Second Style Magazine

Yep – real life has struck again, but since this is the final week of the 30 Days project I wanted to close out my run with a really lovely set of skins by Ayesha Bisiani of Skin Within. Ayesha has a bunch of different ethnic skins ranging from pale Russian to dark African. One of the newest skin lines is the creole inspired Anaise line which is shown to the left. (Note on the right the amazing new prim-toed shoes from SLink – I’m wearing the chocolate set in my photo. They’re L$500 a pair and look so so good with this skin tone from Skin Within.)

One of my favorite things about the Skin Within lines is that Ayesha develops four lines of makeup for each skin tone. A day and evening set, a “fantasy” set, and a smoky eye makeup set. She’s never afraid to play with color, and the fantasy makeups – especially on Anaise lend themselves well to photography and haute-fashion runway shows. You can see Mambo on the left from the fantasy line and Laballe in the first set of photos above.

Which isn’t to say you sacrifice anything from the rest of the skin for makeup’s sake. The body on Anaise is really quite lovely with her caramelly skin tone (and that modifiable to go a shade darker and a shade lighter) and the body shading on this skin is as yummy as it looks. I am especially in love with the nose and ear shading on this skin – I think it looks fabulous on my avatar’s shape. The body also features a torso with well defined cleavage shading and “soft” tummy – it’s not quite as ripped as some of the other skins you can find in Second Life which suits me fine.

One of the other unique things about Anaise is that the day and evening makeups all feature freckles. On the left I took a close up of one of my favorite makeup sets, called Paris from the evening line. You can see the skin has a well placed and well dispersed smattering of freckles across the cheeks and nose. On the right, I am showing off the extraordinary skin-art Ayesha released for the Anaise line in a very (1 copy left in fact) limited edition. As Anaise is inspired by the creole culture of Louisana, Ayesha hand-drew Mardi-Gras inspired artwork directly on the skin along with a Carnival-style makeup theme on the skin’s face. With RL Mardi-Gras fast approaching, you might want to consider saving your pennies for a skin-a-pooloza for your big Fat Tuesday celebration.

What’s next for Skin Within? Ayesha tells me that she’s thinking about her next Limited Edition skin. She is not yet decided, but is looking into an Asian inspired theme or potentially even doing a new line of darker toned Indian or African skins.

You can check out Skin Within at Skin Within (124, 128, 28).

You can pick SLink’s wonderful new (and affordable) prim toed platform sandals at Sanctum (56, 126, 35). Also – until February 15th, you can pick up a set of these sandals with a special Valentine’s theme for only L$100 – that’s 80% off the normal price!

Lingerie by Love Lace and Insolence. Hair by ETD. Gloves by Fleur.

I’ve written a couple of times before about Pulse Skins by the incredibly talented Lorac Farella, and I definitely couldn’t leave them out of our 30 Days project, now in Week 5. (Just 9 more skins to go…) Lorac was kind enough to share some of her newest releases with me and since Valentine’s Day is on the top of my mind, I decided to build a giant prim heart to photograph these skins inside Second Life. These first two skins are part of the Pulse “Kissed” skin line. On the left is Magical and on the right is Serenade. Like all of Lorac’s Pulse skins, these are all hand painted skins. Astounding but true – Lorac has spent a long time mastering pixel artwork and she brings that passion for pixel art to her skins in Second Life. The body on Kissed skins are a bit defined, but don’t have that uber-crunch gym-rat look at all. The makeup and face highlights all give Kissed a very youthful and vibrant look. Lorac also loves to play with her eye color on these skins. Magical, for instances, brings pink, purple, and a touch of shimmery green to the mix; you can pick lined or unlined as you wish.

You can really see the eye makeup in this close-up photo on the far left. And on the right is another new release from the “Bella II” line – this time a dark tone. I love Lorac’s dark tones. They’re not too yellow, and they’re not too orange. They have a really nice blend. I must confess that this shape I’m using is not my normal shape. It’s called “Out of Africa” by Scar Ayres. Scar recently opened a new shop and although I’m not a huge fan of pre-made shapes this particular one caught my eye. Scar also tipped me off to the Pixelfashion lashes I’m wearing throughout these photos. They’re L$300, but they have a menu-based color change system. I don’t know when or why I’ll need lime green lashes, but if I do, these have me covered. In any case they’re easy to fit and look so lush. I’m really enjoying them. Mostly in black, of course.

