I had my seventh rez-day last month and have been blogging for six and half years, so I think I have a reasonable informed perspective on Second Life® fashion history. It is from that perspective that I think it is worthwhile to recognize the third anniversary of Collabor88 – a fashion even that, to me, is one of the true game changers in SL fashion.

When I began in SL, events were not nearly so integral to fashion marketing as they are now. Of course, there were events. The fashion year was punctuated by a few big annual fundraising fairs and specialty expos for shoes, hair and skin. There were also a few “Fashion Week” extravaganzas of runway shows featuring big season collections from 20 to 30 designers.

For marketing, stores predominantly relied on their groups, announcements in marketing groups like FashCon and gaming their traffic stats to get higher in search by using lucky chairs or camping. I confess I miss the camaraderie of lucky chairs. I can remember standing around for an hour or more waiting for a “C”, teleporting in friends to advance the letters, chatting with others who are waiting and even hanging out after my letter came out to help with finding a “Q” or a “Z” to hit that chair. Folks chatted with each other and friendships formed.

Mostly, we shopped at stores. We had learned the rhythms of our favorite designers. Donna Flora releasing every other week, Truth Thursdays and SN@tch Wednesdays. Digit’s secret sales on Sundays. It was seldom frenetic and only a new shoe from Maitreya, new hair from ETD, or new anything from Lelutka would launch a frenzy of people trying desperately to get into a full sim.

Pinwheel at LEA26 is a great new installation – where you can spend hours walking up and down the towers – a collection of triangles. All the pictures were shot there.

Then along came Designers United – an “inspiration” fair where a small group of designers created items organized to a theme – Vaudeville, Op Art, Narcissus, Jellyfish, Surrealism. It was exciting to see how different people responded to the theme. There’s something fascinating about seeing people start with the same thing, run off on their own and see where they end up. But Designers United is irregular, with the first in 2009 and the fifth in 2013.

The magic of Collabor88 is that it gives us this fascinating exploration of a theme, but institutionalized with a monthly schedule so we know when it’s coming and can plan, anticipate and swoon on schedule. In addition, Collabor88 has a color palette for their theme. This lets you mix and match items from different designers. In many ways, Collabor88 is a game changer. I know there were monthly events before Collabor88, just as others wrote about evolution and natural selection before Darwin, but for me, Collabor88 is the event that changed Second Life shopping.
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