Second Style Magazine

You might’ve noticed the Jewelry Expo banner ad running on the Second Style websites for the last few weeks. Even if you haven’t, the expo officially kicks off tomorrow (September 15) and runs through the 22nd. The expo’s running on OnRez Orientation (128, 128).

There are over 90 vendors showing off their creations — and just like at Hair Fair, many vendors have set out some really great freebie items for you to pick up. In addition to grabbing some high quality freebies, you’ll want to play in the Expo treasure hunt, attend several designer-run events, and as always, just people watch (and gawk) as various shoppers make their way around the venue.

One of the other things that will be going on at Jewelry Expo is a fund raising effort for the American Cancer Society. There’s some donation collection stations set up around the island, but you’ll also want to check out the spectacular jewelry items housed in the Charity Auction Hall. My favorite piece here was by Jackal Ennui of Lassitude and Ennui, but there were so many beautiful creations to bid on — one will certainly catch your eye, I’m sure.

I really enjoyed my long tour around the sim — I was especially enchanted with the Juliette set by Earthtones Boutique, the Platinum Fantasy set at Purple Rose, the Antiqued Pearl necklace/earring set limited edition by Paper Couture (which will not be sold in the regular Paper Couture store once the Expo concludes), and Siyu Suen’s collection of incredibly intricate sculptie prim jewelry items. Unfortunately, not every booth had been set up, so I’ll have to make another trip to see what I missed.

Make sure you don’t miss the expo! It’s definitely worth the lag.

Haver Cole writes our “Style ____” feature each month and she’s always looking for stylish avatars to photograph and interview for Second Style. She asked me to post this message — and THREAT:

Listen people, every month I put a request for nominations for a style girl/guy/robot and NO ONE ever nominates people. My challenge to you is to think of the person you know with the most singular style voice and the most unique personality then tell me who they are (and possibly where they live so I can go peek in windows) Your av can be young or old, fat, thin, or even smelly. I just want you to have thought about what you wear and why you wear it. Have you ever gotten a compliment about how original your av looks or been told “I have never seen THAT before”? If you have then then I want you. Have you ever come across someone you take one look at and say, “Golly gee whiz, they look fabulous!”… nominate that person. My threat to you my beloved reader is that if I don’t get any nominations I am running the photo in this post… unchanged. IM Haver Cole in-world or email me at havercole@mac.com.

Don’t make us run Ruth as our style girl for next month.

In addition, Haver will be combing through the Reader Style submissions for candidates as well. So now Reader Style is a great way to nominate someone to be our Style Girl/Guy/Robot. She’ll continue to take regular ol’ nominations too.

In association with Shopping Cart Disco, we’re having our monthly inventory swap party this Friday, September 14 at noon and 6pm SLT. The inventory swap is your opportunity to clear out those transferrable inventory items that you just don’t want any more. (The last stop before they hit your trash can, most likely.) There’s no cost to give or receive. Just show up and start modeling what you want to give away. We promise not to mock you, much. We’ve had a lot of fun at these events over the summer and there’s been some really fabulous finds — especially some great “vintage” designs from Dazzle that just aren’t available anywhere. This swap party will be at Insula Inferi (186, 234, 611). Stop by and join us!

And there’s plenty more fashion events — you can always find out what fashion events are coming up by following the Second Style Style Calendar on the right sidebar of the blog. To get your event added to our calendar, simply IM Justine Babii or Celebrity Trollop with the “who, what, where, when” details.

On the “Fresh Faces” feature in Issue #11, we are showing off clothing by Delaney Whippet of Microphage. The article was written and photographed by Tuli Asturias. We will be correcting this error in the PDF version shortly. In the meantime, you can visit Macrophage at Seomna (109, 160, 46) — be sure to check out the awesome L$1 Microphage bikini/lingerie set Delaney put out last week. Second Style regrets the error.

Second Style #11 is now available in PDF from our website, or in world from our magazine kiosks. If you’d like to get a Second Style kiosk for your parcel, you can get one easily from the Second Style OnRez shop for L$0. Hope you enjoy it!

