Second Style Magazine

Diversity Hair is having a NATURAL PACK SALE !!!!! All Styles (excluding those in the reduced section of store as they are already reduced )  From now until midnight 31st October 2007 all full priced atural Packs in Mens and Womens Styles are 50% OFF ( 150L) ….all demos in the store are free as usual so get your fashionable feet running to Aleri’s shop. She also has several new styles out that are included in this amazing sale too. This is so my thing.. I don’t care for pink or blue hair, but natural packs.. I love them. /me runs off

Happy Wednesday! It’s time for another roundup of the latest and greatest over at SLShopper.com. As more and more people are discovering the site, I’m having a harder time picking my favorites. Which is fine by me, I love a challenge!

First up this week is an entire collection called College Bound by Total Betty. Honestly when I saw this I was overwhelmed by all the options. Be prepared to spend some time when you visit her shop picking out your favorite pieces and colors, and pick up several different pieces for mixing and matching fun.
Seen in World:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

So last week I let out that I liked the hooded items, and this week what appears on SLShopper.com but this gorgeous Hooded Jacket from sf designs. I simply adore the flexi fur on the collar and cuffs of this jacket. Plus the jacket itself comes in a zipped up version, and a slightly less modest partially unzipped one. As if that isn’t enough, it also comes with the mini skirt shown in the picture.
Seen in World:Yes Review Copy:Yes Friends List:No

Dakota Buck at Savvy? strikes again with more additions to her Feel Rich line. This outfit is called Ghosts Are and continues with the same dark rich feel as the rest of her collection. The sexy sheer top just barely covers you up but still manages to look modest in this outfit. I also love the detail of the prim belt that comes with it. Like the outfit but prefer pants? Check out her companion set Good Company. (How can you not love the names?)
Seen in World:Yes Review Copy:Yes Friends List:Yes

Melanie Zhao has done it again with her Miabella shoes. I loved the originals because of the great style and the color changing ribbons on the shoe. But the latest Miabellas are even a step beyond that with a HUD to let you control the shoe’s options. You really need to try it for yourself to see how well it works.
Seen in World:Yes Review Copy:Yes Friends List:No

Last but never least are the Diva heels by TESLA. TESLA is my queen of sculptie shoes and the Diva heels are no exception. These are platform lace-up heels that will fit right into your inventory and match all your favorite things. You really need to look at the level of detail too. I love the perfect little bow tied on each shoe.
Seen in World:Yes Review Copy:Yes Friends List:No

Please stop by SLShopper.com and follow the SLURLs on each of these products right to the shop where they are sold. And I’ll be back next week with more great finds from the site.

While we didn’t plan it this way, we had “Silks Week” over at SexySecond. Anabeth kicked things off with a review of some incredible sculpty prim based silks from Nubian Angel. Celebrity followed that up with a review of silks from Analise and Adam’n'Eve (See a picture from her review to the left). Then, as Fannie said when she wrote about Romance from Solange’s Silk Raven Line, she was proud to “have something for show and tell too.” (That’s Romance in the picture below). All of these sets of silks are stunning, be sure and come over to SexySecond and take a look at the reviews in more detail.

While I wouldn’t be upset by an all silk week, we did oh so many more things too! I took a look at some skins from Jolie Femme that look terrific in their birthday suit and then got out of the way so our wonderful bloggers could work their magic with the wonderful things they found this week. Fannie, in addition to the silks from Solange,  found some more latex combinations from POC, and discovered a great store for vintage hosiery in No.9 Nylons. She also IMd me last night very excited about a designer she just found, so be sure and visit us this week for whatever she has up her sleeve.

Arabeth continues to amaze us all with her ability to find so many wonderful designers as well as her ability to write such detailed and insightful reviews. Shown left is Darkspell from Lavish Style, just one of several outfits from designer Katy Angel she reviewed.  She also reviewed some releases from Babydolls, and a cute and sexy summer dress from Tracy Scofield of Encore.  

As we head into the final week before Halloween, expect to see some sexy takes on costumes, and more of the creative, fun and alluring designs available from the world of Second Life Fashion over at SexySecond.

Time flies when you are having fun, two weeks have (almost) passed again and a lot of nice photos were posted on the Snapzilla Reader Style site. Thank you for that! This week’s Reader Style is Soleil Mirabeau for her lovely autumn look. I am still bouncing between the late summer clothes and the warmer autum/winter stuff, but this is just a perfect style for this time of year.

