November 8th will be another great day in the Swedish multinational clothing retailer Hennes & Mauritz. Following designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Victor & Rolf, now Roberto Cavalli is about to launch a special designer collection for this company. On a newsfeed earlier today I read that during a launch party in Rome, Sharon Stone has mentioned how wonderful the clothes look and what a master Cavalli is in combining chic and sexy.
When a few weeks ago I saw above campaign shot (by Terry Richardson), mise en scène during an actual party at Cavalli’s Tuscan Mansion I could not help but notice how similar the clothes are to things I already own in Second Life. Lets take a closer look for comparison.
The hotpants and white top outfit in the middle of the photo (next to Mr. Cavalli, who, and I never noticed this before, has a total Eric Forrester look in this photo… part of the campaign looks? *shivers): The top is Veschi Shwank Snow top by Alla Ruff, the scarf belongs to the Shwank outfit. The little black bow is the Sabra black satin bow from Roberta Beauchamp’s Love.Love.Love. The hotpants are Cashmere’s Risque by Gianni Broda (pants and jacket layer). The tights are Blaze’s and the shoes are by Tesla Miles from Tesla, who makes some of the best scultped shoes in SL. The skin is Tête à Pied’s Biba by CJ Carnot and Roslin Petion and the hair is Elika Tiramisu for ETD, Willow in smoke blackened.
The skinny armed cheerleader in the back wears a downright copy of Shai Delacroix’ Giraffe Fever dress, that I paired with Curio’s Rita Groshomme sleek bob hair in black because of the glossy texture, Lucas Lameth’s Earthtones Boho Giraffe earrings, and Boho gypsy necklace as well as Polyester Partidge’s Natural bangle at Yummy. The shoes are Maitreya’s Grace in black. Thank you Onyx Leshelle for these strappy divine shoes. The skin is Joannah Carter’s for Pixel Deep, Fit Dark Raven in grey-blue.
That Cavalli can be quite cheap too is not only proven by the fact that he made a retail collection for H&M, but also by the fact that he shamelessly shopped for inspiration at Pixeldolls and obviously up Nephilaine’s lovely freebie dress Celeste: the little gold number. The shoulder straps, the bodice…. even the skirt’s fringes… it is almost identical (as far as possible, considering the limits of fabrics ;-P). To achieve the blonde predator look I dug up the discontinued Tête à Pied Février skin in bronzage light and, I admit, I bought myself the dirty blonde Cora hair at ETD. It is about the only thing I bought for this post. The shoes are the gold T-straps revamped from Fallingwater Cellardoor at Shiny Things, the clutch is one of CJ Carnot’s classics at Tête à Pied of which I think he should do more.
I wanted to post this immediately when I saw the publicity photo and recognised the outfits in my inventory, but then RL got in the way and it became an… i’ll do it later project. But when a reader posted a comment in the “Measuring With Different Standards” entry about SL clothes makers lacking designs skills, I made it a priority again. Because even if they are not likely to execute their designs in RL the way Mr Cavalli and his team do, the latter is not likely to be able to make the same wonderful textures and his designs a pleasure to wear in SL. The designs though are really pretty much the same.
Anyway… as you may have noticed, I did not ALL the outfits on the photo. In case of the little leopard babydoll to the right, I do have Camie Cooper’s version of it, but not the snow leopard one and that would be better. The lovely black gold empire gown is an item I don’t have, and do not immediately get an idea who might have such a design. Same goes for the leopard dress in the back. So what I would challenge you to do is to make the missing outfits or improve the ones I did already and post them on Reader Style. There are only a few rules. Clothes you use for it must be available in Second Life already, and you should not make (big) changes to them in post editing. I will post the best outfits in an extra Reader Style post. It is not a contest, just a small pat on the shoulders of the many designers who are always being told that they look too much to RL for their inspiration. Well it sure looks like RL is starting to look at SL for inspiration too 
/me dreams on
Back in April I wrote about Adam ‘n Eve Pandora skin and that it didn’t exactly look great on my avie, although I was swept off my feet with the over all quality of the skins. Yesterday I saw the lovely Tigerlily Koi modeling the new Pandora skin range on the Adam ‘n Eve blog, and I sent a message to Sachi Vixen to compliment her with what is yet another stunning example of how skilled a skinner she is. She sent me a few examples and to my big, big surprise, this great skin that used not to fit my shape looked lovely on me this time. I asked Sachi whether she had made snall changes to the shape of the mouth, but the only tweaking she did is in the eyes and some minor details on the body. It took me a while before I remembered that it was me who in the meantime has been doing a bit of tweaking. Anyway… I still look like me in the skins I mostly wear, but I have to correct my previous statement that Pandora does not work well with my avatar.