Here is the cover — hot off the InDesign document — of issue #11. I am so overwhelmed by our sexy, gorgeous, mysterious cover girl Solange Cerveau. The very first issue of Second Style, we had a reader write us an suggest that we work to cover the huge diversity of fashion in Second Life, including things like silks. It’s taken us a bit of time since that first issue, but in our stunning Arabian Nights photo spread in this issue, we’re going to show silks at their exotic sexy best. But that’s not even close to being everything in this issue — we have our Four Favs, Runway Review, and of course the Style Guru column by Isabella Sampaio. We also have a super cool pictorial showcasing designs that designers absolutely loved but the rest of us — well, not so much. It’s surprising and eye opening. All of that and much much more, coming in just a few more days.

Managing Editor Iris Ophelia is prominently featured in a lengthy article about Second Life (free registration may be required to see the article) in the business section of the New York Times. One of the themes in the story is that Second Life is all about acquisition — and being acquisitive is really the true force of social movement. I don’t really buy that (without really meaning to pun) — do you come into Second Life just to buy things? And if not, what do you come into Second Life again and again for?

We should have a Second Life lolkatz creation contest. Anyone like that idea? In the meantime, here are some sales which have already started or about to start.

Nessinger Loveless of TART Clothing, (Yarna 74, 71, 40) moved from her longtime spot on Oe to a new parcel with a new store build. To prepare for her upcoming clothing line releases, she’s discontinuing all of her current items at deep discounts: shoes, dresses, separates, and some of the best costumes in Second Life. Everything’s priced at L$100 or less and everything will be on sale through the end of September. You can also win a L$200 TART gift card by joining the update group — Ness is giving one away every day during this month. (Full details on a display inside the store.)

Puck Ida and AnneJoy Paine bring you a fantastic deal starting tomorrow, Sunday September 9 through Wednesday, September 12. Several dresses from the aDIVA collection will be priced at just L$99 — they’re regularly sold at L$400-L$800! After Wednesday these sale dresses will be retired to make way for the new autumn collection. Check it out at Full Moon Island 103, 77, 22.

Half-off at Hobo – bags and belts and other prim accessories. Hobo designer Kelly Bellman writes:

I’m closing down Hoho. RL has been so busy for me lately and is only going to get more busy. So, for a few days I’m going to have a sale. 50% off everything. Come grab up everything you want before I close it down. Thanks to everyone who has ever bought anything from my store. It’s been greatly appreciated.

The store’s at Phenlite 195, 191, 74.

Having a sale? Post it in the comments.

Miko “I Like to Make Things” Omegamu, Owner of ICING boutique, makes the perfect things to match my today’s mood. Over here it’s one of those late summer days, with plenty sun, and I am all in the summer mood again. These dresses are all extremely feminine. Such a coincidence that Hethr, over at Closet Crisis, has used the top of the Garden Party dress in an outfit today. Looking lovely Hethr, welcome back.

Anyway, 3 super sweet and girly dresses that recently caught my attention again. I love the nautical jeans look of On Deck (m). It has the sweetest halter top prim ribbon in the neck. So does Chanterelle (r) by the way with the funny mushroom design on the skirt. Garden Party (l), as stated by Ms Engel is indeed totally right for sipping tea on a lovely sunny afternoon with your friends in the garden. With cupcakes… iced cupcakes  of course.

The hair is ETD’s Marisela in smoke burnt, the skin is Tete à Pied’s Vivant Bronze Sultry 1. The shoes in are Shiny Things T-straps (revamped)

Seen in world: yes  ~ Review copies: no  ~ Friends list: no  

There is a flood of avatars swamping ETD Isle as I write this. Elikapeka Tiramisu, one of the most talented content creators in Second Life, has reopened her store after a lengthy hiatus that left many fashionistas scrambling for alternatives to their absolute favorite hair store in world.

Finally that wait is over as about an hour ago, Elika sent word that the sim was open for business. Within minutes wave after wave of grey avatar blobs descended on the store to check it all out for themselves.

