Iris Ophelia's Fashion Top Ten for March

Exclusive to NWN, the elegant fashionista selects (and often models) her favorite fashions for the month

A monthly top ten list of Second Life fashion releases is a daunting task. Think about how many releases come out every day on the New Products forums alone, and how many are released unannounced into the dark, immersive waters of SL consumerism. 100 items a day would be a conservative guess. Multiply that by the 28 days of last month, and account for the usual period of heightened releases surrounding holidays like Valentine’s Day, and you have a very long list to boil down. As they were so hard to pick in the first place, I could never order these items from best to not-so-best. Instead, I’ve chosen to order them alphabetically by store/brand names.

That being said, I invite anyone to post about an item released in the last few weeks that they absolutely adored and that I neglected to mention, because my idea of the crème de la crème is by no means universal.

Casa Del Shai: Adulterer Suit
Valentines day brought out a lot of clothes for women, and yet out of all the V-Day outfits released, the most unique, impressive, and creative release was for men. The Adulterer Suit released by Shai Delacroix of Casa Del Shai comes in navy blue or black, and each come with jacket layers, tucked and untucked shirt options, collars with kiss or without, even a choice of flexi-prim ties. A clever idea with immaculate execution definitely earns this suits its place on the list.

D3volution: The Threadbare line
Govindira Galatea, Fade Dana, and the other contributors to the D3volution line came out with a series of Threadbare outfit elements in February. The detail of the rips, runs, and strings hanging from the pieces are done with the utmost care, but what actually impressed me the most is the structure of the skirt. it is not a series of cut cylinders, nor is it a cone. Ratherm the flexible element is connected to a torus, which gives the skirt a subtle change in silhouette that really compliments the detailing and design. This outfit is literally a perfect mess.

Kyoot: The Photosphere
Saeya Nyanda recently opened up her new shop, Kyoot, with the Photosphere as its headlining product. I will admit in the spirit of full disclosure that Saeya passed Photospheres out to several Residents and fashionistas alike, including myself. Because of the spherical build, there are no seams in the background, and you can move your camera to different angles without having to reposition your avatar against the backdrop. I’ve loaded mine up with my favourite Torley Textures, and used it for all the shots shown in this article. The Photosphere is not enough to make me pack up my N30 Studio yet, however it’s a fabulous option for fashion snaps because it takes up fewer prims than the average sofa, and costs no more than a good skin.

Last Call: Nadirra
Dazzle is dead, long live Last Call! This phoenix-like reemergence is best represented (as far as I’m concerned) by Ginny Talamasca’s Nadirra gown, which literally knocked the wind out of me the first time I saw it. Ever colour chosen is so intense and perfectly complimentary to the other colour on each dress that, paired with the effect of the skirt overlay and the amazingly rich texture detail, this gown is easily worth five times the price asked. Every now and then a gown is released that absolutely cannot look bad on anyone, and this is definitely one of those dresses.

Little Rebel Designs: Peacock Back Tattoo
This is more of a representative choice. Jonquille Noir released a number of tattoos recently, including the Peacock tattoo shown, and all of them really caught my eye. There’s a fine line to tread when it comes to making a colourful SL tat, either making it look too cartoony, or too photographic and detached. Either extreme usually results in an awkward look. If you can hit it right in the middle, then you’ve done a great job. Jonquille’s used very appropriate, slightly muted colours to create some very artistic and very believable body art.

Love Lace: Exotic
Another representative choice, really. Nephilaine Protagonist and Launa Fauna (whose absence from the front-lines of fashion has been something I’ve been mourning as much as Lo Jacobs’) released a line of lingerie leading up to Valentine’s Day, complete with a series of sultry ads which, in many cases, did not do justice to the actual products. Sadly, neither have I. For the most part, the Love Lace releases are not typical SL lingerie. A lot of color, style, and class has been imbued into the sets, covering a wide range of tastes and coming in over and underclothes layers. Exotic is definitely my favourite, though admittedly the bottoms make me a little nervous.

Naughty Designs (Influence): Winsome I&II
This may be a little too much ponytail for some. I was incredibly skeptical about it when I tried the demo on, because I’m not a “big hair” type of girl. The Winsome ponies have curls that rest on your back and coil lightly around your shoulder from a straight-on angle. With a turned head it looks like a really full cascade. I get nothing but compliments with this mane on, and while I recommend it, I also really recommend trying on a demo first. Winsome’s not for the faint of heart.

Nicky Ree: Faerydae
Two words: Beyond stunning. Two more words: Acquired taste. The peach version of this dress has been everywhere, so I decided to show lavender for the sake of variety. The dresses are colourful and detailed in a really charming way (which is pretty typical of Nicky Ree’s work) with lots of accessories. At the same time, Faerydae isn’t something a lot of us will get regular wear out of, and that is definitely our loss.

Random: Mischell
Garbage Prototype released Mischell as a test to get feedback and an overall feel for her new textures (as posted in the forums). So, she released this charming red and black pigtailed style for L$10. Garbage’s old hair textures never looked quite right on me, so I leapt at the chance to try out Mischell. There’s a great balance between fluffy alpha-tipped textures and playfully wavy and curled prims. I’ll be 100% clear here: A+ on this test.

Tête à Pied: Prim Nail Line
Once more in the interest of full disclosure I’ll admit that I was given a review set of these nails by Roslin Petion. I’m a little mistrusting of hand attachments, because my animation override is prone to making fists for poses I like too much to remove. In spite of that, these nails have really grown on me. Prim nails haven’t been widely done. A little less than a year ago, a store (which I believe was named Hex) released prim nails, but doesn't seem active of late. Roslin’s nails have a nice shine and very cute polish options, including the hearts (my favorite by far), and come with gloves to mask the nails of your skin, as well as a left and right hand set adjusted for size 20, size 30, and size 40 hands. While I can’t see prim nails making as much of an impact as prim lashes, they add a little something extra to an outfit which a plain glove or skin manicure can’t, simply because of the difficulty and awkwardness of texturing those areas directly, so kudos to Roslin for her hard work perfecting prim polish.

All images by Iris Ophelia.  Visit her pose store, Orchidee-- direct teleport here.  And read more from Iris at her blog.

Comments

[Aenea Nori]

What a great article, Iris! I love this idea, and thanks for recommending a bunch of things which I hadn't seen, or hadn't been able to find (I'm talking about you, Faerydae :) I look forward to this feature going forward!

I need to go through my inventory to see if I can come up with an adequate suggestion to add to this list...

[Hjoerdis Stenvaag]

I'm a relative newbie and find this incredibly helpful and the designers were also very helpful. The one thing I was frustrated about is that I liked several of the shoes that you were showing with other items and would have loved to know where they came from as well.

If you keep writing, I'll keep reading.

[Roslin Petion]

Hey Iris, thanks for the mention. I would like to point out that my business partner CJ Carnot was responsible for actually building the nails and putting in an AO to take care of hand movements.