Author Archives: Cajsa Lilliehook

About Cajsa Lilliehook

Santino Rice's little ditty "It's only fashion" seems a perfect title for my little fashion blog as you and i know that fashion means the world to him. Co-founder of It's Only Fashion and Blogging Second Life.

Designer Download — June Monteiro

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DesignerDownload

June Monteiro, of JUMO, is a multi-talented and multi-faceted designer, creating skins, clothing, shoes, and jewelry. Her designs are modern, bold looks that demand your attention. Her jewelry is distinctive and unique — occupying its own niche with its modern forms and generous use of gems. There is an extravagant simplicity to her designs, that self-contradiction making them ever more fascinating. From the rich colors and exuberance of her designs, you would expect a loud and brash personality. In this interview, however, Monteiro reveals herself to be more quiet and introspective – as though she channels her energy into her designs.

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Juno’s Faraji necklace and earrings. Photo by Cajsa Lilliehook

It’s Only Fashion: What was your first day in Second Life® like? What made you stick it out through the learning curve?

June Monteiro: My first day was hard, I did not know anybody and also did not know where to go. But I started researching blogs and sites about SL® and I started to see many of the wonderful designers we have here. It awakened in me a desire to be on their side, to also be able to make beautiful fashion as they did. After that I never stopped:  to learn, to seek, to conquer. Continue reading →

Innovation

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One of the most satisfying pleasures in Second Life® is witnessing moment of true innovation – the imaginative brainstorms of creative people that change our ideas of what is possible. We did not have prim hair or flexi hair until someone thought of it. And then everyone thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Once someone thinks of it – it seems so obvious, doesn’t it?

Someone had to come up with the idea of a sculpted foot in a shoe. The Slink hands and feet were an innovation that sparked an explosion of mani/pedis and Slink-compatible shoes. I have seen capes and jackets before that come with poses so your arms go in the pockets, so when I first saw this cape from ISON, I did not realize how innovative it is. But those arms in my pockets are part of the cape. It comes with a collar and gloves that can be set to a range of colors using a HUD or turned off altogether. It’s magnificent and innovative and I wage we will see more outfits with built in gloves.

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The hat hair from Little Bones is a perfect match, controlled by a HUD as well, from which I selected a red hat and teal band and silver metal findings.  Continue reading →

Bedazzled or Shoe Glue Is Magical

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When long-time model Fuzz Lennie told me she had begun designing for Zanze and had just produced her first dress, I had to see it. She has a great sense of style and exquisite focus on detail and I was eager to see what she was going to make. All I can say, is wow! if this is her first, I cannot wait for her second. This dress spoke to me on another level though, reminding me of one of my favorite gifts I gave for Christmas.

It was several years ago, back when I had my very first job in political organizing – working for the mission more than the money. My “discretionary income” was close to nil and in choosing between getting the NY Times of a telephone, I opted for the Times and walked two blocks to a convenience store for phone calls. So Christmas would have to be frugal and I would have to make gifts. Well, I grew up on frugal Christmases with homemade gifts, so that was no problem.
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Designer Download — SySy Chapman

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DesignerDownload

Take it from us, SySy Chapman (pronounced Sai-Sai) is one of the sweetest people on the grid and great fun to hang around with. She is one of those people whose answer to almost every question is yes – and not just yes, but an enthusiastic yes. She is a whole-hearted, jump right in with both feet sort of person. For example, when mesh came along, she deleted all her system clothing and started fresh with mesh. But do not let me tell you, you can see it for yourself when you read her interview.

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SySy’s Billboard @ Hair Fair

It’s Only Fashion: What was your first day in Second Life® like? What made you stick it out through the learning curve?

SySy: A real life friend of mine told me about Second Life, she said “you have to try this chat game out, it is like an extended MSN messenger”. Little did we know at the time…. Because the fact she was already a week or two old in SL®, she found most of the basic things like teleporting, saving landmarks, change outfits, how to buy things etc., so i skipped the whole orientation island thing. I landed in some shady club she had found and was immediately intrigued by avatars we saw visiting the club. How come some had moving hair and why was i wearing an orange-non-movable-helmet type of thing on my head? Where did they got those pretty clothes? Which basically immediately set the tone for me, to begin creating.