Finally, I had to leave Pulse with Lorac’s wonderfully shaded and multi-tonal Elegance line. This is Tone 6 from her line. There’s one shade darker and 5 shades lighter. I absolutely love the shading on this body and the face is so amazingly executed with perfect highlights and lowlights in the right places. Elegance comes in 7 Virtues, 7 Sins (this is “Greed” – green eye makeup, of course) and a new monthly release for 2009. (January and February are already available.)

Skins: Pulse, Nip Tuck Island (40, 134, 461)
Shape: Scarlia Inc, Tora 5 (67, 140, 21)
Color change lashes: Pixelfashion, xstream80 (62, 210, 29)
Lingerie: Insolence, Venom (94, 133, 28)
L$1 Giant Prim Heart: Le Zoo (136, 36, 24) – with Valentine’s Day coming up, I figured, why not? If you want a giant mod/copy/no trans prim heart, stop by and pick one up.

From time to time, the topic of taxes in Second Life comes up. Many content creators I know who make “real” money in-world and cash it out on a regular basis are aware they’re liable to pay income taxes on it, but recently I came across this paper by Indiana tax law professor Leandra Lederman, suggesting pretty strongly that sales taxes ought to apply to in-world purchases made with Lindens whether or not you actually “cash them out” into US Dollars. Writing in the Yale Law Journal she states:

Millions of people participate in virtual worlds—immersive online forums such as Second Life and World of Warcraft (WoW). While some online activities lack significant economic implications, one of the attractions of Second Life, which is designed to be a commercial platform, is the prospect of making “real money.” This essay argues that profits received in the form of Lindens (Second Life’s currency) should be taxed in much the same way profits received via PayPal, a widely used electronic-payment system, are. Although Second Life profits could instead be taxed once the taxpayer sells for real money (“cashes out”), that would create a special exception for Second Life that does not exist for platforms such as eBay. It would facilitate abuse and distort economic activity.

Although some previous discussions around taxation in and around Second Life (and other commerce based virtual worlds like IMVU) haven’t amounted to much, having an article like this published in a prestigious law journal makes it a lot more likely that the U.S. Congress will take some action on this issue in the near future.

Thinking about the nightmare of trying to figure out how to collect and remit taxes in a global micropayment environment where the buyer and seller have no idea of the legal jusidiction of either party boggles my mind. To paraphrase President Obama that’s way above my pay grade.

(Tip: TaxProf Blog)

Welcome to week four of our 30 Days project! We’re half way done with this series and I hope you’ve been enjoying it. When I started thinking about the skins I wanted to post in the series, I picked old favorites, but I’m taking my slot this week to write about a brand new skin release by Cane Sutter called Skinthesis. In fact, the grand opening for this line was yesterday, January 25.

This brand new line is a hybrid between photorealism and hand-painted skins and I think Cane has done a great job with this release balancing the contrasts between the two approaches to skin design. She also has quite a flair of picking classic makeup combinations and doing them well across most of her skin tones. Skinthesis Mandi line comes in six tones from the aptly named Dark (a bit too orangey for my tastes), to a beautiful caramelly “Ethnic” tone (shown left in my favorite makeup from the whole line called “Assassin.”) through the ultra-goth pure white “Powder” tone on the other end of the spectrum.

And while Cane was kind enough to send me samples of every skin tone the one I liked the best was the “Fair” tone – a bit lighter than “Tan” but not quite as light as “Pale.” (Seen left. The far makeup is called Smoulder; the near makeup is called Moderne.) While I’ve enjoyed wearing these skins around the grid, I did have some issues with them too. First, depending on the shape (I tested several) the breasts can look a bit, well, square. The trend in SL is definitely toward well shaded breasts so perhaps it’s a function of the shading on these skins. The second issue is that these skins seem to have painted-on eyelashes. This can make fitting prim lashes a challenge. If you pick lashes that are thick and luscious enough they’ll hide the painted-on lashes pretty effectively, but you can still get some strange artifacts from the viewer depending on the “LOD” or level of detail that’s rendered and how well your video card does alpha layer sorting. Third, the only brow color is a beautiful dark brown – perfect if that’s your everyday hair color. If you’re a redhead or like dark black hair, you’ll want to request different brow colors from Cane.