Hair: Ghost Boobs in Dark Brown by Hiccup @ Cotton Candy
Skin: Automne 2 by Tete a Pied
Dress: Fringe Sweater Dress in Moss Green by Anju Enoch
Boots: Maitreya Bloom in Green.

Tilly Tokyo’s hair from Hiccup is awesome. In fact, Cotton Candy as a whole is pretty awesome with a lot of shops that specialize on the hand drawn look (Fashionably Dead, Très Blah, Surgarcube etc) and I saw Tête à Pied’s Automne ad where Roslin is wearing the blue version of this Fringe Sweater Dress… but seeing it heasd to toe so to speak, I really need to go and get mine. Mirabeau, thanks for posting this!

 A next Reader Style will come to you in a forthnight. In the meanwhile… keep those photos coming and make me crazy. Here is how to enter,  all you have to do is:

• Wear something fabulous.
• Take a picture of yourself against a neutral background (or somewhere really cool in SL), and make sure you are the main topic in the photo. A lot of snapshots feature an itsie bitsie avatar against a huge background.
• In the snapshot dialog, one of the buttons reads, “Send an email postcard.” Click that option!
• Send the email to “rs@slpics.com” Please include your outfit notes (i.e., who made the blouse, who made the jeans, etc.) as the message text so we know where you shopped!

Your picture should quickly show up in the Live Panel feed here on the blog!

Shaka Saintlouis is a total charmer… we have had several occasions that IM’s were exchanged, and everytime he ended with a message like: “Grazia, I would love to see you in Shakture sometimes”. So when I finally lived up to my promise to check out his shop, the first time I crashed.. the second time around I got called to RL and had to log off and only on the third occasion I managed to take a look around in his err…. rather pink shop. I must admit there are a lot of, I think, older items, that did not really whet my spending appetite, but some of Shaka’s recent releases are really very interesting and made me a happy shopper again.

Like the Peak Lapel Ladies Suit in Grey Pinstripe, of which the collar of the silk blouse underneath is visible and that has one of te most gorgeous cleavages next to Last Call’s signature cleavage. Not too deep, not too generous.. just awesome. Jacket and Blouse are on one and the same layer, so you cannot separate them. Which is too bad, because this is the kind of suit that you would like to combine with, well … almost everything you have in your inventory on the shirt and undershirt layer, but well that is maybe an option for a v2 of this suit. *hint hint. The pants have traditional prim cuffs that unfortunately SL would not let me make decent photos of. What is very nice about them, is the fact that the textures on the pants and on the prims match very good, whereas more often you see dramatic differences in the way one and the same texture behaves on system templates and prim attachments.

The Dress Shirt & High Waisted Pants in Sky Blue is quite a glamourous outfit. Glamourous rather than chique I admit. For true chiqueness I think it would have to be a little less revealing… but on a day that you are in the mood to show off… this is absolutely a very flattering thing to wear. Unlike what lots of other designers do for their high waisted clothes – adding the high waist part on the jacket layer- Shaka opted for a simple shirt and pants combination that does the trick as well as adding a jacket layer. This set comes in many colour combinations. The brassiere that you see peeking through the blouse (and the matching knickers) is quite nice stand alone lingerie too.

Last outfit is the lovely Amanda outfit *makes mental note to start watching Ugly Betty. On display in the shop there is actually a photo of the Amanda character wearing the shocking pink & black version of this outfit that Shaka has recreated in SL in that same pink and black ad well as this olive polka dot version. It has the same lovely brassiere of the high waisted pant suit (and flattering neckline). The high waist part on this outfit has straps though that cross on the back. I like the blouse part on the skirt template. You don’t have to wear a dress shape for this which is good because it would look weird with the actual skirt that is on the pants layer with a skirt prim. The necklace and earrings come with the outfit

These 3 outfits are a pleasant surprise and it is probably not the last time I have visited Shakture. As said.. from the current inventory, these are the 3 that made me curious, but I am eager to see what Mr Saintlouis comes up with next.

The hair is ETD by Elika Tiramisu, Lynne II in Smoke Burnt, the skin is Sezmra Svarog’s Nora Entice Almond “The Pout”.

Seen in world: yes ~ Review Copies: no ~ Friends List: no

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kemet/104/127/23

Have you ever visited the Daedalus Project? It’s run by a researcher at Stanford University named Nick Yee. Nick runs online surveys about behavior patterns exhibited by players of massively-multiplayer online games. It’s generally more focused on games like World or Warcarft, but from time to time, Second Life creeps into a survey or two.

