I had pledged not to buy anymore hair until my out of control inventory was tamed, friends scoffed in disbelief when I refused invitations to Hair Fair 2008.My good intentions were blown out of the water when dana, my beautiful boss lady, gave me the order;" Fire our readers need to know about Hair Fair 2008 - so go report". Its a tough job but someone has to do it.So, having removed my high prim items, sacrificing my AO, and putting my dance partners on hold I set off. I spent six hours wandering the stalls and I suspect I still missed a few designers, even with maps to guide me.Hair Fair 2008 is a charitable event for Locks of Love, a charity which raises funds for children who suffer from hair loss from illness.The hair fair this year is huge - it covers four sims and has numerous designers showing, small up and coming designers as well as the big, well know ( and well loved) favourite designers. What a treat we hair addicts have in this hair fair, there are many hair designs which are unique for the fair and a lot of the designers have been especially generous supplying freebies on their stands.One of my greatest pleasures of this hair fair is the amount of mens hair that is available. Men have always been quite poorly served compared to us ladies when it comes to choices in good hair, this is at last changing and it is a real pleasure to see. Special mention here to the designs of Find Ash - a design shop that I have been taking customers to regularly - it's good to see they are growing and getting more generally known. Find Ash are by no means alone in their expanding mens (and really good unisex designs - to all the men I hear moaning about how hard it is to find good hair, I'd say take time to go to the hair fair and take a peek at what is available. Rezzable have 3 great mens hair on show and there are many wonderful new options for men - AT LAST the designers are waking up to the almost untapped market that is the Second Life man who wants to look good.I was also very impressed by some of the more adventureous designs on show - Tekeli-li! dark artistry began as the random notion of Tekelili Tantalus, a traditional artist specializing in dark fantasy and Lovecraftian themes has produced some wonderful fantasy "hair" unfortunately the picture doesn't do his amazing Gorgon design anything close to justice. The options on this are amazing, and the serpants are textured in such a way as to make them look like they are moving.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Hair Fair 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
"ESSENCE OF STYLE & ELEGANCE" FASHION SHOW
Premiere Modeling Management invites you to:Frank's Place Jazz Club
Date & Time: August 9 (Saturday), 2008 1pm SLT
Mythology and The Shops At Sconfinate Grand Opening Event
Mythology and the Shops At Sconfinate would like to invite you to join them as they celebrate the grand opening of not only Mythology, owned by Aeris Pinazzo, but also the opening of the shopping district and residential; area on the sim.
The SIM owner Burattino String is excited to open the sim up to the Second Life community. There will be models dispalying some of the hottest new trends, music, dancing, games and so much more.
Schedule of events:
There will be modeling exhibits displaying the fashions from and latest trends in Second Life. The lovely DJ Laine Markova will provide us with music from the 80's,90's, today and anything you may wish to hear. IM her with your requests.
4:00pm SLT- 4:30pm SLT Grand Opening kick off with DJ Laine Markova
4:30pm SLT- 5:30pm SLT~ Let's play "What's in Your Inventory?"
5:30pm SLt-6:00pm SLt~ Bee Keeper Sploder Game
6:00pmSLt-6:30pmSLT~ firework display and scavenger hunt kick off and music and dancing with DJ Laine Markova
6:30PMSLT-7:00pm SLT~ Some more balloon sploder while we close out the event with DJ Laine Markova
*Please feel free to walk about the shops and the model exhibits or hop on the dance floor and boogie down at any time during the event. **Also Sconfinate will be celebrating not only the grand opening of the shopping district but of the residential area as well. For more information regarding this event please contact Sadie Pippita, Lead Brand Strategist at Sand Castle Studios.Quote: I am proud to present to you my contribution to the SL fashion community, Mythology brand clothing, Mythology is my project that I have worked so hard to bring to you which will satisfy your taste for quality and fashionable trends without the excessive cost. My goal is to make my mark in SL with a quality product, the lindens come in last :-) So it's my honor to invite you to our launch party... Join us on August 9th at 4pm SLT for what is sure to be an event to remember. I plan to stick around for awhile. Come to the party and we can both say you were there with me from the beginning. xoxo Aeris Pinazzo
Monday, August 4, 2008
Styling your Second Life with Firehorse
This week I have to apologise for the lateness of this article - due to circumstance totally beyond my control I was computerless for a couple of days. But from now on Styling your Second Life with Firehorse will be published on a Sunday - all things being equal.
This weeks challange was to make a tiny avatar for 500L$ a task far easier than any undertaken so far - and probably the most sucessful. First of all my deepest thanks to Bixyl, who was this weeks willing guinea pig.
I started off by visiting Wynx's (check Wynx Whplashs profile for the location of her main shop - she moves a lot). The avs created by Wynx are superb, the vendor pictures do not do them justice, and as well as the cuter, more typical tiny avs there is a fantastic rhino - an avatar with such power and presence that it really does punch well above it's weight. These avs are a testiment to the skill and craft of the maker, the detail is way above what you would usually see in any sort of avatar in SL - if there were complete human avs for sale this good, I would be out of business.
After much deliberation Bixyl opted for a squirrel av - which is so cute that only it's detailing save it from being nausiating.
The av comes with two gestures (waves I believe) but no AO - but after spending sometime wearing the av Bixyl assures me that it doesn't actually need a tiny AO - more testiment to the workmanship. L£350 well spent on the av.
