Ophelia's Gaze: SL Avatars Meet a RL Doll Craze with Emma Gilmour's Bloom Dolls

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Bloom Dolls: Super cute, or super creepy? If you're one of the many Second Life users on Flickr, no doubt you're already familiar with their giant heads and somewhat vacant stares. The Bloom Doll Flickr group boasts nearly 400 members with over 800 Bloom pictures so far. Fashionistas love any reason to take pictures of their avatar, so gimmicks like these customizable avatars tend to take us by storm (as anyone who remembers the DP*yumyum bunny trend will tell you.)

So what the hell are these things anyway? Love them or hate them, keep reading for all the details!

Like the bunnies, the Bloom Dolls come in several varieties and are worn with your own hair and clothes. Each doll avatar costs L$600 and consists of a scripted head, a matching skin, and two shapes. The normal shape is pictured above for comparison, though the other included shape is even smaller.

Bloom designer, Emma Gilmour, recently fell hard and fast for a real life collectible fashion doll trend that inspired these bobbleheaded avatars. Blythe dolls (and their Korean cousins, Pullip) are a cult collectible favorite, beautifully bugeyed and a bit of an acquired taste. One of my favorite fashion bloggers, Gogo, is a former Blythe collector, and anyone who follows me on Plurk or Twitter knows about my own asian doll collection. They beg to be customized with scaled down clothing, wigs, and accessories, and Emma's encouraged the budding Bloom community to take the same approach with her creations.  In a lot of ways, dressing your avatar is no different than dressing a doll, so it's no surprise when doll lovers find their way to SL, and vice versa!

You can start building your own Bloom avatar at Sand Shack Surf Co. [Click here to teleport to Sand Shack Surf Co. in ARTILLERI]... and don't forget to take plenty of pictures!

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

[Adeon Writer]

Cute and creepy are NOT mutually exclusive!

It's not something I can get into since I don't wear female, but this is just downright creative. :)

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Thanks for the nightmares, Iris ;)

A few years ago my wife gladly parted with some Blythe dolls from her childhood in an eBay auction...I was astounded at how much she got for it. There's a cult following for those disturbing things.

It reminded me of the doll that stalked Karen Black's character in "Trilogy of Terror." I will try not to pull out the fake shotgun if I see one of these things in SL.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

Yeah I am vocally not a fan of these things... expensive photoshop props but if you dont PS these heads to death there are a lot of sculpted errors and stretches in them =/ I would have smoothed it before releasing these

[supra shoes for kids]

I'd actually love to review these boxes on my shopping/lifestyle blog. i wonder if they'd send me a sample box to talk about?