Tag Archives: Mandala

The World in a Bottle

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One of the reasons I love the jewelry at Balderdash so much is that when you zoom in on it, you can find whole new worlds. Take this Bit of Earth Necklace which is lovely and attractive from a distance, but when seen in detail, reveals so much more than you would suppose. Whether you’re zooming in on a pair of earrings and finding some words from a book or tiny shamrocks, the true revelation of Balderdash jewelry is in the fine details. I showed this to a real life friend who was in awe and perhaps, for the first time, really understood the appeal of Second Life fashions. I wore the jewelry with what seems a relatively casual, everyday outfit. Which is what I thought myself, until…
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1966

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Shot with Mechanized Life's Filter Cam and Expansion Pack

Rock Per Annum moves forward another year to 1966. 1966 was a year of contrasts. The Vietnam War continued to polarize people, largely along generational lines. Star Trek made its debut, as did the Monkees. The Black Panthers were formed, and the first Toyota Corolla was sold. More importantly for our purposes, this was a year in which the notion of an album really started to be much more than just an assortment of material packaged around a couple of singles. Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde, and Revolver made a strong case for the pop album as an art form of its own. The Velvet Musicologist Maht Wuyts will be ending the set tonight by playing Revolver in its entirety. His plan is that most weeks moving forward, he will end the night with an important album from the year in question. The set begins at 7 PM SLT tonight at The Velvet. Be there or be square. (I wonder if that phrase began in 1966?)

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There was a lot of diversity in fashion in 1966. Hemlines were up, down and all around at the beginning of the year but by fall, were pretty firmly above the knee, though you wouuld often see a long coat paired with a mini-dress. The waist was gone forever, lost in a world of aline shifts and babydolls. There was a lot of experimentation with fabric. It was the year of the paper dress and of Paco Rabanne’s plastic and wire dresses. Yes, plastic a full 45 years before Josh McKKinley thought he discovered something new on Project Runway. Most women still wore cloth, however, and it often was a bright, bold print from textile designers like Emilio Pucci and Ken Scott. This dress from Subculture by Shauna Vella is a perfect example of the 1966 look.
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1965

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1965 was a strange year in fashion with the advent of bell-bottoms and granny dresses, one-shouldered sari dresses and metallic catsuits, flowing paisleys and the Mondrian dress. It was also the year of Edie Sedgwick, declared the “It Girl” by Vogue. Sedgwick was a fashion original with a free and rebellious style. She wore tights with nearly everything and added huge chandelier earrings, heavy eyeliner and a casual short moptop cut. She has an ease and freedom to her that made her captivating in photos. How perfect, then, is this Sedgwick dress from Ingenue for Collabor88.
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Exquisite

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A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Can pixel dust be a joy forever? I think so. I think you will find moments of breathtaking beauty that can linger in memory forever. I had such a moment while on the swing at Humanoid, the installation on Gilmour sim. I jumped on the swing and when I zoomed in and out – the perspective change was dizzying. Zooming in, the flexis in my hair blew in the breeze and my skirt seemed to pool around me. It was hard to stop and actually take some photos.

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I knew I wanted to find some place extraordinary for this dress from Ephemera. The skirt textures are so beautiful and the entire dress just made me feel like a princess in a fairy tale. I needed a fairy tale setting and I found one. Funny story, I have seen photos that said they were taken at Humanoid and decided to go explore long ago. However, I went to Humanoid, the sim, not the installation. They are very different. The sim is the giant mo-cap store and is quite distinctive with its red-grid terrain, but it has a very utilitarian, modern mood without any of the soft, dreamlike romanticism of the installation.
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Valedictory

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Back in my infancy when I graduated from high school and thought I knew everything, I gave the valedictory speech at graduation. My title was “You get from life what you put into it.” How smug that sounds to me today. The lessons of time and experience have taught me that life is much more random that that. The course of your life is not determined by hard work and will alone, but by hard work, will combined with health, luck (good or bad) and sheer randomness. You can control some factors, but not all of them and even with the best of control of your own efforts, you can’t control others. We all like to take credit for our successes and blame outside forces for failures. That’s human nature. There is, however, one way that we still have control and it’s in how we react. Are we positive or negative? Do we try for more kindness in our actions and less bitterness? Our attitude to the randomness of life plays a major role in how we get along and move along in the world, so I guess that old speech wasn’t so bad after all.

