The Unofficial Second Life® Fashion and Shopping Blog

Having recieved a most excellent handbag from the real life Santa last week, my interest in SL handbags has been slightly revived. I’ve never really been one for bags in SL; they are, as a point of order, completely useless since you can’t actually put anything in them. They can, however look very pretty, and hell, there are plenty of days when that’s good enough for me.

In real life, I’m a fan of the “roomy” shoulderbag, and so I found it very difficult to resist the most elegant Vagabond bag from Paper Couture. PC is chock-a-block with fantastic bags of all sizes right now, and these happen to come in fashion-friendly staple colours: red, tan, black and olive.

Ingrid Ingersoll of etc made the very first handbag I ever bought in SL, and I’ve been a hard-core etc fan ever since. Etc is also a bargain hunter’s haven, because Ingrid generally sells in packs and always sells very inexpensively. The beautifully crafted Biagio bag comes in brown, black, and a summertime off-white, sold all together for under $100L:

And while I may be late to this particular party, I’ve recently become a fan of the artful but difficult to spell Kimilu bag at Shiny Things. I picked up aqua, but it comes in black, pink, a divine yellow, a vibrant deep blue:

It’s very rare that I buy handbags, but I’m pretty delighted with these. There are a lot of handbags out there because people think “Oh, that isn’t hard to make” but the result is pretty much a huge number of lazy, crappily made bags on the market. Really good bags are, in fact, very hard to make and require excellent math, texturing and tiny prim skills. The ladies who make these accessories have all of those attributes, by the bagfull.

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Good thing I’ve started a “shoot now, blog later” approach to entries, or it would be a very quiet afternoon at Linden Lifestyles, what with the grid being unexpectedly down. Nothing scares me quite so much as the phrase “Second Life is still down while we work with our storage hardware vendor.” That is never a good situation, and I suspect this is going to be a very, very long wait indeed.

Although not as long as the wait for a broad selection of classy, professional women’s suits and separates, which has finally been fulfilled by retailer First Impressions. She has some truly excellent women’s suits, which I plan to get through in a big way at some point in the very near future. However, at the moment I am running around SL in the fantastic Flat Front Prim Trousers, which come in such a useful, thoughtful range of colours that you can coordinate them with practically anything:

Blouses, jumpers, corsets, jackets - everything looks fab with these elegant, excellent, beautifully textured trousers, and these are prim leg attachements that actually work. They fit right the first time, flawlessly blend prims to mesh, and add length and style to your trousers. First Impressions also has a range of coordinating separate tops you can rummage through to find an excellent match to your chosen trouser colours.

I am wearing them with the equally excellent Dots Sweater from [ Space! Romantic ], which in addition to being just so damn good, is also a tremendous bargain:

For a mere $75L, you get six jumpers that come with the shirt and sweater as one, in some great coloured dot combinations that you can probably mix and match to any colours in your virtual wardrobe.

Which brings me to a broader point, which is that mixing and matching is more fun. There are fantastic designer ensembles I just absolutely adore and that hold sacred space in my inventory, but really, anyone can buy a box off a wall and look just as good as the last person to buy that box off a wall. I’ve found that my favourite outfits are the ones I’ve put together myself - top from one store, pants from another, accessories from a 3rd (or 4th and 5th!)

And speaking of accessories, I would also like to say: finding the biggest, flashiest, blingiest diamond jewellery you can buy is not the perfect accessory for any outfit. Diamonds are for silk and evening gowns. Wood bangles, like these beautiful stacked and individual bracelets from Eathtones, are for wool and denim, and look so much better with these outfits than any fancy shmancy precious stones might.

There is more than enough choice in SL for us each to be our own fashionista. Mix! Match! Accessorise!

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So last night while I was quietly sitting in my house and pondering which shoes to wear next, the Fashionista Cabal arrived in tasteful flexi robes and delightful masquerade masks, deposited a charming prim head of a horse on my lawn, and hauled me off to a secret location to hang me over a sparkling, lavendar scented toilet bowl.

Apparently, we at Linden Lifestyles are not charging enough for our ads. Since we’re not really actively selling them, either, (new advertising manager starts in January!) we have not paid much attention to our ad rates, nor have we raised them at all in the past year. But it is true that we have fallen steeply behind other SL websites in terms of what we charge, and probably are fucking up the market, and so will be raising our rates accordingly.

Fair warning: Our rates are really behind everyone else’s right now. As of January 1st, we will be more than doubling them to reach fair and current market value. The new ad rates will start at $500L per 1,000 ad views and scale accordingly. Please book your ads now to get the current pricing.

Advertisers with ads already booked and/or running will not be affected by this price increase for the duration of their current ad cycles. And we are taking a maximum of 100,000 impressions per advertiser at this rate.

Speaking of big numbers, this seems like as good a place as any to say that December marks a significant milestone for Linden Lifestyles, as this month we’ve exceeded 100,000 page views per month, and expect to exceed 125,000 in January. We’d sincerely like to thank the designers, advertisers and visitors who all contribute to making this site what it is. We’re very grateful, and all of you rock.

Eponymous Trenchmouth, who made the fantastic Jeepers Creepers crepe soled shoes people were asking about recently, has really outdone herself with her latest Betty Shoes. I just love these shoes. More than I can describe. The notecard that comes with them says “Betty’s women’s shoes have no “bling”. These shoes ARE bling.” And ain’t that the truth:

These are seriously good, seriously vampy, seriously fabulous shoes. And the buckles! So cute!

They come in these two varieties, plus black, lacked up, black with roses, and black with adorable little bow ties. Clearly yes we need these in pink, green, leopard, cheetah, blue, and every other colour and pattern imaginable, but these are enough to be getting on with right now.

They obviously look fabulous with wrap dresses, anything retro, and any kind of trouser. But if you’re feeling a little bit Rizzo, I think they’re fun with the Cherry Cuffed Jeans from Miau Haus, which also come with a few cuff patterns that are very adorable. Or cranky, if you choose the skull and crossbones variety.

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