Today is the last day of Culture Shock. I popped by last night to do some last minute shopping and there were only about 6 to 10 other people, making it a delightfully lag-free shopping experience. If you have been deterred by lagophobia lo these many days, now is your chance to find delightful dresses like this one from Spright and fun fashions and shop until you drop knowing that your lindens are saving lives for people whose time literally is running out without the fabulous work of Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

I love this dress from Spright. It’s called Inspire and has so many lovely details such as the gathering of the skirt, the well-made waistband and the modern femininity of the ruffle on the top. Sure, if I had my druthers it would be sold as separates to let me mix and match, but complete outfits is one of the ways designers are choosing to adapt their work to the limitations of mesh. Knowing that rigged clothing cannot be modified by us inworld to make little adjustments to the waistband, it’s just easier to make it all of a piece so the pieces won’t intersect if we move a mm off dead square. When you consider how much richer and more natural the textures look and how well the clothing moves with you, it’s an acceptable compromise.

On the other hand, most – but not all – mesh creators leave the inside of the clothing as an alpha. I have been told this has something to do with reducing the number of polygons which will reduce the upload cost and the server cost to render. I do not know enough about creating to know if that is the right explanation or not. What I know is that some designers do texture the inside, or at the very least, the visible inside, and it makes a difference when shooting pictures at different angles such as in this photo where the back of the skirt behind the legs is gone or in the photo lazing on Gidge’s couch in her blog post. This is not a specific criticism of this dress or this designer. The majority of mesh clothing and mesh designers do the same thing. I just wish they would not.

The shoes are from Lelutka and they’re vintage – pre-2.0 shoes with invisi-prims. I know that I should toss them out, these remnants of the old days when we had little Boxes of Weird around our feet anytime we went Where the Alpha Things Are. I love them, though.  I even ♥ them and I ♥ very few things. If I were queen of Sl for a day, I would encourage shoe designers to release an update of some of their golden oldies.  They would not have to upload new pairs, just remove the invisi-prims and add an alpha. With shoes this cool, there’s people who would love to buy them and for people who have the old set, perhaps offer a generous discount as an incentive to upgrade.

Back to what is gorgeous! The ruffles on the top are romantic and feminine, but so modern as well with restrained simplicity. The hair from Exile is gorgeous as hair from Exile always is. The jewelry is from Dark Mouse and a new release. This is an example of the wonderful serendipity of Second Life. The dress and the jewelry were released very close to each other and seem made for each other as though the creators shared their creations in their dreams.

Second Life fashion events are kind of like the ocean, as one wanes and another waxes. Yesterday, the Skin Showcase opened with all sorts of skin designers showcasing just a few of their newest and best. This is from IrEn. It’s called Molly. I love the eyebrows that are a bit more natural than the usual manicured brows you see.  It’s a clean, fresh and youthful skin that I like quite a lot.