IOF: What’s the craziest thing you ever did in Second Life? Most exciting? Silliest?

SySy: Oh boy. Where do I even begin? lol…. The most exciting things are definately some awesome projects I was involved in. For example the First Fusion show, back in the day organized by the Ewing Fashion Agency in SL, it was the first cross-over fashion show in real life and SL at the Amsterdam Fashion week. A year later, we did it again as Second Fusion, where a real life fashion show was held at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, and simultaneously we did the SL fashion show, at both places visible on big screens. We even created the exact designs the real life designer had created. A big challenge, but an absolute honor and privilege to have been a part of! Continue reading →

It’s Only Art #9

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It's Only ArtI doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that these columns are a lot of work. It is a good thing I enjoy them. One of the hardest parts about doing these columns is selecting just five pictures from my gallery and selecting only 50 for the gallery. That is the kind of abundance of worthy pictures are out there. Second Life® is rich in creative and talented people. That is its greatest asset. Be sure you check out this post’s gallery here.

I always think about you.

I Always Think About You by Nap.

I Always Think About You by Nap (blissfulnap) is a delightful photo. It appears so simple, a young man pausing on his bike, watching some birds flying away. No special effect, so intricate props or set, just a pure and simple picture. At least that is what it seems. However, whether deliberately or unconsciously, Nap created a complex composition that exploits our innate need to find patterns and shapes. This is done so well that we cannot help but be drawn deeper into the picture, our eyes forced by his skill  to see what he wants us to see. Our minds look for geometry; he gives us geometry.

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When you really look at this picture, it is full of geometric shapes, and there are more than these very obvious ones. This does not mean that the artist sat down and drew out a plan for finding circles and triangles and squares. It can be the unconscious recognition that this position relative to the birds looks better than a foot back, that cropping the picture at this spot looks better than cropping it differently. Because these “rules” of composition are merely acknowledgement of what we naturally prefer, they do not have to be learned, we are born with them.

What they do, though, is intensify the wistful longing we feel when we follow his eyes to those birds flying away, as perhaps the person he always thinks of flew away as well. Continue reading →

Feminist

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Misogynist bullshit from TIME magazine’s annual ban-a-word poll.

I was feeling fiercely angry after learning that TIME included feminist on a list of words to be banned from common usage. I will not provide the link because they did it for traffic and they should not be rewarded for their indecency.

And it is indecent. For clicks, shits and giggles, a human gerbil desperately spinning for male approval and working far above her competency suggested that feminist is overused and included it in a list of words that should be banned. Responding to richly deserved backlash, she demanded we consider the context; she is critiquing media trends, not feminism. This is doubly shameless when she blithely ignores the context in which the “I am a Feminist” campaign came to be. I am sure she is proud of herself, though, because she is the kind of feckless  crystallization of vapidity that always will be very, very, very proud of itself.

I am not going to rehash GamerGate or the War on Women or review the depressingly long list of women whom retrograde knuckle-walkers have tried to silence with rape and death threats. I am not going to list the long list of anti-women legislation proposed and passed. I will only sadly mention that 36% of Oregon voters voted that women should not have the same legal and civil rights as men. It is all sad and depressing, but, Katy Steinmetz, that is context.

Feminism is controversial because as women have become more economically independent and achieved a measure of parity in society, they are less susceptible to social and economic extortion to remain in bad relationships. Is a good relationship possible with a man who thinks women are second class citizens? That, Katy Steinmetz, is context.

Of course, Katy Steinmetz is not that important and she never will be. Though I imagine someday she will realize that she is paid significantly less than men in her same position – notoriously common in journalism. She may be angry, she might want to express that anger with a word. I wonder what word she will use?

Continue reading →

Designer Download — Bubbles Clawtooth

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DesignerDownload

Bubbles Clawtooth is an iconoclast – challenging us to think in new ways and to see the world through new eyes, not through his eyes, but through our own at a different angle of refraction. Clawtooth by Clawtooth is a beloved Second Life® brand, not only because of the originality and quality of his hair, but because of the ineffable wit and whimsy of everything from the designs to the color names. That fanciful joie de vivre is apparent in every response in this interview.

