Build Up Your Real Vocabulary to Match Your Virtual Wardrobe With This Awesome New Fashionista Blog

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

If you've ever wanted to know the difference between a pleat and a pintuck, there's a new project by a group of experienced SL fashion bloggers that might be worth your time. The A to Z of Fashion Writing, a blog spearheaded by Cajsa Lilliehook among others, aims to inform fellow fashionistas and bloggers alike with illustrated lessons on crucial fashion vocabulary. Why is a solid fashion vocab so vital even when all the items in question are virtual? Well...

While I'll agree that while a great deal of hyper-technical fashion terminology may apply to virtual fashion in only a handful of cases (think stitching and fabric weight) there are few things that make a blogger seem more ignorant than when they use incorrect terminology... Or none at all. 

Take the collar diagram above. Now imagine a blogger talking about a virtual garment, and saying "the dart" or even "the dippy-inny part of the collar" when they mean to say "the notch". Having the right words at your disposal is one of the most important things for a blogger with any intention of writing, rather than relying on the pictures-only post format that is, quite frankly, wearing a bit thin.

The blog also offers a taste of history in some of its entries so far. I'm hoping that Cajsa and crew will eventually include some digital terminology -- words like "baking" and "skeleton" for example. A solid tech vocabulary is just as important as a fashionable one if you want to have a good grasp of the pixels and polygons in your petticoat.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, 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

[Wolf Baginski]

I am just going to check this out, but it sounds like something that some friends of mine would be interested in. It's not just virtual fashion bloggers who have an interest in knowing the jargon. I write fiction, and I might have a scene involving a tailor, for instance.

[Orca Flotta]

Pheew, I'm so happy I only have to write about the comparatively simple topic of sailboats. Maybe I should blog in German and blow you all away with my fancy vocabulary.

[Kerryth Tarantal]

This is so overdue. It drives me crazy, for instance, to see people talk about seams when they mean edges and hems.