Second Style Magazine

Usually it’s Ginny Talamasca who makes my jaw drop open in awe at something she’s created, but last night, it was the superbly talented and creative Jackal Ennui of Lassitude & Ennui. She released four new items yesterday: sandals in two heel heights, a “Love Conquers All” bracelet, and a truly beautiful set of geometric themed jewelry named Rydra.

Like Jackal’s other shoes and boots, the sandals come in numerous colors and patterns — something sure to suit your color palette. But just take a look at the details: richly textured, with an astounding eye for pleasing symmetry and simplicity. The sandals are graceful, elegant and sophisticated — and I am so loving the T-strap top. With your choice of heel height, you can keep it casual or go all out for something dressy and upscale.

Rydra is a delicious set of jewelry which carries kind of an Arts and Crafts-ish design vibe to it, again Jackal shows off her great sense for symmetry and simplicity in this set. It’s available in three base metals: silver, gold and black, and a multitude of stone colors. Since these are transfer OK, they’d make a fantastic gift too.

You can see all of the new sandals and jewlery at Lassitude & Ennui in Deneb.

Zoey Pinkdot showed me a sneaky-peak preview of her new Sparkle outfit a couple days ago. I loved it then, and I still love it now. Zoey’s been making some great looking tattoo sets for a while and finally got back to crafting three more clothing designs. Sparkle isn’t exactly “demure” but it is just the thing for grabbing attention. I also wanted to highlight the shoes Zoey’s wearing in the ads — those are brand new too, Diamond Strap heels — don’t they look fabulous? (Shown in black, Zoey’s wearing the white edition in her ad.) They come in a rainbow of other colors too. It’s virtually assured there’s one to match any outfit. Stop by Digital Dragon Designs in Keundott to see everything — there’s new sunglasses, two sweet loop belts and a whole other set of new shoes!

Cream colored cami-dress with lots of black lacy accents and big prim belt — got you covered with Delia, a brand new release by Ginny Talamasca. The prim belt here sneaks off the runway and into your inventory — Ginny’s packaged it up to have three different attach points (spine, pelvis, or stomach) so that you can move wear where you like it best. You could also take the belt and sneak it into other outfits where you just want to pull some extra attention to your waistline. Get it at Dazzle in Innamoramento.

This outfit, part of three new outfits released by Janie Marlowe has sexy tattooed on its forehead. There’s not much here from a “fabric and coverage” point of view, but from a construction and execution perspective, this is quite a lovely garment — look at the way the highlighting is baked around the bust, and the extra tone-on-tone pleat details in the skirting. It’s really great, sophisticated texturing on a super skimpy, super sexy outfit. Find it at Mischief in Illusion.

I doubt many (straight) men would be willing to wear a cropped polo and a pair of high cut denim shorts, but continuing with a theme I raised in my post about Zabitan Assia’s designs, men’s wear on women is a hot trend and I expect to see more and more men’s wear design details coming into play in RL fashion — as a consequence, I think there will be more of it mirrored into SL as well — a trend which I am quite happy about, because I think it exudes an aura of power and sophistication, and with the right accessories still can look very feminine and pretty. So here’s Lexi Morgan’s brand new design Relaxed, which comes with cropped mens-wearish polos and some really nice looking destroyed denim shortie shorts. Find it at Stellar Designs in Furu.

Bump I decided to pull this post “from the vault” in honor of Zabitan Assia’s Designer of the Month feature at PXP. It’s a great interview and Zabitan is a very talented designer. As I wrote below, his designs are focused on men’s wear, but normally it looks great on women too.

Just coincidence last night that I happened to meet Zabitan Assia, the designer of :FORM: menswear. Normally, I don’t cover men’s wear, but when I met Zabitan last night he was wearing the shirt (on the jacket layer) that I’m modelling in the photo below. (Except mine is modded to show off the belly tats. ) As you can see, I think most of the things in Zabitan’s stores look just as great on a female avie as a male avie. So I decided to post his new polo shirt (that pattern on the back is just delicious gothy goodness) and use that as a spring board for talking about taking men’s wear and modding it to make it a little more girly girl.

Now it’s true that unmodified, the shirt I’m wearing below looks great on female avies. But with a little tweaking, you can take it and make it your own — and maybe highlight some stuff underneath like all those hot tats you painstakingly collected from all over Second Life.

Modifying clothes is pretty easy. All you do is enter your appearance screen, and click on the tab of the clothing layer you want to modify. For the Yeehaw shirt (on the jacket layer) I chose “jacket” and then I just adjusted the slider for “jacket length” to 50. And in the :FORM: 505 jeans, I changed the pants length to 60, crotch baggyness to 0 (girls with baggy crotches just look bizarre — like, “Is that salami in your pants or…”), and the waist length to 0 to show off the (very) low tummy tats.

