest trying a on demo first and giving it a bit of a test drive before buying.

Short styles? You want short styles? Okay, Detour has those as well. There are currently two short styles for sale at Detour, but when I tried them on I’m sorry to report that they just didn’t look right on me. Don’t get me wrong, they’re lovely, a friend has the Writer style and it suits her perfectly. They’re just not for me, and I’m not about to post pics of myself here when I’m not looking my best. Gotta maintain the image, you know.

Just as I had come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to review either of the short styles, what does Keri Clip - Detour’s hair designer - do but send me a short style that does work on my wee noggin. This is Coma, pictured above in Burgundy. (She really shouldn’t encourage me, you know. I’m liable to get spoiled.) It’s not a style that’s for sale yet, but I offer it here as a preview of things to come. As you can see, there are a few wispy textured tendrils around the face, while the rest of the hair is a more traditional construction of prims. But, they’re sculpted prims, which allows the hair to have a more rumpled, natural shape than a lot of the prim hair out there, which can be overly smooth. I think it really works, and I’d encourage Keri to get the style set out in a vendor ASAP.

Detour sells a lot more than hair, by the way - looking around the store, I saw skins, eyes, lashes, furniture, and even fun little plywood men who sit on your shoulder for sale. Oh, and the shoes! There are some sneakers at Detour that may be among the best I’ve ever seen on the grid, and there are flip flops and more formal shoes available as well. It’s really a quite impressive range of products, and it’s all very well done. The designers at Detour either are as scatterbrained as yours truly, or they are just stunningly talented in making just about everything you could ever want to shop for.

Yet even with all this diversity, the store itself is almost shockingly empty. Detour is on a sim by itself, and it’s a pretty one: a dramatic tropical island with waving palm trees and a somewhat inexplicable statue of two gigantic plywood lovers, locked in embrace. The store build is also fitting for the tropical theme, very open and airy. But there’s huge parts of the store that have no items in them at all. Hopefully, this means there’s lot more to come from Detour. If they are able to fill the store with content of the same quality as what they’re already selling, I get the feeling this is a Detour many people will want to plan into their route.

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The bulk of this entry was supposed to be about the Paris set from Melissa Lingerie. Since I’ve been unable to rezz a skirt layer, I’ve been traipsing about in jeans and lingerie a lot lately, and so when I spotted Paris in my review folder I thought I’d give it a go:

This set is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I love the Spring-friendly originality of the blossoming bra. You see this kind of style IRL often with small European lingerie makers and I love how the motif is continued in the stockings and panties without exactly duplicating the large design of the bra cups. I really like this concept - color satin or sheer inlay lingerie as opposed to X number of recolors of some lace deisgn. We don’t see this enough in SL, except in tacky photosourced pieces, generally.

On the “not-so-hot” side of the fence, I really wish there was a little more panty in the panties. The barely-there triangle and parallel straps doesn’t mesh with the classy bra. Also, it would have been nice to have more than spaghetti strings for the bra. A bra with this type of delicate sheer detailing on the cups begs for a bit more substance. The execution of the pieces is where the real hiccup is, though. While this is a delightful effort, it’s just not up to the higher-end designers that SL features today. And, really, that’s okay - we need individual creators that are developing their skills in the marketplace. But, I can’t pretend that this is a completely refined piece. The piping is nothing but solid lines of base black. The degree of all over contouring and detail we’re accustomed to seeing from major designers isn’t represented here. Still it’s different enough to deserve a nod. Melissa Lingerie could be one to watch.

While I was preparing to shoot this lingerie, however, I innocently slipped into my “accessories-to-review” folder and discovered that Eolande Elvehjem is a big honkin’ cheater. At which point, the bulk of this post took a severe left turn at Albuquerque.

Yes, that’s right. Scripted color-change hair ribbons designed for ETD’s Patootie II (granted, I’m still most likely to be found wearing the no-longer-available Patootie original, but they work with that style TOO!). For the record, making things to compliment my mad favorite hair style is cheating. Wicked, wicked CHEATING. The bows are darling and have oodles of pre-loaded colors (27, actually) you can choose from - sure to match any outfit your heart desires.

The following must be done (You may wish to avert your eyes):

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

*straightens hair* Nothing to see here - carry on.

While poking around Accessories By Eolande I also found a few faboo items, including this must-have-for-Spring Daisy Hairband which looks good with just about every hairstyle I tried it with. It comes with the crown and flex ribbons so you can use them together or separately. There were four different color combos on display, and you know I had to snap up the pink rose, but the ocean color scheme with its robin’s egg blue stole my heart. I’m now officially on the hunt for a cute little blue Spring sundress to pair it with.

Also too darling to resist were these Pirate Beads that she’s made for a variety of ETD and Calla hairstyles. These are a bunch of fun and together with the earrings and necklace of the accompanying jewelry set make for a nummy gypsy/pirate accessory.

(More from Eolande after the cut)
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