In less than four hours, Fashion For Life will be closing until next year. The vendors will be picked up and the sims will be dismantled and it will all go away, these beautiful builds such as this one that are all part of a monumental annual effort to raise funds in the hope of finding cures for cancer. Cancer is such a tricky bastard; it needs more than one cure. But the cures are possible; they can be found and it will take our concerted effort to find them.
I am going to see Cocorosie in a couple of weeks here in LA and as the date draws near I find myself wanting to blog extravagant outfits. I found such an outfit at House Of Rage. I’m all about the sparklies and feathers…which is strange because my avatar is not a girly girl. She is feminine though, I just tend to love dark colors.
I met Alicia Chenaux on Plurk, though I had read her blog for a long time before that. I should say blogs since she has a fun journaling blog where she chronicles her Second Life adventures as well as her fashion blog. I first began paying attention to her blog when she began her 365 Project which was such a huge commitment. I don’t know if I would commit to blog for a full year even after blogging for four years. For me, it’s so much easier to do something than to say I will do something, because then I really have to. I admire people who have the will to make that kind of commitment up front. I also admire the kind of openness and vulnerability that journaling blogs require. It, too, requires a commitment beyond what I would do.
I was looking forward to seeing Alicia’s outfit because she’s a former model and I knew that work history would translate into an impeccable outfit that was perfectly fitted. And I was right from every Elikatira hair on her head to the GField shoes on her feet, everything is perfectly fitted. Her outfit seemed perfect for sightseeing and wandering the streets in the fashionable city of Venice which you can find on the Prada sim. I could see her modeling skills at work as she positioned herself on the dock by the gondolas while I was flailing around in the river after falling off the dock a few times. In fact, I had to run inside one of the stores and dry off while she patiently waited.
I bet you thought I was going to mention Vintage Fair, didn’t you? Well, you are mostly right, but there is that old traditional song that has been revitalized and covered by everyone and their sister. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anyone “gonna buy me a diamond ring” right soon, so turn that soundtrack down in the back. Yes, I admit it, I am going to slather and drool all over the Vintage Fair, but I think that’s okay, I slather and drool over vintage all the time and this is the first exposition of vintage designs I can recall. One of the wonders I found at the Fair is this sweet and lovely day dress from Paper Doll. Yellow is such a tricky color, but I do love this pale lemon that is just about the shade of washed butter or shaved lemon ice. It’s such a delectable color it makes me think of yummy foods, I notice. I will confess that my avatar build is not even close to the build this dress was made for, but it’s modifiable and with plenty of stretching I finally got it big enough to go around my waist. As you can see, once fitted, it looks good in many positions.
Autumn flower rhyme filtered through my mind
But I wouldn’t begin to explain without help from a song
And the moon and the sun
Sometimes the wind that blows through life
Can stir up the darkness and pain
Oh I’ve been blown to the right and the left of the light
It’s the wind but I still feel to blame
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I love many things about this dress from bubble that’s on sale at the Chic Limited Cherry Blossoms event, though it began as a babydoll before I lowered the skirt to my waist. I am never a big fan of babydoll dresses and often try that, but it doesn’t always work as well as it did with this dress. As you can see, this dress comes with a band that anchors the skirt so just increasing its size a bit made it look very natural at the natural waist. This lets me really enjoy the wonderful sense of playfulness in the dress design. I love how the fabric choices almost suggest a wall treatment with the more subdued black on black pattern meeting the vertical stripe pattern “wainscoting” and the cherry blossom border print “chair rail.” It’s cute and clever and makes a gorgeous dress.
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I wonder how often folks do this. I went to G. Field to pick up one or two of the darling new spring blouses that we have all been seeing on the feed. Everyone looks so cute and adorable and the multiplicity of posts just shows how wonderfully flexible the tops are. So off I go and the store is full and I am waiting for things to rez and the first thing to rez is the vendor photo for this blouse set – an entire top wardrobe in one as it comes with sleeveless, short sleeve and long sleeve options. It’s a classic blouse style with the maximum flexibility for shoppers who want the most for their lindens. I could not resist. And could you? My inventory would be so much neater and smaller if it were not for the wonderful somethings I have found on my way to find something else.
Hart Larsson from PXL Creations has made a lovely skin for black avatars. One of my real-life friends that I brought into Second Life is African-American and has lamented the state of black skins in Second Life many, many times. It’s not that black skins don’t exist or that no effort was made to create beautiful skin. She described it as the skin having the wrong undertone so that it looks flat. She also said it was often too light or too gray. When Hart sent me a bundle of promotional copies of this new Efe skin I tried them out and think they are what she was looking for. If she weren’t pregnant and a few days overdue I bet she would be camping outside his store waiting for their release.
Normally I would not wear a black skin because putting on a skin does not bring with it the experience and culture that it projects. A white person role-playing a black person could easily transgress with inappropriate stereotypes, cultural appropriation and even blatantly racist role-playing. I think nearly all of us have seen this happening in SL with some of the “gangsta” avatars. However, I did want to highlight this fabulous skin and shot it in a few outfits inside my photosphere.
My friend Miffy (Miffyhoi Rosca) has been making clothes a little over a year now. I have spent hours sitting on her Electro-Kitty pig watching while she concocts one of those outrageous belts with filled with different kinds of candy or cigarettes or looped together a prim skirt and admired her sure and confident whipping of prims into shape. Her style is youthful and fun and just keeps getting better. Once or twice a week she drops her newest and latest on me to check out. Lately, though, her style is branching out into more colors and I am finding it much more appealing for me personally. Take this lovely red dress.
More than one person has called me a pixel prude so imagine my surprise at myself when I opened a review box sent by a new designer with a new store (Jordanna Magic of Magic Kisses) and found myself most drawn to an extremely racy lingerie set. Totally not my style – but there was something about it that I liked. Continue reading