The Unofficial Second Life® Fashion and Shopping Blog

Were I to switch my format to a weekly list of checks and balances, we would likely see that this week we’ve barely broken even. But then again, I may be wrong. So let’s take a brief respite from my usual stream of blobby and undreadable paragraphs and try a blobby and unreadable list. The Good, the Bad, and the Nondescript.

The Good

-This month’s winner at the Take Five Machinima festival was a video the fashionistas can really take to heart
-Sabrina is back, and she’s after your peanuts!
-Kiku springs up out of the woodwork and wows me!
-*Tweet* follows close behind!
-Princess crowned in the Gurl6 logo competition for a job VERY well done… And the rest of us still get some swag anyway.
-A Secondcast double whammy; a Roundup title that should have died a quiet death, and the dulcet ballad of a rebel and a rose.

The Bad

-R.I.P. Forbidden… For now.
-Philip Linden meets with prominent SL content creators: chat logs leaked to general public. “So that was depressing.”

The Nondescript
-Myst Panther posted some interesting Musings on Mall Rentals on Caveat Emptor
-The Linden Legal Eagle Ginsu clarified a little more about the DMCA process, and Lo Jacobs clarified more ontop of that.
-Official Linden blog launched, hopefully putting an end to blog hopping for the important knowledge… but also highlighting some oversights (an exploit AR category but not a theft one….?)

Okay, so it may look, numerically, like the Bad lost in a landslide… But Bad point #2 is a minus 10, in my books. I can’t even keep track of which designers are on hiatusses of undetermined lengths now. It really is getting that bad. So stay vigilant and stay honest. I know you all are anyway, right?

One hates to be premature with announcements, but I think it may be safe to say that I am back from blog hiatus. To be perfectly honest I’m shocked the blog has even let me log in instead of turning up it’s nose and sobbing “You just expect me to sit here, waiting for weeks on end, while you gallavant around doing God knows what? I’m changing the locks!”

For reasons having to do with carnivals, I have spent the last three days since logging back into SL dressed as a lion tamer. Therefore it was a relief to take off my top hat and hit the stores, and the first stop on my shopping list was Elephant Outfitters - makers of some of the best tops around:

This top and undershirt set comes in at least half a dozen colours and has many, many high-style friends hanging around in the store with it: cool stipes, bright tanks, multi-layer goodness and all things excellent. The quality is delicious and the designs are just yummy and hip.

Also note the cute bangle bracelets; you get 12 colours in sets and individual bracelets for a mere $50L. They are totally sweet and the colours are rocking. They have great belts and other accessories too - there’s a scarf belt that my friend points out is ideal for hiding low slun butt crack peekage. (You may think the butt crack is a good look. It so is not.)
There’s also a great selection of casual urban menswear, none of which will make you look like a refugee from some bad 80s film. The shirts involve colours, yes, but they’re very boy-friendly mustards, maroons, forest green and steel blue shades. Major points for that.

The trousers however reaffirm my strongly held belief that All Gauchos are Traitors. They seduce me with their rarity and casual lines; they tempt me with their less-than-ass-hugging looseness. I buy a pair whenever I see them. And each and every time, the prims just don’t match the colour of the pants - I know its a flaw of SL lighting but I keep hoping that this time, it will be different. It never is. I never learn.

But having said that, I really like these. They betray me but I will remain loyal to them anyway. This is the most conservative colour; they also come in light tan plus white and red and yellow and black. Fun!

(Read More | Where to Buy)

Well the Relay for life came to a close this past weekend. Sabrina and I both had items sell at the silent auction, and in a tragic twist of fate, I was outbid on the Sylfies I wanted. By Khan. The… Klingon? I never actually saw that movie, I just think George Takei is darling.

I know Torley has an infectious personality, but this is ridiculous! I’ll explain the eyecatch right away, seeing as time is of the utmost importance! That’s me stretching in Mexico before the Watermelon-themed lap of the Relay! For those who missed the Relay for Life and think they’ve missed their chance to see the Delicious Dozen sims… You’re WRONG. Linden Lab has given the sims an extra 10 days of existence. Everything is still set up so I imagine if you felt bad for missing it, you could run a few laps and light a few luminarias to console yourself. The greedier people may need a better reason. Well, did you know the Pixels in Pink team posted qui-i-i-te a few items that hadn’t been released beforehand? Including a sexy suit from Elikapeka Tiramisu, as well as tons of camp gear including a Jooky Kitty innertube, a hippo bonnet and slippers, and the fanciest superhero outfit ever, by Starley Thereian. I was poking around today and everything was still up and running, so run, before Linden Lab stops being so generous and the whole RFL World dissappears forever~! … Aside from its Snapzilla scrapbook.

On to the business side of the spectrum. A new scam of yard-sale copy fraud was unveiled this week, and continues to cause a big fuss in forum after forum. All this fuss has lead many designers to lose their faith and their passion for designing (temporarily we hope) so there’s been several designers deciding to go on hiatus. It’s not all doom and gloom though, since this week also saw the formation of a guild for SL content creators and vendors to join to protect themselves in a group, as well as slay some orcs. Down with the Horde! Night elves 4ev-… Erm…

A great deal of grief was averted recently, after the Lindens worked in the wee hours of 2am Sunday morning to correct a bug that had disastrous side-effects and had resulted in a precautionary closing of Midnight City. All’s well now, but it’s good to stay informed, and be aware that the demi-gods of SL aren’t just twiddling their prims all day and night.

Two rather interesting interviews have also been put up recently, Canimal Zephyr’s interview with up-and-comer Zabitan Assia (PXP Designer of the last week of the Month ) and also Akela Talamasca’s interview with everyone’s favourite brat, the vivacious firestarter Six Kennedy.

Oh, one more thing, said in my best Columbo voice (which is still not that great)… Two more things. Antonia Marat fiiiinally released the skins she teased the fashion community with weeks ago! So colourful, so sweet, think if Toast and Gala had some sort of naughty affair, these would be their lovechild. Kin Keiko is also releasing what appears to be the beginning is a mini-line of Final Fantasy-inspired hairstyles, though I may be calling it a little early. So far she’s given us Cloud and Reno, available only in the colours shown (that of the character’s original hair).

That’s everything. Run free, children, and revel in the RFL build before it’s gone forever!!!

One of the most compelling aspects of Second Life is that things entirely out of the reach of the average person are commonplace and wholly attainable. Want your own tropical island? Done. Want to be a fairy or night-elf or vampire? Done. Want to own a yacht or music club? Done.

Want to own a Fabergé Egg? We gotcha covered. Well nearly covered. You can have your very own Faberage Egg, and you know, what is a letter “a” and an accented “e” between friends?

I discovered these nifty little treasures at a store called Musical Bliss in one of my favorite SL SIMs - Parioli with its Italian (well, Roman) theme and flair. The eggs come in different sizes and are fabulous gift ideas. They are marketed as musical eggs (the store proclaims it is happy to turn anything into a musical gift) but objects that play music in SL are problematic at best. With the built-in sound clip limit, nothing can really be music-box functional.

However, these delightful decorations get full pretty points and are worth their virtual weight in virtual Lindens as far as I’m concerned.
(Read More | Where to Buy)