Making Sense of Proenza Schouler & Seapunk in Second Life

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

Recently RL fashion label Proenza Schouler released a short machinima called "Desert Tide", featuring some of their designs implemented in Second Life alongside pink dolphins, particle waterfalls, and textures stretched beyond recognition. RL brands and designers have dabbled in SL before, and it rarely if ever is on par with what designers native to SL are producing at the time. Unsurprisingly, "Desert Tide" is no exception to that, nor does it want to be. Take a look, and I'll explain what I mean:

 

If you've been in SL at any point in the last few years, you might notice that it no longer has all that much in common with the scenery or the style being demonstrated. System skirts and bargain basement waterfalls and cheaply-made sculpty cars and floaty animations and unflattering lighting... Is it any wonder this video has had a less than fond reception among SLers? Just reading the Youtube comments tells you all you really need to know about what they think, like this comment from Meghindo Romano:

"Second Life as a online platform 3D looks very different nowdays from what's this video showing, and i don't know if those are Proenza Shcouler[sic] insipired[sic] dresses but clothes in SL look so much better than that, that scenary[sic], those clothes, those models, those animations, that pink dolphin, that car...atrocious! This video is a fail, for whoever paid for this video, do your background search better next time."

Or this one from GlamArtista:

"This is the problem when RL fashion stumbles upon SL. They have no clue how to make it translate into meaningful and marketable content and THIS happens. Not sure who ordered this work, but SL has some MAJOR fashion designers, some MAJOR set builders & some MAJOR cinematographers. This is a slap in the face to all of them. You guys should have googled a bit before you chose your participants. Shame."

I'm not among the crowd who find this video outright offensive, though. This isn't a case of brand arrogance and ignorance like Armani's failed SL store launch (which I wrote about back in 2007) where a designer or brand is releasing subpar items into Second Life and hoping to sell based on RL reputation alone, that would be offensive. Proenza isn't trying to make "meaningful or marketable content" at all. They're not even really trying to showcase their products in a flattering way. That's completely not the point of this film.

They're trying to tap into the seapunk aesthetic, which delights particularly in the ridiculous nature of digital art from the '90s and early '00s, down to the last animated dolphin. Think of it as a digital version of all the Lisa Frank nostalgia that's bubbling up recently. Depending on who you ask, seapunk is either a punchline, a dying fad, a rising trend, or not a thing at all-- but normal people can probably just tuck it somewhere under the hispter umbrella and move on. This isn't the first WTF movie to represent Proenza Schouler, like this video exploiting the rather offensive/distasteful "hipster indian" trend (which can't die fast enough for my taste), and it won't be the last. Obviously this isn't how Second Life looks in 2012, but it's not supposed to be-- this is just someone trying to make a bit of a joke, and most of us are probably too close to the subject to comfortably get it.

What I do find offensive is a lot of the ultra-lazy research that is going in to reporting about this, like in this post from Oyster which compares this machinima to an artist who ripped off Givenchy designs for their Sims 3 outfits. I can't decide what bothers me more: the fact that unoriginal digital copying of RL designs is being encouraged on the same level as original creation from an official brand, or the fact that the example they used of this problem that occurs constantly in just about every avatar fashion community is a year old.

But that's beside the point. The mistake the SL community is making is to perceive this as a personal attack and not just a platform choice. I have no doubt that this is exactly the look the Proenza Schouler team set out for, and they achieved it in SL more faithfully than they could have in Daz, Poser, IMVU ,or any other virtual space. So... Maybe that's something to be proud of?

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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

[Tenshi Vielle]

Someone should teach them the name Damien Fate, so they can avoid embarrassing themselves in the future with these types of endeavors.

[Iris Ophelia]

@Tenshi Guuuurl read my article before you comment. :P

[Gogo]

Great post Iris! I love what you said here:

They're not even really trying to showcase their products in a flattering way.

True, cos now I'm not really interested in their products at all. I'm not into ugly Orange things.

[Tenshi Vielle]

@Iris I did! I just feel like they've completely missed their mark. That's not ironic, or "vintage"- it's ridiculous.

[Austin Walker]

The problem is that the techniques that go into non-SL Seapunk productions are clearly intentional. It's a pastiche of past aesthetics, but it could never be mistaken for something actually created in an earlier time. But go back in time five years, and yes, aspiring artists in SL did actually make videos that looked like this. That's why so many are so quick to point out in comments that SL can do so much better.

That disconnect is frustrating if what you want from SL is to be able to bring in aesthetics and subcultures without any loss of cultural fidelity. I definitely understand the allure of that: when you really love something in one part of your life OF COURSE you want to bring it into another, where you can share it with others who you hope will enjoy it too. So finding out that the two things don't map directly onto each other definitely sucks. For my money, though, it's affirms that SL as a medium does best when creators understand its history, the context they're working in, and the material benefits and disadvantages of SL for artistic work, rather than try to simply copy an outside aesthetic and bring it in. At the end of the day, I don't think that's actually so bad.

[Pussycat Catnap]

First anyone who thinks this is credible needs a reality check:

"but SL has some MAJOR fashion designers, some MAJOR set builders & some MAJOR cinematographers."

- Um, yeah...

No.

There -ARE- however some people who are quite prominent SL digital artists, SL 3D model makers, and machinimatographers in SL.

***
As to the video... Its still bad, even if its meant to be bad, its just... bad...
And not in a good way...

Junk can get a buzzword and a french beret, and still be junk.

