Four Reasons Fashionistas Should Give Pink Fuel's Latest Second Life Skins a Second Look

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Pink Fuel [SLURL] is a skin store with a lot of cachet among SL fashionistas. It's a brand that saw wide success with Elly, a babyfaced skin with exquisite details and dozens of makeup combinations. As popular as Elly was it did also convince some people that Pink Fuel wasn't their brand-- whether the face simply didn't fit their shape the way they wanted or they just found the features a bit too young-looking, plenty of people decided that as pretty as Elly was, she just wasn't for them.

Designer Mochi Milena leads a pretty busy life between being a student and working with a charity that supports medical clinics in Vietnam, so she tends to drop teasers for her in-progress skin lines long before they're out. Kumi's been teased for more than a year, so now that she's been released it's time to convince those of you who may have written Pink Fuel off for being "not your style" to take another look at this beloved brand to see what's changed and what's stayed the same.

For example:

While Kumi is still pretty fresh-faced, she looks a bit more mature than super-sweet Elly (a skin that has become a favourite for family-oriented roleplayers in SL). Her features feel a little more refined, and she's not quite as 'dewy'. Don't get me wrong, I was and still am a huge fan of Elly, but Kumi is far closer to the kind of face I like Iris to have on day-to-day.

This face actually reminds me a lot of Asian internet makeup gurus like Michelle Phan and Pearypie, which is quite appropriate considering how many lipgloss/lipstick layers Mochi likes to bundle with her skins (with and without teeth, depending on your tastes). You can pick from several different brow colours as well and, although one of Kumi's selling points is the uncreased upper eyelid, the "Pure" makeup offer a creased variation as well.


With Kumi, Mochi has also branched out into a broader range of skin tones, offering much darker options than she has previously. Better yet, they're not too ashy or too orange looking. If you're looking for rich, dark skins with uncreased eyelids, Kumi is also one of only a handful of skins on the grid that provide the combination.

Mochi's makeups are also tweaked (and in some cases specific to certain tones) so they'll look natural on each skin tone rather than just being copied and pasted from the lighter ones, meaning that lipsticks for darker tones don't look awkwardly bright (or utterly invisible). If you like wearing darker skins but have a hard time finding makeup layers that work, I'd honestly recommend snagging Kumi just for the array of lip layers available on the off chance that they'll match with your other skins as well.

Take Kumi for a test-drive yourself at Pink Fuel on Atomic Island or check out more pics on Mochi's Flickr.

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Karma]

Curse you Iris! You have given away my secret treasure that is Pink Fuel skins, I have been wearing skin from Pink Fuel for over a year now and it is by far my favorite among even the leading skin creators. I love when people ask where my skin is form and I tell them, "Pink Fuel!"
I love the attention she puts into the entire skin, without going overboard on the shading. I also enjoy the tattoo layer attachments that take the typical breast shading a step further to an athletic chest or the other available options.
Really good work and I am actually GLAD to see her getting the attention she deserves.