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Gretchen and Teddy

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Here I am heading out for a short foray of exploration. I brought along a tote bag in case I picked up some eggs, wheat or butterfly milk along the way. I noticed in the Destination Guide that there was a new exhibit from Bryn Oh and you know as well as I do that they are not to be missed. I wanted to look really chic since there’s usually a few people watchers so I tossed on this lovely outfit from Jador. It’s a gorgeous fall skirt suit and the work on it is really great. Look how beautifully the plaid matches up at the seam. The creator provided an alpha mask for the breasts so you needed spend a lot of time fitting if you don’t mind your breast size determined by the outfit – though with a jacket, the bust always seems flatter the more you layer in any world.

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It's a Matter of Perspective

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I was getting read to shoot this outfit when Gidge and I went shopping. After a bit of a spree, we headed over to Collabor88. Now I thought I had put together a pretty good outfit, but I had that affirmed with a massive compliment when out of the blue a total stranger asked if she could shoot my look for her blog. Of course I said yes! I still hadn’t settled on earrings yet, but I was close to done.

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There's a New Sim in Town

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There’s a new sim that calls out to the inner child to come and play. I ran over there to shoot some pictures and was entranced by the whimsical creatures and definitely wanted to wear something that was playful and fun. I remembered this outfit from Magoa at Modavia Fashion Week. Magoa’s Fashion Week collection is not for the faint of heart. There’s a dress made of eyeballs! But it is the collection for our inner Gaga and something tells me this sim is as well.

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Intrepid explorer that I am, I fell in the lake where I found floating tomato slices among the fish. I certainly fit in with my bright and cheerful skirt and top and the Ferris wheel headpiece.

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Hey, can I borrow your store for a minute?

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I have been frantically updating the blogroll. You see it over there on the right? It’s so much shorter now because I have shifted the links to Blogging Second Life, a companion site to It’s Only Fashion. This will make our blog load more quickly while still making sure all the links are available if you need them. It also allows me to provide more useful information, such as the name behind the blog, the store, and marketplace links. If I knew how to integrate two themes on one site, I would have kept it right here, but that’s above my pay grade. I hope you check it out and add missing information in the comments there.

While working on this project, more than once I came upon a store blog that required an in-world visit to complete the information. One such was MMGrafitti’s store blog. It’s possible all the information is on his blog, but it’s in Japanese and even Google Translate cannot answer every question.  I am happy I checked it out, though, because it was such a fun home and decor store that I had to shoot some pictures there. Seriously, when it’s time to shoot some photos in the snow, I am definitely taking pictures at the snow cabin. It has footprints in the snow on the porch!!!

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The weather has turned colder in real life and that has me reaching for warmth in Second Life. How silly is that? Still, any excuse to wear this marvelous fur from Baiastice. Sissy Pessoa has release two new jackets in four different furs. This is the short black fur and while she may have squeezed and skinned some pixels, no animals were harmed. I am wearing it over a magnificent blue python dress from R.icielli released for Modavia Fashion Week. I love the blue color and its overall look and don’t mind the seams not lining up as it makes it seem like python skin rather than a python-print fabric. The dress comes with shoes and earrings and that magnificent belt.

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An Investment Dress

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The Shimmy Dress from ICING is one of those wardrobe foundations that you can build a wardrobe around. It has all the hallmarks of an investment dress – a classic silhouette that is never out of style, multiple layer options to coordinate with other clothing, colors that work in every season, and quality construction that is deceptively simple. These are qualities that make a dress take on a different mood as its styled with different accessories.

This is the dress for the quick change artist in you. In this post I will show you how easy it is to take a good investment dress and make several looks from high fashion to funky bohemian to vintage classic, all with a few accessory changes. Don’t for a second think this was all, either. I had several other possibilities in mind, but thought five was more than enough to make the case for this investment dress.  There are many investment pieces out there. While not making it an official “challenge” I would love to see what ideas you have for investment purchases that build a versatile wardrobe.

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