There’s so much new – 21 new hairstyles, new hair textures, new clothing and an entire new store build which you can see here to the left. If you were quick enough to join Elika’s new Subscribe-O-Matic customer update system, then you’ve already received a full set of all the demo hair to try on in the comfort of your own hopefully much less laggy space inside of Second Life. And if you just can’t wait to see all of the newness, you can see all of the new goodies right here on Elika’s blog post.

One of my favorite features about Elika’s new store design is her front window displays (shown right above) which showcase one of her new hairstyles — Lannah — but also really ingeniously showcases the raw building blocks of her hairstyles — there are sculptures of tori in various states of distress, cut, twisted and twirled. I thought it was an especially clever artistic decoration.

But, beyond the brand new store and all the new hair, welcome back to Second Life, Elika. You’ve been missed by so many.

Visit ETD Isle via this SLURL, or look it up on your map: ETD Isle (128, 128).

I have more congratulations to offer — today I ran our magical random name picker from the reader survey and it gave me these lucky five avatars:

• Anastasia Ferdinand
• Nerissa Beck
• Montgomery Sunnyside
• Elisama Rodenberger
• LadyAyn Kaufman

Each of them won a L$1,000 cash prize. Thank you to everyone who participated. We will be running the results in a story inside of Second Style #12 – just in case you’re curious about who reads Second Style.

If you want another shot at winning one of our L$1,000 reader survey prizes, I just started another survey for Men’s Second Style which you can take at this site.

If you’re not reading Men’s Second Style, how will you know what to buy for your boyfriend?!

It’s been a busy week for Managing Editor Iris Ophelia and I as we sorted through all of the submissions for the first Second Style model pool. After a set of very challenging and difficult decisions we narrowed down the field to our mutual favorites over the long weekend and then held a series of callbacks where we gave each prospective finalist an outfit and asked her (or him) to accessorize it and pose in it. Based on that process and the results of the test photos we took of all our callbacks, we settled on this list of finalists to create the first Second Style model pool. Here’s our list of finalists in no particular order.

Anastacia Lusch, Anessa Stine, Aradia Dielli, Brunella Torok, Caliah Lyon, Cherie Parker, Dendre Benelli, Eclair Niven, Georgette Whitfield, Graciana McMillan, MensPocky Kumaki, Steve Hansen, Takeshi Kiama, Thora Charron, Violet Xingjian, Yenneffer Dielli, Zahara Rahja, Zoysia Legend

The models in our pool will be working on photo shoots for the magazine and also in the forthcoming Second Style fashion shows. (More details about those shows are in my publisher’s note in Issue #11.)

Congratulations to our finalists and thanks to every one of our beautiful contestant readers so very much for sharing your avatars with us.

Hello there, it’s Reader Style time again. This week’s pick is the Communist Chic from Melanie and Vivienne.  I like those coats. Bought one time ago before the female version of the spetnaz came out and have never managed to fit those prims properly… well maybe it is time to get me a new one and start all over.

From left to right…

Melanie:

Skin – =RaC=, Trisha
Hair – Cake, Romance
Eyes – simtropia, brown deep
Sunglasses – PrimOptics, Reban glasses
Sweater – Tres Blah, plain black sweater
Skirt – Ingenue, from the Joan outfit
Shoes – SF Design, red suede boots
Hat – Unknown Boutique (shimokitazawa sim), one star hat in grey
Tights – Blaze, black tights
Coat – D3volution, women’s Spetznaz charcoal coat

Vivienne:

Skin – Deviant Nation Vogue at Last Call
Hair – ETD Coreen, black chrome
Eyes – Nomine, indigo2
T-shirt – LC Designs
Pants – Bare Rose, from the Army Tank outfit
Shoes – Kangaroos Classics Flexgrip (freebie)
Glasses – NeaBan, Courtney glasses
Hat – D3volution, scratty green cap
Coat – D3volution; Soviet Army dirty khaki overcoat

Thanks for participating ladies. Next Reader Style in a forthnight. Keep those photos coming