So, all in all, it’s both fun and sexy to raid the men’s wear lines at places like :FORM:. That’s why even though I don’t follow men’s fashions too much, I keep checking in with Zealot Benmergui’s column The Man Factory. I’m just never sure when something he features will strike me as something I simply must have in my own wardrobe. Even if it’s a bit girlier than it originally started.

Do your own men’s wear closet raid by visiting :FORM: in EXPOSé.

In this photo: Skin: Love 04 (with suicide girl tats impressed) by Canimal Zephyr; Eyes: Fetish (DkBlueScope) by Canimal Zephyr; Belly and right leg tattoo: Rebirth by Laylah Mistral, Flrefly Ink and Studios; Hair: Vivacious (dirty burnt) by Elikapeka Tiramisu, ETD; Earrings: Crescent Moon chandeliers by Koge Cleaver, { JUNK }; Shirt: Yeehaw Shirt by Zabitan Assia, :FORM:; Jeans: 505 Jeans by Zabitan Assia, :FORM:; Shoes: Libertine (sable) by Lyra Muse, Papillionerie

Astrid Ophelia tipped me off to KK Outfitters, the store where you can find these incredibly detailed Chuck Taylor high tops. They come in about 15 different colors and patterns (Astrid was wearing the “B&W Camo” pattern.) What I especially liked about them was that they weren’t big and bulky like many other high top prim shoes. I thought they are especially suited for smaller ladies’ feet. (You don’t have to feel like you’re preparing to waterski or something.) They’re L$200 for a pair and they really do give you a lot of authentic “skate or die” street cred — if that’s the style you’re trying to pull off. There’s — of course — a larger pair that is suited for men’s feet too, if your guy has been looking for a pair of “normal guy shoes.” These might be the ones. Find KK Outfitters in Modesta.

When I saw this posted on in the new products – animation forum this morning, I thought, “It’s perfect for Elika!” who often roams her island kicking griefer butt armed to the teeth. But then I thought, “No, pink neko ninja Lur Sachs needs one too.” Her partner, Sol Columbia introduced me to the joys of ruthlessly chopping your opponent into so much fresh meat with scripted katanas (like at the House of Blades — did you know it has a blog? It does! Just found out today.) Anyway, if you need to do some kung fu fighting — stylishly, of course!! — I think this might just be the perfect product. Find it in Rutz.

I have two favorite “go-to” pairs of blue jeans in SL. One is Nyte Caligari’s Shred jeans, and the other is DoC Eldritch’s super snug fitting DE Red Tab jeans. So when DoC spins up new denim pieces, I can’t wait to try them on. Here’s Venus, the very latest release in his Vye line. The patch jeans are snug fitting with a low waist, come in three different washes and sport a painted on scarf belt. They’re paired up with a set of frilly embroidered tops in four colors which gives a lot of mix and match options. (I think I’d take these tops and put them with the awesome denim mini skirts from Elephant Outfitters or Dazzle.) By the way, if you haven’t been over to shop at DoC’s new island store DE Designs Island, definitely go have a look. It’s really nice.

Ciera Bergman zapped me an IM this morning pointing out this new release at her store. Named Flora, it comes in 5 colors, but I just loved this crisp, fresh looking white/black combination. It’s got a wrap top and some super flirty scalloped hem line detailing. Check out the funny post on Ciera’s blog about making this outfit a little punk. Shop for it at Vitamin Ci in Extraordinaire

I had the chance to catch up with Nicky Ree at the RFL auction site and as usual I asked, “What’s next for your designs?” She passed me a copy of this dress, and said, “This!” Sonata Dream comes in five colors, fuschia (shown), black, blue, green and yellow. It’s got oodles of skirt options, but the detail that I really liked the best was the drapey, flowing back. It’s just gorgeous — and in SL you spend a LOT of time looking at the rear of your avatar, so it might as well be especially appealing. Stop by Nicky’s main store located in Plush Lambda.

That’s like hitting a design jackpot. Have a look at these new earrings by Cami Paperdoll. For just L$70, you get both pairs: white with gold wire, and black with silver wire. They’re not ornate 100+ primmonsters, but they look really great and are versatile enough to wear with casual outfits or something way more dressy. And I always appreciate getting both metal color options in the same package (though I typically lean toward silver/platinum for myself when I must make a choice.) You can find these at Cami’s display inside of Camie Cooper’s (BTW, welcome back Camie Cooper!! Yay!) store “It’s All Good” in Naedam.