Bubbles Portrait by Nylon Pinkney

Bubbles Clawtooth by Nylon Pinkney

It’s Only Fashion: What was your first day in Second Life like? What made you stick it out through the learning curve?

Bubbles Clawtooth: Oh what a glorious day the first day of SL was! Bubbles wandered about aimlessly in a  misshapen female avatar, lost in a landscape of random sims “For Sale”, sex clubs, neko (remember them?!) and furr oriented sims. Second Life was a treasure trove of bizarre and wonderful things and Bubbles knew immediately he’d fit right in.

Any “oldbie” in Second Life knows that it wasn’t exactly the most user friendly years back. In fact, in cold reality Bubbles almost didn’t come back to Second Life *because* it was quite challenging to figure out. The thing that made the biggest difference was meeting wonderful people who were willing to share information and help get over that hump! Continue reading →

NPISL

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One of my favorite groups back “in the day” was Bettina Tizzy’s Not Possible in Real Life (NPiRL). Tizzy gloried in the freedom of Second Life® creation – unshackled from the laws of Euclid and Newton – free to create anything they could imagine. Of course, Second Life has its own laws that result in some things common in real life becoming Not Possible in Second Life. Something quite simple in real life can become very complicated, even impossible, in Second life. One of those things is fringe.
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Fringe is one of the fall’s hot fashion trends and promises to be an even hotter item in the spring. However, the physics of SL are not fringe-friendly. Of course, we could have flexi-fringe, but after two years of not having our clothes fall through our bodies, I think that is not the solution we want. We know from reports that flexi-mesh is not even under consideration right now. So I am excited to see Sunami Beck of Emery look for a work around. It’s not perfect, perfect is impossible, but it is a valiant effort that works pretty well overall. This fringe dress is a la page fashion – and it looks great. You can find it at Collabor88 with a bundle of coordinating loose sweaters like the on I am wearing.
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Friend or “Friend”

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Bizza’s Asymmetrical Jacket is fun, casual and goes perfectly with the Josie pants.The Josie pants come with a HUD offering three options for each pair of pants. The details on these pants are out of this world.

Most of our friends are not our friends; they are acquaintances, contacts, colleagues and associates. However, in social media, we lump the people on our mobilization phone trees together with those for whom we would give up a kidney. The act of reading each others timelines foster that sense of shared intimacy that is the hallmark of real friendship. The boundaries blur and sometimes we invest more emotionally in those who are merely ships passing by, mistaking acquaintanceship for friendship. More than one person has been devastated recently by opinions of “friends” they have mistaken for friends.

However true friendship requires more than knowing the name of my cat or my political persuasion. Friendship is an investment in trust and intimacy. We share our best selves with our “friends” and share our flaws with our friends. You know someone is your friend when you know you can safely confess some petty, spiteful thoughts and feeling, secure that your friendship will not falter. That is why the opinions of “friends” should be taken lightly. They know of us. They know about us. They do not know us.

Continue reading →

Give a Man a Fish

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There is a popular quote that says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Perhaps there should be an addendum. Give a man at fishing net and he can feed his family. Heifer International is all about not only teaching people to provide for themselves, but also giving them the means to get started. Depending on where they live, people in poverty are given anything from honeybees to water buffalo and launched into the business of not just feeding themselves, but making a living. In addition, they pledge to pass it on to another family, raising the standard of living for the entire community in time.

Every December, Maht Wuyts does his annual Mahrathon to raise money for Heifer. He DJs for 26.2 hours from The Velvet in Second Life and from a coffee shop in Chicago – a RL/SL event that raised $2500 last year.

Because it is happening in two worlds simultaneously, it is helpful to have a few hosts to help greet people and encourage contributions, so if anyone would like to volunteer to cover an hour or two as a host – encouraging friends to come join in the fun and greet people, please IM me in world.

And everyone, mark your calendars – so you don’t miss the fabulous Marathon. The music is great.