Second Style Magazine

There’s been so many great casual dresses released lately, that I’m going to highlight some of my favorites. Let me start with Shai Delacroix’s fabulous new winter collection (the full collection for men and women is posted on her blog here). The Batucado dress is just one of three casual-ish dresses in the newest releases, but I think it’s my favorite because of the high waisted belt and the sweetheart neckline with the accent piping. It’s like a summery flashback at the start of winter — and that might reflect my mental mood, a little, but it is a great looking garment. (S: No, R: No, F: Yes)

Rosemary Galbraith continues to impress me with her new designs. As she notes on her forum post, this originally started out as a cardigan, but it turned into something else entirely, this completely cute 60s funkadelic polka dot dress which comes in red and black dots. Rosemary included a semi-sheer undershirt — as shown in the ad here — but I wore the dress without it and I think it actually looks better that way. Perhaps that is a telling indicator of my (lack of) modesty or something. Hey, I just write ‘em, you judge ‘em! (S: Yes, R: Yes, F: Yes)

Time to show off the work of another promising designer: Charlotte Morellet of ::Soda::. I had the chance to shop in her store for the first time last week, and who did I spot there but Tami McCoy! Charlotte’s made some extremely cute separates so far, and it’s nice to see her add a set of fun flexi swing dresses to the mix in her store. Everything I’ve bought from Soda has been a pleasure to show off, drawing comments and appreciation from my friends when I’ve been wearing it in world. I will definitely need to swing by and pick these up. (S: No, R: No, F: No)

Nicky Ree has been drawing some inspiration from James Bond movies, she writes in her blog, and that is part of the origin behind the Tangia series of clothing. Nicky designed the set using this really deliciously shiny Thai silk. I’m showing you the ad for the combo pant and dress set but there’s also a set of capris and bikini in the same wonderful colors and fabric. You will definitely look as hot as a Bond girl in Tangia. I sure did. (S: Yes, R: Yes, F: No)

Last but definitely not least is this brand new offering from Rebel Hope named Tess. Tess is another one of those super versatile collections that features a casual shorter skirt, and a longer cocktail length skirt, and even a floor length formal skirt so you can go from daytime to nighttime to holiday gala, and not even need to look for something to wear in another folder. Tess is done with a shiny bright sequin top and is available on Isla del Amor in six colors. (S: No, R: No, F: No)

When I saw these over at Nylon’s blog my mouth went directly into an “OMG” expression. I didn’t think you could make system dresses look so smashing!

Prim free, system mesh wedding gowns that look tremendously stunning, all with the visual flare and hand drawn goodness that Nylon packs into each creation. The wedding gowns of yesterday were not 10 yards of lace held together with a strapless bodice and a big poofy skirt. They were more classic, simple shapes detailed in a subtle but still tremendously beautiful way. Something in these exquisitely adorned designs just really grabbed a hold of me visually and although I have absolutely no use for a wedding gown in Second Life, I can’t stop myself from thinking, “Ya know, it just ought to be in my inventory!” There’s a third dress in this collection too which you can see at Nylon Outfitters on Tableau island.

Seen in world: No
Review copy: No
Friends list: No

Update [CT]: sachi’s released these skins — they’re now available for sale in Genesis. I’d highly recommend trying on a demo! They’re lovely.

I was pleasantly surprised a few days ago when I got a surprise drop from sachi Vixen of Adam-n-Eve. Back when sachi released her Pandora skin, I called it the best skin she’d ever made. Until now. In the first paragraph, I noted in parenthetically that sachi was also working on a second skin named Aphrodite — and that was what the surprise was all about. Aphrodite is almost ready for sale. sachi’s been collecting refinements and enhancement suggestions from a select group of beta testers. I asked for her permission to post these sneak preview photos, so keep in mind the final product will be even more improved than what I’m showing you today. (I know this because I have a “v2″ beta in my inventory, but no photos yet! But they’re coming…)

Read on if you’d like to see more photos (behind the cut because they’re potentially not work safe) and commentary.
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Canimal Zephyr set up some new forums over at PXP. They’re just getting started, but it’s a place to post new items, blab about your day or just vent. See you there!

I wanted to round up all of the beautiful creations that have been rotating top spot on my avatar’s head lately. Think of them as little cakes to devour while you wait to log back in… OK, first up is this ultra brand new release by Tami McCoy named “Alluring.” It’s a high curly gathered pony style with some killer bang work in the front. It’s “almost” an updo, but for the dangling strands on the bun. It comes in Tami’s normal 10 colors, and her “caboodle” packs which are 5 colors for the price of 4. Get it in Dixie sim. (S: No, R: No, F: No)

Next up is Sparkle Skye’s brand new entry in her “Princessa” line — Updo II — a gorgeously abundant braided bun, styled complete with hair jewels and some really tasty frosted tips. Princessa Updo II can be found in Sparkle’s store on ImagineNation island. It looks fabulous with Sparkle’s Milady gown. (S: Yes, R: Yes, F: No)