And that other video you linked of theirs, that other "WTF" video...
- After your recent two articles about that gender offensive video game... you should know better than to link a racist video without at least some verb-age acknowledging one major elements that makes it such a WTF video. The only word I can come up with for that one is 'Redface'... As in, if they put those two in Sambo outfits and black makeup, everybody'd be up in arms. But because they put them in 'Tonto and Cigar Shop Injun' costumes... its ok?

I know that video's not your statement... but you should realize its more than just a 'WTF fashion video.'

But thank you for the heads up on a brand to boycott.

[Iris Ophelia]

@Pussycat That's a good point, I'll add a note about that with the link since I do agree with you. I'm not at all a fan of the hipsters-in-native-clothing thing, and I'm eagerly awaiting the point when that fad dies for good. It's tasteless as hell at the best of times.

As for the video being good, bad... Well... it is was it is, and some people appreciate it and some people don't. I don't, but I know my own tastes are far from universal law. I'm far more comfortable saying that better research would have allowed for a more effective machinima, whatever their aesthetic choices.

[Vega]

Seapunk? Hipster Indians? Whoever heard of such a thing..

[Pussycat Catnap]

The Navajo nation is actually suing, not Proenza, but one of their imitators: Urban Outfitters. They were fool enough to label their stuff 'Navajo'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/fashion/an-uneasy-exchange-between-fashion-and-navajo-culture.html?pagewanted=all

I'm out of touch with the hipster thing. I'd thought it was blokes in rimmed hats and overly tight slacks.

/shakes paw at articles that make me feel old.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Oh and yeah - better research.

Retro is best done when it has a subtle touch of something not possible in the actual era. Or when it gives itself away as not actually the old stuff.

But as some have noted - the video looks like it could have been made in 2006. And many of us have seen something a lot like it back then...

Some of us look at the outfits and wonder if they're buried in that part of our SL wardrobe that has the label "OMG, noob junk from back then" on it.

Some of us have been past parts of mainland owned by folks who last logged in around 06 or 07, and have that car and that dolphin still rezzed on their land, next to that waterfall...

Get me a modern actor digitally filmed to "do the walk" over a version of Saturday Night Live recorded with Auto-tune...

Don't just loop the actual Travolta. :p

/facepalmeryallupinthisplace.

[howfar2be]

I wonder how many of the naysayers have actually stepped foot inside an art gallery in a non-digital setting?

This video is amazing for what it is. It's not meant to be compared to this or that in my opinion only. It is amazing all by itself-the simplicity and the concept. Outside looking in if you will, the in being Second Life.

As for the comments on the video, calling people in Second Life fashion designers is a stretch. They make things for avatars, that never see the real world, so therein lies the difference, but of course some will disagree.

I like it.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I don't think its amazing from "the outside in" in the least.

This is 2012. And any fool can record 5 minutes of video game footage.

And that's all this is.

It is not up to par with machinima.

Even by 2006 standards, since it uses 2006 objects and lighting... its still -beneath- what a digital artist would do in 2006.

Even in 2000... when I was in the community doing this kind of stuff... (I did stills though) living room hobbyists were doing better visuals and better animations in Poser and Daz and Bryce and Vue than this.

- Especially for things mean to be quirky and abstract.

But in 2012...

Again, any fool can record a few minutes of random video game footage, and put a music score over it. And this... this is less than event that.

[Narrow Arrow]

Well, 2006 or 2012, we can't get above limits set by Linden Lab. Dolphin will fly and car will jump if LL will not help us with improving the visual part of the whole thing.

[Maddy Gynoid]

After I watched the video for the first time, I had the same opinion as Pussycat. But the more I watched the video, the more I like it. I think Proenza Schouler has deliberately produced it that awkward, to provoke precisely the discussions that can be read here, on YouTube and in many fashion magazines.

There are hundreds of well done machinima on YouTube. With 'only' another state of the art production, Proenza would hardly be noticed.

[Adeon Writer]

I hear they were going for a 80's videogame look.

Second Life seems like the right thing for the job.

[Iggy]

Hipsters need real problems. I'm glad there are no pork pie hats or ironic beards in the video.

It's just an awful machinima, seapunk or not (thank you, Iris, for explaining what that is or was).

What's next in the compost heap of trends?

Abe Lincoln logpunk!

[joker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z0AWgOnk67A#!

"Best Graphics" in tech driven video games/platforms etc..has been a joke to all that truly are trained as visual designers for decades.

Further proof that "wisdom of crowds" and networked online amateur "art critics" have killed Art.

[jake85Harvey]

https://d27fcql9yjk2c0.cloudfront.net/assets/2164230/lightbox/mark2_assembly_001.jpg
Same equipment, other setting. It's all in people's hands.

[Cake]

There's a big chunk of information missing here: the effect of Tumblr on the trend of featuring Second Life imagery, that has cropped up in seapunk. This is why the choice to do this in Second Life was purposeful; images of crappy avatars are being reposted and reblogged through feeds now.

[Tikaf Viper]

As the maker of this video ... here's what I have to say.

Few, if any, know that the original footage (this film is just another cut) is part of the video installation set up in the shop Proenza Schouler opened on Madison Avenue. It's also displayed in parts over many vintage 1970's TV sets there, in very special lighting conditions, hence the special colour palette chosen, which looks indeed much different on a youtube page.
Anyways, good or bad to SLers is very far from my concerns. I was hired by RL clients for a RL job, and I did what they wanted.
I just like to think that assuredly, RL people paying RL dollars for a project as important as the opening of their first store on Madison Avenue did their background search right.

And just to answer to "get a better filmmaker next time", I just have to say that I have just finished and released the French version of >run RAM, with Iono Allen and Tutsy Navarathna for the voices. Surely, they wouldn't take that much time and efforts (Iono also helped me write the French version) for an utterly hopeless filmmaker...