Cane is very open to taking custom work from her clients – although she tells me that she’s been super busy with a set of orders lately. Simple requests like brow colors can be handled quickly, but if you want to request a custom makeup or tattoo placement or something like that, it could take a bit longer to fulfill that request. She’s also planning a fun line of “dress up” skins – like for example the golden hued Egyptian-themed skin she just finished last night. So far you can play with that one, plus a “Totally 80s” makeup theme called “Radical.” If you’re in the mood to try one of Cane’s skins for free, you can try your luck on her Lucky Chair which is currently loaded with an exclusive (not-for-sale) Valentine’s themed skin in all six tones.

Visit Skinthesis at Mysten (103, 97, 76). Prices for the skins are: singles 999L, 6 pack(1 makeup, 6 tones), 1600L, 8 pack (mix and match, any 8 skins), 2000L and 15 makeup packs are 3000L.

Wow, didn’t see that one coming. I woke up to find an email in my inbox, like many readers I suspect.

I must say I knew that OnRez was probably not long for this world. Strategically, the Electric Sheep Company pulled pretty far back from Second Life through most of 2008 and it was increasingly apparent that the OnRez portal just wasn’t going to get the developer time and attention it required. I figured that ESC was just going to quietly wind operations down and move on to whatever it is that they do now.

But I was genuinely surprised that the Lab showed up to buy both OnRez and Xstreet, putting the former out of its misery and the anointing the latter as the web shopping experience for Second Life. I had to tilt my head here and think, “Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?”

For all the charm of Xstreet’s late 90s layout and design, I always recommended people buy things from my OnRez store, whether they wanted to do it in world from our headquarters location or via the Web. I also had put a number of free (hopefully useful) items in my OnRez store so that I could easily distribute them to others. I guess what’s really disappointing is that a ton of content creators are going to have to spend hours and hours and hours transferring information, objects and graphics from OnRez to Xstreet.

I’m debating what to do myself. All Second Style back issues and magazine kiosks are already on Xstreet – but I’m not really sure I want to go to the trouble to move all of the free items over. Based on the feedback I’ve read at SLUniverse, I don’t think this is an extremely popular acquisition, although I can tell it has the potential to be a great thing.

Given previous track records though, I’m not really expecting much, or on any reasonable timeframe.

What do you think?

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I just passed my third Second Life rez day on Saturday and I wanted to celebrate with a post about Tuli Asturias, the fashion designer I’ve known the longest in Second Life. If you ever get the chance to spend some time with Tuli, you’ll learn just how incredibly humble she is about her talent. Entirely self taught, she’s been honing her skills with skins for as long as I’ve known her. And – not to embarrass her – I still have the very first skins she made in my inventory. Talk about a before and after photo, it would astound you to see how far she’s come.

Never one to be entirely satisfied with almost anything she’s made (she’s quite the perfectionist!) Tuli seems to constantly tinker with her skins and this line shown to the left called Meredith is no exception. Meredith has been out since October 2008, but Tuli just released a brand new set of makeups for this line – all of which have playful takes on trendy looks. One of the best features of Meredith is the glossy lipstick which pairs well with the understated but entirely lovely body on this skin. It isn’t the kind of gym-rat I-do-one-thousand-crunches-every-night skin which looks sometimes out of place on certain body shapes (at least it does in my opinion.) Meredith is available in five different skin tones including light (shown), fair, sunkissed, tan and suntanned. You can pick up a freebie Meredith skin called “Post Party” with the ever popular (and well executed) smudgy makeup look – for when you absolutely need to look like either Courtney Love or Amy Winehouse, depending on your particular drug vice of choice.

But the newest skin in the Tuli line is called Kalista, and you can see a couple examples of it to the left. Kalista comes in three tones, light (shown on far left), medium, and tan (shown on the near left.) Kalista’s body is a bit more defined than Meredith, but it’s still very subtle. I personally love the collarbones and shoulderblades on this skin. Sure it looks stunning in lingerie – of course – but it really shines in an outfit which frames the shoulders and neck. Unlike the sassy makeup names in Meredith, the makeups in Kalista are bit more utilitarian, just numbers across the three skin tones. Kalista has some fun “editorial” makeup styles too – perfect for fashion modeling, runway work or photography. The lace eye treatment is especially cool looking with the right sartorial look.

Did I mention Tuli likes to tinker with her skins? She’s currently working on her very first male skin release, a new update to Elizabeth (the only skin – so far – which has a darker skin tone than tan) and a brand new woman’s skin (that as far as I know is unnamed.) You can see sneak peeks of these on Tuli’s blog.