I happened to run into Aleri Darkes over at Sol Columbia’s Luminosity store a few nights ago where she was modelling her awesome short style named “Tempt.” I wore this successfully with everything from a ultra-brief silk to a full ball gown. I teased Aleri (gently and with good humor!) about needing more frosted and tipped hair textures. She promised she’s working on them — and she’s just started to master alpha on her hair textures. It’s a technique which has been put to excellent use in this hair style. Find it at Diversity Hair. (S: Yes, R: Yes, F: Yes)

Lost Thereian is killing me with his Angel line of hair — although if I were to die from prim hair, I’d be honored to shuffle off this mortal coil wearing this one. Here’s Angel III, the latest one. Tantalizingly, the name of this ad was actually “Angel IV” so maybe there’s a secret as-yet-unreleased Angel style still on Lost’s hard drive. Let’s all hope so! Naughty island has undergone a bit of a makeover, all in an attempt to rez things more quickly and make shopping a more pleasant experience. (Read more about it here) (S: Yes, R: No, F: No)

Finally, Six Kennedy has been super busy with “not hair” for a while — setting up a new blog, revamping the front table in her sim, and other things — I know she’s been fighting off a cold recently. But she still had time to work on several new hair styles and this one, Sass, is definitely one of my favorites. I’ve been wearing it a lot lately, putting it with denim, with knits and with semi-formals. It looks great with everything. (S: Yes, R: Yes, F: Yes)

I had this article all prepped and ready to post, but then CopyBot hit, and Camie shut down her store. So I wanted to wait until the store was reopened to post this.

These amazing denim prim skirts were released about two weeks ago, but I’ve heard nothing but raves about the incredible detail work that has gone into them. Wearing the skirt for myself, I can only add to every positive thing I’ve heard about these. One of the traditional drawbacks to using a prim to construct a true non-pleated mini is that the color matching is just slightly “off” the primary texture color, especially if the prim is not using an actual texture, but a system generated color.

With Camie’s design using a solid cylinder, though, there really isn’t much of a problem with that — and her decision to use a cylinder is a really innovative one, because most of the time designers choose to use a flattened box to fill in the gap in the mesh shorts.

Given the texture on the skirt, the way the prim fits the skirt and just how fantastic it looks, I’m ready to say I think it may be the best single prim skirt in Second Life right now. It’s that good.

Seen in world: Yes
Review copy: No
Friends list: No

In this photo: skin: Charmed (Tone 30, Glitter, silver #2) by Starley Thereian, Celestial Studios; hair: Angel II by Lost Thereian, Naughty Designs; Plaid (pink) by Charlotte Morellet, ::Soda::; skirt: Denim miniskirt by Camie Cooper, It’s All Good

Garbage Prototype and Six Kennedy just started up a fun new fashion blog called Appearance Mode. Other writers include fellow hair creator Mikayla Kohl, House of Paisley creator Paisley Poindexter, designer and rock star Callie Cline, Palomma Casanova of the Free Dove, and DJ diva Jellybean Madison. One of the best features of Appearance Mode is “fashion flashback” which is the SL equivalent of “Golden Oldies.” Older releases that are so damn cool and good that every fashionista ought to have them in her inventory. Have a look and enjoy!

There’s been a lot of surprises showing up in my inventory lately — pleasant ones to be certain, but unexpected nonetheless. Take for example, this brand new silk design by paeoti Pomeray of Nymphetamine Boutique.

It’s a new direction, an experiment if you will of what a designer flexing her creative muscle can achieve. I like to think of this design as a combination between the incomparable Devyn Grimm of Chaospire and paeoti’s own sense of what looks devastatingly sexy on a female avatar. This silk comes in red and black — and it’s kind of fun to mix the pieces up together if you get both colors. I also liked wearing this set without the skirt piece which covers the hips in this photo. In fact, paeoti was thinking about perhaps revising this outfit a bit with some modified skirt textures.

Finally, I wanted to show off Garbage Prototype’s new skins that he’s marketing in now in Gurlywood, under the Gurl6 brand. The skins are priced at L$500, and come as singletons or in fat packs for a deeply discounted price. Some of the things I liked on the skins were the makeups — especially “shooting star” and “crimson cat” (which what I’m wearing). The skins build off Garbage’s work with the Melanie skins he created about three or four months ago — there’s been a lot of refinements added to that skin line, especially around the bust and the abs.

Seen in world: Yes
Review copies: Yes
Friends list: Yes

In this photo: skin: Gurl6 (light, crimson cat makeup) by Garbage Prototype; hair: Angel II by Lost Thereian, Naughty Designs; silk by paeoti Pomeray, Nymphetamine

Update [CT]: I definitely wasn’t the only one who was excited to see Dazzle reopen. For about 20 minutes before midnight, a cluster of 15 or so hard core fashionistas and Dazzle junkies hovered around 75m (just above the sim ban lines) shouting to Ginny and Lyra, and chanting “WE WANT DAZZLE!”, holding signs. It was almost like a mob scene at a Filene’s Basement sale or something! The snapshot was from around 12:30 am — most of the limited editions were still available. I didn’t have a chance to log in this morning and look around, but if you haven’t ever been to Dazzle before — or you were asleep (like most sane people) — head on over and take a look at all of the holiday decorations.