Bixyl is a very respectable sort of fox and never goes around in just his fur, so clothing was the next quest. We didn't have far to go as there was a CatPaws vendor in the same space - these are delightful, quirky designs, well made with wonderful detailing, this was tough - so many choices. For humour value (and because Bixyl is practical as well as stylish) we chose the electicians outfit with toolbox and toolbelt.This was L$150 and worth every penny. if you don't believe just look at the pictures. Catpaws has a lot of outlets so just check Cat Masala's profile for details.To sum up for a mere 500 linden you can have a wonderful tiny av, complete in every way - and all of the highest quality if you go tiny. The over all opinion was highly flattering as Bixyl took me at my word and wore the av around and about for a while.
With many thanks to Bixyl Shuftan, who made this weeks challenge so much fun.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Rusch Raymaker and the SL Fashion business
I left you last week at the end of my personal tour of Avenue Models. Rusch Raymaker had been showing me around her impressive building. And no, I hadn’t gotten to met any of the 30 models on the books; and to cut the suspense immediately, let me tell you that I didn’t get to meet them later either. But I was warming to Rusch, who was now talking to me in her office.
Rusch is a woman with some very interesting ideas about the world of Fashion in SL. She is also somebody with a Mission, which we’ll get to later.
We began by taking about the Exxess fashion show I’d been to and where I’d first met Rusch. I told her how impressed I’d been;
Rusch Raymaker: *beams* that is one of our best shows yet and more to come :)
Rusch told me that the show took about a full week's work to put together. (And in case you didn’t know, the work-day for people at the top of the fashion industry is probably way over 20 hours work per day). She said she’d hardly slept the whole time; she’d been in Mad Max mode thought. (Don’t think “Max Factor” here folks; we’re talking about a mean and determined Mel Gibson pushing the accelerator through the floor). Eight models had been used on the show. I’d been overawed by them, and Rusch agreed that we’d been treated to the pick of the cream.
Getting exposure is probably one of the toughest challenges for designers wanting to go beyond word-of-mouth marketing. I asked Rusch if the Agency’s PR service wasn’t perhaps the most essential cog in the machine, but she told me that really it was a combination ... the main thing was the creative direction of the show combined with seamless coordination and good PR work of course.
The staging of course can be very important – as it had been for the Exxess show, which worked in total harmony between the collection and the setting. Rusch agreed with me that it would have been impossible to have staged it on a set of floating clouds.
Actually, considering that Rusch is bringing over 18 years of experience in RL event production, choreography and marketing and has created fashion shows for some of the really big names in RL fashion, she’s really offering a good deal here. And she told me that although Avenue could do a normal runway show for less than $15k, clients will come to Avenue (and pay) for quality and original show concepts that will help set them apart from the other shows. Again, it’s all about getting the right exposure.
Our conversation turned to the Modelling school, Avenue Academy which started in June and so far more than 20 students have signed up.
Models impress me. The way they walk, mainly. I wanted to know how much of the models was actually *them*, and how much was the Avenue mould, so I asked whether Avenue had developed its own special modelling pose AOs to get the girls in the Academy sliding down the runway the way they did, but no, the girls chose their own from a range of available AOs or huds, and they select appropriate poses suitable to the show and designs.
It’s just like RL. To be a model they need to have a good base to start off with in terms of their shape and skin, although anybody can enrol in the academy (although personally I can’t see really grotesque people, or tinies, or furries really wanting to do that, but this is SL and anything is possible).
Rusch said that getting to the top in SL modelling depended mostly on whether models in SL have that eye... the ability to shape the aesthetics of their own beauty, unlike RL where apart from maybe getting plastic surgery you get what you’re born with.
So why do women come to Avenue to learn how to model? Rusch’s answer was really the same as you’ll find on her web-site; Avenue Academy is able to provide them with comprehensive and practical training from top working models in SL and help them get emotionally and mentally prepared for the industry as well. The lessons they learn from experienced working models is invaluable, and Avenue sets standards for their trainees to aspire to and help them get started in modelling.
And then, for me at least, the conversation got to really interesting ground. I told Rusch that I’d slanted my first article around a not-much-thought-out preconception that Top Models were something like every man’s fantasy, a kind of unattainable sexual goal. Very quickly (at the speed of light even) Rusch’s reply flashed on my screen, that she hardly thought that models do it to become a man's fantasy.
I wasn’t looking to provoke Rusch in the least, and I went on to say that in reality, men had little to do with it. The models were there to appeal to women, to show them their own fantasies about themselves, how they wanted to look, who they wanted to become. And it’s true.
It’s women who buy the clothes, and the men just pay (at least they do in RL fashion. In SL the women pay unless they’re very lucky). Fashion is really for women, by women and all about women. Male fashion is of course a thriving niche. But go to any mall and compare the number of women’s stores to men’s, you’ll see. Fashion, and Fashion models, are fantasies for women.
Subtly changing the subject, Rusch told me that for her it was its really all about the designers, presenting their brand and designs with the best models and show production and PR
When we started winding up the interview, I finally discovered Rusch’s Mission;
Why does someone start an Agency and a modelling Academy? In Rusch’s case it was simple. She’d seen so many women in SL, beautiful women, having to resort to escorting, camping and such. Her answer to that was to start up an agency which would let women partake in a fun vocation and experience in SL without having to sell themselves out.
Rusch left me with a “goodbye sweetie”. Hamlet the man hiding beneath the Clark Kent suit bristled a little. I don’t really *do* sweetie. But she meant well. And this is Fashion, after all, so I let it drop.
I went back to my very wonderful new office with nameplate in the SL-Newspaper building. My next challenge was going to be meeting the icy stare of an Editor armed with shiny sharp pointed steel scissors ready to dress me down to size after last week’s exercise in self-indulgence.
But it seems that my luck’s still holding, because you’re reading this. Or maybe I’m just learning some of the tricks?
Hamlet Kornbluth
(This editor needs someone to learn to count - I believe I said 500 words?) Dana