I know from my reader survey that almost 90% of my visitors are female in RL, and I thought Nick’s recent post about the similarities and differences between men and women in forming and keeping online friendships made very interesting reading. The conventional wisdom is that women socialize more and make friends more readily in online spaces than men, but Nick’s research doesn’t support that conclusion. The difference, he writes, is in what men and women want from online friendships.

He starts his article this way:

Earlier research had shown that men and women socialize about the same amount in MMOs – in terms of chatting and catching up with friends. What is very different among men and women is what they want out of those relationships. Women are more likely to want to form relationships where they can discuss their RL personal issues and can count on those friends for support. Men, on the other hand, are less likely to use the MMO space to form a support network (or probably in general).

Nick presents a series of graphs which show how likely men and women are to discuss RL current events/news, RL personal problems, and in-game issues. The most surprising thing to me was the final graph in the article which shows that women are about three-times more likely to answer yes to the statement, “I met my best friend in an online game.”

Nick concludes:

Where men and women do differ is the kind of relationship they want. It appears that men are more likely to draw harder boundaries between their physical and virtual spaces; men are less likely to talk about personal issues with friends they have met online. On the other hand, women see a softer boundary between the physical and virtual spaces and are more willing to share personal issues with friends they make online.

Definitely an interesting article. Does it match with your experiences in Second Life? Leave a comment and say why or why not.

I also set up a new poll question about this topic.

[poll=14]

I meant to publish this last night, but I was busy with another project that I’m pretty excited about. Anyway, better late than never, right?

At 11am SLT (about one hour from now), the EFA Fashion Week continues with a charity auction to benefit the Pink Ribbon campaign. I know that several designers who participated in Fashion Week shows and several others besides have donated incredible items to be auctioned at this event. Attend the auction at Saint Helene (41, 71, 22).

At noon and 6pm SLT today, Second Style and Shopping Cart Disco host our monthly “Inventory Swap” party. This month the party will be at a spooky October-perfect graveyard in Insula Inferi (212, 240, 24). At the swap meet, avatars show up and trade our transferable items that we’re just tired of carrying around with us. Simply put them on for the assembly of traders, and then ask if anyone wants it. If no one shouts out “Me!!” then it’s probably time to put that outfit in the trash. These are always a lot of fun, and there’s always some extremely interesting items that people try to trade — from the ridiculous to the sublime.

At 3 pm SLT, today Saturday October 20, there’s a fashion show hosted by Aspire on Lover’s Escape Island featuring the fashions of DoC Eldritch and Rebel Hope. There will be a grand opening party and plenty of goodies available for attendees. The ladies at Aspire always do a fantastic job with the fashion shows, and I’m sure this one will be great — I know the fashion items themselves will be top shelf. Lovers Escape (50, 96, 46).

On Sunday, October 21 at 5pm SLT, AlinaRae is presenting Grace Winnfield’s fall fashion collection. It looks like a lot of the outfits have been inspired by classic old Hollywood films. Visit the show venue on Rutha (240, 76, 461).

Where I live autumn is kicking in hard. Whereas last weekend the roads were still packed with people that were heading for the beach, during the week we have had plenty of rain, thunder storms and even some hail and last night the first substantial cold laid a layer of jack frost over my garden. It’s very hard to dress up to this kind of weather. Lots of layers is probably the best. However no doubt on the skin front in SL. This new Tête à Pied skin Automne is perfect in any circumstances this time of year. Besides the lovely eye make up (in pink, green and slate) and the ever perfect lips, this week’s Vivant skin comes with a healthy blush, as if you are coming in after a long walk in a gold and auburn coloured forest on a crisp, sunny fall day like the one I am going to enjoy today.

Automne will be released later this Saturday.

Hair is Naughty Desings by Lost Thereian Flirt in Black Pearl. The scarf is by BettiePage Voyager crochet scarf 2, as is the jeans jacket.

Seen in world: yes ~ Review Copies: yes ~Friends list: yes

This will be my first Halloween in Second Life and I am so very excited I may burst. With that in mind, I thought I’d use this week’s blog round-up to look at some fun Halloween stuff!
Last Call by Dazzle Haute Couture (Blog, Slurl) just released a huge batch of sexy costumes in conjunction with Celestial Studios. Each costume is L$ 300.