If you missed out on that one LE — keep in mind there will be another drop of limited edition outfits December 1st. I hope that release time is a little more U.S. friendly. Otherwise it sure felt good to stroll around one of Second Life’s primiere fashion content creator’s store again.

In just about two and half hours from now (I’m writing at 9:30 pm SLT) the Dazzle sim reopens — midnight SLT — featuring 10 brand new limited edition outfits, 60 copies of each or, 600 total limited edition copies for sale. This is definitely one of my most anticipated events this month.

You can see some of the incredible LE designs in the first ad (featuring the first three LE outfits), and what I consider the crown jewel of this limited edition extravaganza: the Sought gown — and it certainly will be, I have no doubt! I was blessed to get a sneak peak and I truly think it may be the best Dazzle gown I’ve ever seen. It’s been run through Ginny’s secret post-processing software blend and it is truly incredibly stunning. No doubt you will be the elegant toast of any holiday formal. Heck, wear this one to grab your virtual groceries it’s so fabulous. You can see the other six LE designs on this post at the Dazzle blog.

But wait! That’s not all. The L$100 sale continues from November 17th until December 31st. All of the previous Dazzle inventory will continue to sell for L$100, but it is absolutely positively going away January 1st. As Ginny writes over on her blog: There is NO third farewell tour! After all, we’re not Cher!

And — as if that wasn’t enough news — there will be a second drop of 10 new winter and Christmas limited editions on December 1st. Plus, I am reliably informed that there are plans for a very special winter holiday themed collaboration between Ginny Talamasca and Starley Thereian. Stay tuned for an update on that soon!

Seen in world: Yes
Review copies: Yes
Friends list: Yes

UPDATE [CT]: HeatherDawn Cohen put a “Take a Copy” enabled magazine vendor at our HQ in Green (59, 97, 22) (or use this SLURL). If you’d like a new vendor, and one of us three (Josie, HeatherDawn or myself) isn’t in world, feel free to teleport over and get one. (Right click the vendor there, choose “More” and then “Take a Copy”)

Thanks!

Remember all of the problems we’ve had with our in world vendors? We’ve decided to try a new distribution system, and so we’ve redesigned the vendors using the Kiosk.net system by Sasun Steinbeck. Kiosk.net has delivered probably hundreds of thousands of notecards to new residents in the welcome areas, and now it will be serving in world copies of Second Style too.

If you have one of our old vendors, please delete it and IM me (Celebrity Trollop), HeatherDawn Cohen, or Josie Hamilton to get one of the new vendors. Unlike the old system, you just have to rez the new v4 vendor and it’s all ready to go — no initialization needed!

If you’re just looking for a copy of the magazine, you can get one in world from our in-world headquarters in Green, or you can download the PDF version from our website.

Bianca Darling on behalf of the Aspire Modelling Agency invites you to attend a fashion show featuring the creations of mcgeeb Gupta of Jolie Femme. The show will be held at Aspire’s headquarters in Plush Genesis.

Also, Aspire magazine’s second issue has just been released, and it features fashions and interviews with Storma Amarula of X2, among many others. I don’t think the PDF version has been released on their website, but you can get an in-world copy from the SLURL linked above.

The position of the editorial staff of Second Style has not changed since the last time this came up:

The editors of Second Style Magazine do not support or condone the use of any third party software to reuse or modify Second Life content whether for commercial or personal use unless explicit permission to do so from the original creator(s) has been given.

There is a lot of confusion about what the CopyBot is, and what it can and cannot do. The most succinct summary I’ve seen was posted by ChronoCloud Creggan on her blog. CopyBot can:

• copy fully textured objects attached to avatars in proximity
• copy fully textured objects in proximity

It cannot:

• copy any object contents, including scripts, animations, or sounds,
• copy clothing,
• copy shapes,
• copy textures (objects are textured but the CopyBot does not get the original textures)
• be “deleted” from the SL database because it is an external program which logs in to Second Life just like the normal viewer we all use today,
• be permanently coded in such a way to respect SL permissions (such as “no copy” “no transfer”)

Additional details and some countermeasures (like turning off object creation on your land parcel) are also available for you to read if you want more information.

The last 1,000 comments on the Official Second Life blog have spanned the range of emotions and opinions about this technology. But the most interesting thread about CopyBot and how fashion content creators feel about the IP issues it raises can be found on this PXP post. There are two replies to this post that I want to highlight because I think they eloquently summarize both the emotional and business cost that these IP issues are provoking in content creators. Read them and more commentary below the fold.

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