Self Portrait of Leyla Flux 2015

KoKoLoReS Skyler for Hair Fair 2015

It’s Only Fashion: What’s the craziest thing you ever did in Second Life? Most exciting? Silliest? Is there a story you can share that captures your Second Life experience? 

Leyla Flux: Actually, I don’t think I ever did something really crazy in SL. I came here in 2009 for the premiere of my Machinima movie “Saving Grace” at the Machiniplex theatre, which was run by Sol Bartz, better known as Phil Overman Rice in the machinima world. My film was not a Second Life movie but made using the program Moviestorm and footage taken in the game X³ Terran Conflict, and I was asked to do an interview with Overman and the interested viewers at the venue. That was in February 2009. So I stood in front of the audience, knowing next to nothing about SL, in my noobie avatar. It was fun, and frightening at the same time!

Later that year, my film was shown at the Machinima Expo, by then I was already infected with the SL bug and looked much more stylish than in February. If you’re interested, you can watch “Saving Grace” on Vimeo, I’m still very proud of it and sometimes sad about moving away from making machinima, but it just happened. And yes, that time might have been the craziest I had in SL!

KoKoLoReS Silence with Glam Affair Skin, Adam & Eve Makeup, Zaara Earrings.

IOF: What drew you to designing hair? When did you start? What are some of the changes that were most significant for you?

LF: Once I found my feet in SL (with the help of Riott Viking and Lainy Voom, both machinimators and creators), I knew I wanted to make things. I started out with system layer clothes, built prim houses. Riott (she did skins) and I had a shop together, and it was going nicely. Then mesh came, everything changed, and I realised that if I wanted to create still, I needed to learn mesh. I admit I was pretty daunted by the idea (I never learned making my own sculpties), so Riott and I decided to give up our store. For a time, my blog was my only creative outlet, then I started to itch for doing something creative again and learned making poses, and finally dabbled in blender. I did tons of Youtube tutorials (thank you, Youtube!) and as I’ve always loved hair, I pretty soon was sure that I wanted to make hair. Cyclic Gearz helped me a lot – if you need blender lessons, she’s great! And around April 2014, I released my first hair.

KoKoLoReS Lilibeth

IOF: How did you choose your store name? Does it have a special meaning for you?

LF: I’ve always loved the word “Kokolores”. To me, it’s nonsense in a positve sense, fun, light, entertaining, creative, colourful.

IOF: What is the most challenging part of being a creator in Second Life? What is most rewarding? 

LF: I strive to get better with everything I do, and I’m a perfectionist. Sometimes the real challenge is to let something go! And a big challenge also is that you’re not only a creator, but your own marketing force, too. So much depends on how you market your stuff. A picture can make or break an item. Packaging, making colour huds, doing marketplace all takes up so much time, time I’d rather spend making more hair!
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