Not only is Alienbear Jewelry (Blog, Slurl) giving away what looks like a great set of silver goth spiderweb jewelry in their lucky chairs, they’ve also just come out with a limited edition version, and an adorable little pumpkin thief “kids size” version that will also be released in freebie and a limited edition versions.

Draconic Kiss (Blog, Slurl) has a series of four Lolita dresses with an Edgar Allan Poe theme; cleverly named “Poelita.” They’re L$1100 and include the dress, the skin and some other Poe- themed item. The Tell-Tale Heart for example comes with a box with a beating heart and the Raven (left) comes with a Raven.

Rowan Carroll at She’s so Unusual (Blog, Slurl) makes some fun and funky shoes, and it’s nice to see something completely over the top on honor of a holiday devoted to sugar. The Pumpkin Patch Platforms I found on her blog are part of a pair of limited
edition Halloween platforms that will only be on sale until November 1. I mean who wouldn’t want candy corn heels?

If you have a blog or an event please drop me a line.

So I’m a day late but never a dollar short, thank heavens… or else I wouldn’t be able to get all these goodies from slshopper.com! Without further ado, here is this week’s roundup of my favorites.

This season I have developed an attachment to hooded items, so when Maitreya released their Hooded Jam Sweater, I was ready. The hood itself is sculptie for added realism and the textures are everything you’d expect from Maitreya. Worried about your hair poking through the hood? No problem! Maitreya has also released the Jam Hood with add-on hair to cure all your prim adjustment woes.
Seen in world:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

Maitreya is not just about tops though. Check out these Sassy Sculpted Wedges Onyx is offering as well. There are demos to try on in her shop, but I’m confident you’ll love them as much as I do. As I said before, the textures are excellent and these shoes are very realistic. My only complaint is that they’re not in my RL inventory as well!
Seen in world:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

While we’re on the topic of shoes, check out these Arme Sculpted Boots from Adam n Eve. Damen Gorilla has outdone himself with these buckled beauties. To me, they are just thing thing as the weather (for me) gets cooler. The detail work on the buckles is fantastic, although I’d expect no less from Adam n Eve.
Seen in world:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

On a completely different note, you should definitely check out all the new dresses from Mimi Coral. Her shop has some adorable new offerings, but there just isn’t enough space here to list them all. My particular favorite is the brown lace dress, pictured here second in from the right. Mimi also offers excellent customer service, which makes her shop completely irresistible to me!
Seen in world:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

I’d like to round off my round up this week with some new hair. Now I am a known hair addict, so when I heard Bossa Nova was getting into the hair business, I had to see for myself. Of the three styles that were released, this Lydia hair is my favorite. The thick over-the-shoulder braid is very well done and the textures are great. I recommend everyone stop by Bossa Nova and support Moire in her first hair release.
Seen in world:Yes Review Copy:No Friends List:No

And with that, it’s back to slshopper.com I go to find more goodies on which to spend my lindens. Hope to see you there!

For the last four months or so, I’ve been collecting pre-made shapes from 14 different vendors, totaling about 41 shapes in all. One of the questions I am commonly asked, especially by new residents is: where should I buy a shape? My long term answer to that question remains the same: don’t; make your own. But when you’re brand new, I definitely understand there’s just too much learning curve to master the sliders and make them do what you want, especially when you’re probably wearing a default skin or one of those everyone-has-one freebie skins that’s floating around.

I hope to post a tutorial later this week about making your own shape, or perhaps tweaking a shape that you’ve purchased to really make it your own personal look. In a world where everyone can literally be your exact copy, your shape and skin together define your look to the rest of Second Life. Eventually, if you spend enough time in Second Life, you will develop a strong attachment to your personal avatar shape, and when you put on “foreign” shapes they feel off putting to you. I think that’s why mostly newer players are the prime market for shapes.

I’d be careful about buying a shape without a “demo” shape you can test with your favorite skin. (What’s a demo shape? It’s a no mod/no transfer shape with size 100 hands.) The combination of skin and shape together makes a huge difference in the way any given shape looks on your avatar. Some skins and shapes just do not go well together. If a shape maker doesn’t already offer demos, IM him or her and ask (politely) for one.

I looked for proportion when I was collecting shapes to review. I wanted the shoulders, bust, waist, hips and leg/arm length to correlate, roughly in the same proportions you’d find on a RL person. I tried to select faces that I considered “runway” ready.