Shop for Kalista and Meredith at Tuli’s mainstore on Journey (130, 107, 25).

P.S. Carissa missed her day last Friday, but she’ll make it up this week – never fear!

Welcome to week 2 of our 30 Days project. I am pleased to show off Rosemary Galbraith and Mimi Coral’s collaborative skin called Celebrity. (OK, I am a sucker for things named after me. I can’t help it.) Celebrity is a very recent release, coming within the last 10 weeks and already the duo has carried forward their most popular makeup styles to the new body line.

This is another skin which has gone through a major overhaul, especially as you can easily see in the body highlighting. On the right is Celebrity Mocha, the darkest tone available in the line (my personal preference) and on the left is the Gemini Iroko tone (both skins feature the same makeup combination called “Smokey.”)

While I enjoyed wearing the Gemini line of skins, I really like the revisions that the team has made to the Celebrity line which features major highlighting across the chest, and collar bones, a more defined tummy (but not quite as ripped as some other skins out there.) Celebrity also sports a significantly more defined face, including shading around the lips, nose and the cupid’s bow (seriously!)

Cupcakes has a lot of different skin tones (see the lightest tone called Sugar on the left) and unusually, I think they do all of them quite well although I know that Rosemary and Mimi have made a conscious choice to reduce the body highlights on the lighter skin tones. For me, personally, that makes the darker skin choices a more appealing look.

Check out Cupcakes new mainstore at Le Zoo (73, 162, 22). Since I know Rosemary and Mimi are meeting each other IRL this week – have fun, girls!

Seen above: Satin Balconette by Arielle Ceres, Isle of Spirits (17, 152, 62); Aveda Short Crop by Elika Tiramisu, ETD Isle (187, 198, 31); d’Orsay Sandals by Stilleto Moody, Stiletto Moody (43, 42, 23).

I’m excited to kick off the 30 Days Project with a post about Fleur skins by Roslin Petion and CJ Carnot. I’ve known both Roslin and CJ for a long time in my Second Life, back to the earliest days of Second Style magazine. Roslin was involved with the magazine even before I was and it was through the magazine that I got to know them both. Like almost everything in Second Life, there is a huge gulf between 2006 and 2009 and Fleur is no exception. Formerly known as Tete a Pied (TaP), CJ did the skin bases and Roslin, using her experience as a real life makeup artist would add the makeup. This remarkable partnership has endured for years across SL database trouble, content theft and a huge brand makeover. (Ask Roslin how much she enjoys reshooting box ads!)

Fleur recently released the fourth major incarnation of their skins called Allure (you can see a whole retrospective of the line by reading this great post by ChronoCloud Creegan) and I wanted to make Allure the first post in our project series. On the left is Allure in the Sable skin tone, with a cat’s eye makeup called Kitten. For comparison’s sake, on the right is the Vin makeup (Chestnut tone) from the previous Fleur line called Vivant.

As you can see there has been a lot of detail enhancements between Vivant and Allure. There’s more definition in the tummy and navel region, the collarbones and breast shading has been heightened and the facial highlighting has been amped up a touch. It may just be my lighting settings, but the Sable tone also looks a shade lighter than Chestnut.

Overall I think the trend in Second Life skins has been more toward photorealism and although Fleur has its roots firmly in hand-drawn and hand shaded skins, they’ve managed to come through with a beautiful hybrid skin incorporating elements of both photosourcing and hand-drawing. One of the biggest draws to Fleur continues to be Roslin’s makeup designs, case in point is the quarterly seasonal makeup called Winter Nights is wonderfully executed including some of the deliciously glossy wine lipstick to be seen in world. (Pictured below far left.)

One of my favorite things about Fleur Allure skins are the subtle and distinctive butt dimples (shown near left.) Unless you’re caterwauling around the grid in unmentionables or a bikini (or perhaps channeling your inner Lady Godiva) you might not ever get to show them off. But even so, the well shaded shoulder blades will always look amazing given an open back gown or top.

Front or back, Allure skins look great under everything.

Seen above: Allure Skin (Kitten 1, Sable tone) by CJ Carnot and Roslin Petion, Fleur (137, 126, 27); Vanessa Lingerie by Burlesque Dolls, Celestial City (129, 244, 27); Starley Pumps by Elika Tiramisu, ETD Isle (187, 198, 31); Hearts & Diamonds Jewelry by ~flirt~, Juicy (46, 210, 28); Lesley 2 (chocolate) hair by Truth Hawks, Truth Island (224, 44, 751).