Philosophically, I don’t believe in no mod shapes. None of the shapes I reviewed are no mod, although some of them are sold in a less expensive no mod version. I strongly encourage, if you decide to buy a shape, to buy the more expensive modify enabled version. You will — at some point in the future — really want that ability. Trust me. The price for a shape varied from free (sometimes included with a skin, not sold seperately) to L$1000. Almost all of the shapes came with “style notecards” that give all of the details from skin to clothing to hair to get the exact look photographed on the vendor.

For this article, I used four primary skins: Sin Skins’ Ton Visage Sakura in Bisque, Pixel Deep “Fit” Very Dark, Pixel Deep “Fit” Light, but the default skin I used for most shapes was Tete a Pied’s Paon #2 in Cream. Paon has a thick, glossy lip which on some shapes gave the mouth an exaggerated pout, but I wanted to pick skins which were generally inexpensive and looked very satisfactory if not outright beautiful on many shapes. Some of the shapes I’m modeling here are paired with a skin too. In those cases, I’ve worn the matching skin for the shape. The Jia shape by Skin Within, for example, is modeled with the Jia skin. The bikini is Nyte ‘n’ Day’s Festini Dots. The hair is ETD Tessa in Mahogany. I received review copies of all of these shapes.

Thanks to all of the shape makers:

• Alaska Metropolitan
• Raine Dagger
• Willow Zander
• Lyra Blackthorn
• Sariella Ashton
• Dyna Diller
• camilla Yosuke
• Maddox Dupont
• Zahara Rahja
• Ayesha Bisiani
• Dalian Darrow
• Zada Zenovka
• Zaria Bellman
• Haver Cole
• Faedra Allen
• Elease Graves
• Torrid Midnight

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, before I start, let me say that I usually avoid ranting on the blog. If I find something I don’t like, I will either not blog it, or talk to the creator of the item and offer feed back one on one. But what to do if the creator is a mere contractor and the company is a RL organisation that came to SL?

Recently Armani has come to SL and although the build looks nice enough, the content in the vendors is absolutely way below the quality that you might expect from one of the RL top couturiers. The marketing staff at Armani obviously is clueless about the fashion standards in SL and has trusted blindly the company that brought them to SL. Armani in SL states that RL Armani has approved all content in the shop and when asked, a couple of weeks before opening, Armani’s RL press office stated they were working with top class content creators. But if you don’t know what really is possible apparelwise, then how are you going to judge the quality of content? When I met mr Armani in world and asked him his opinion on the content, he hesitated for a while and then said that unfortunately the creative process in SL is limited by the possibilities that applications like Photoshop and Lightwave have to offer. Hmm… he has a point… but judge for yourself whether those limits have met in this blue dress (300 L$!!…. at least the price is Armani worthy). Just for the record, the hair in this photo is Armidi’s Ibiza in pearl, and the skin is Nylon Outfitters Poppy black.

Yesterday I got this mixed feeling of excitement and angst when a folder was dropped on me by No 7 cosmetics. No 7 is a well known UK cosmetics brand from Boots and the notecard that came with the folder talked about a preview of make up that would later this season be introduced in RL. So I thought… wow… this is a nice way of marketing your procducts. You whet the appetite of the fashionable people in SL and then introduce it in RL. Cute idea. Until I actually tried on the skin, hair, shape and dress that were in the folder. And again I got struck with desillusion. I am not going to bother to enter into a detailed description. Let me suffice to say that the shape is err… not quite anatomically correct, the skin has weird shadings and the clothes… I do like the shiny hems actually. Too bad they bleed. Question remains,  if you want to make people curious about your RL product… is this really the way to do it?  Reading the name of the creator of some of the items in the folder I conclude that, again, an in world web development  company has been involved. One that I thought actually knows what they’re talking about. But guys…. how can you advise your clients to jump into this world full of eager and critical people with products like this?

The title of this post refers to something a friend was saying on this topic. I was reluctant to post about this, but she encouraged me to do it. Because it is about RL companies coming in world, taking advantage of their RL brand names. They really should be setting the standards on content creating… not taking the standards down. Yes, I agree I am measuring with different standards. Would this have been te work of just another resident trying content creating, I really would not have bothered to post about it. But this content coming from well known RL companies… honestly? I think it’s a bad development. SL as a marketing platform is not being taken seriously by those companies when they dare to come to SL and offer content from this quality. I can only hope that other organisations that consider coming to SL take the effort to get themselves aquainted with the possibilities before they put themselves to the mercy of an in world company to translate them to Second Life.