Is this the future of content creation in Second Life? Recently the Lab has focused on better integration between Second Life and the web. Delaney Whippet’s Mirrorlabs flash based skin creator is a mashup match made in heaven to illustrate the way it can work. (You may remember Delaney’s funky-cool clothing line Microphage which made a splash in 2007.)

Using Eloh Elliot’s open source BSD licensed skins, Delaney built a flash interface to layer PNGs textures onto an avatar mesh in real time so you can see exactly how it’ll look before anything’s imported into Second Life. You can control the skin tone, blusher, lip stick, eyeliner, eyeshadow and glitter and use custom color selectors to precisely add the color combinations you want.

Once you have a skin you love, you can export a set of demo textures for free as shown to the left – or you can visit Delaney’s sales kiosk at her store parcel on Saturn and purchase a set of full download codes (skins are L$500 for singles, with discounts for bulk purchases) to download textures ready for direct import into Second Life. Since these are textures that you own and import yourself, you get them full permission (naturally!) so you can give them away to your friends, n00bs or random passers-by.

Here’s the skin I designed on the website as it looks imported into Second Life. Since the site is still in “early alpha release” there may be glitches in order fulfillment, but once you use a download code on a skin, you’ll be able to attempt downloads on it more than once – and Delaney has been really good about responding to customer service requests.

Future enhancements are planned and include adding things like custom tattoos, additional base skins and more. Delaney is actively seeking feedback for other ideas. You can read her full list of plans by checking out a blog post here.

Seen above: Skin by Mirrorlabs, Saturn (155, 17, 29); Phoebe Lingerie by Shai Delacroix (Autumn) Casa Del Shai (148, 127, 692); Donna Platform Shoes (Tartan) by Kookie, Juicy (30, 69, 24).

One of my 2009 resolution is to blog more regularly. With a new baby and a lot of RL job responsibility, I know that blogging daily really isn’t in the cards for me. That’s why I’ve enlisted four other fabulous fashionistas to help me kick off this new project called 30 Days.

The 30 days project is about featuring one fashion category, one content creator (or team) in one post, every day for the next 30 weekdays (we’re taking weekends off.) Behind the scenes we’re coordinating our posts so that we won’t repeat or feature the same designers that we’ve already covered in a previous post. Our first feature will be on 30 Days of Skins. For the next 30 (week)days, we will have a fresh new post featuring skins from all over the grid. The first post in the series will be on Monday, January 5th.

Each weekday has a specific blogger assigned to it:

• Monday: Yours truly, Celebrity Trollop
• Tuesday: Graciana McMillan
• Wednesday: Honey Bender
• Thursdays: Ryker Beck
• Fridays: Carissa Crimson

I’m also interested in your thoughts about future 30 Days themes, so I made a poll to help guide us in making a decision.

I hope you enjoy this new series. I know I will enjoy seeing a survey of the wonderful skins to be found in Second Life for the next several weeks.

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Seen above: skin, lashes and hair all by Kuja Akina of [the oBscene]. shape by angel Cleghorn for [the oBscene]. All of these items were holiday freebies found on Crush Row – Doll City (232, 220, 21) Winter Dusk dress by Shai Delacroix, Casa Del Shai (148, 127, 692).

Get your own – Open publication

I’m proud to announce that our first Men’s issue is now available – issue #23. Find it on our website, on issuu.com (also embedded above) and in world at our headquarters in Le Zoo and many other in world vendors.

We asked everyone on staff to spend some time researching the rich world of men’s fashion in Second Life. It’s really come along way from our first issue, two and half years ago. Back then, it was only about the ladies. Now men have as many high quality offerings as women and such diversity too. It’s remarkable and we’re proud to showcase some of the best to be found in world.

Enjoy!

Get your own – Open publication

As Iris Ophelia writes in her editor’s note: Halloween is the Fashionista’s holiday – so we’re bringing you this special mini-issue which is all about the costume! This mini-issue is over 30 pages of last minute creative ideas from ALL over the grid and in all styles and themes.

The issue now available as a PDF download from our website here, our Issuu stream (as shown above!) and bundled with Issue #22 in world from our HQ in Le Zoo (136, 27, 24) or any of our other vendors in world.

Hope you enjoy!!