Sash Arabello Showcases The Latest Fantasy-Inspired Fashions from SL Brand FATEplay

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

SL designer Damien Fate recently opened FATEplay, a new brand of fantasy and roleplay inspired mesh fashion. The brands launch lineup features a few outfits that would be right at home in any Lord of the RIngs setting, but my favorite so far has to be the Materials-Ready Wende dress. It's a very simple dress with gathered sleeves and fine golden embellishments, and this past week my blog-browsing has focussed heavily on seeing how fashionistas have been styling it.

Sash Arabello's shots of Wende for her blog The Ramblings of an SL Shopaholic might just be my favorites. Including the picture above, her images of FATEplay's Wende and Rochon dresses are richly colored, moody, and well edited, but not bogged down under too many brushes and filters and effects... Which can be tough to resist when you're taking fantasy-inspired fashion pics.

You can find more of Sash's pics on her aforementioned blog or on her Flickr, and don't forget to check out FATEplay's debut lineup for yourself in-world [SLURL].

Please share this post with people you like:

Tweet

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

[Pussycat Catnap]

This looks VERY interesting and I'm frustrated now that by the time I got home last night I forgot to go check it out.

/shakes paw at self.

BTW: Go check out Everquest Next Landmark. Its right up the ally for you and Hamlet. Second Life building style tools, inside an MMO (partly, landmark will be isolated, and have a not-yet-detailed system for getting your stuff added to the live game if approved). Even to the point of selling your builds. And it solves a long time issue with Second Life of licensing fullperm builder items: If I make a build using an item I bought from you, and your item is 50% of my build, you get 50% of my sales. If your item is only 5% of my build, you get 5% of my sales.

Everquest Landmark may end up being a popular place for a lot of SLers and Minecraft types, who might not even ever get the MMO side of it. I'm pretty sure I will be in Landmark, though not so sure I'll play the game side. It already has cat-furries...

Wasn't sure where to send this catch on to you folks... but since you've got a fantasy fashion blog here... /shrug. Only 80% off-topic. :P

So um... back to topic...

FATE is part of the coldlogic team, and of course the FATE store for the male side of things (they should link that branding together better). These two stores always put out very high quality mesh clothing - that always fits well to 'standard sizes' even if your other shape dials are very different (my avatar being proportional and standard sized - I'm about 25 feet shorter than the standard size shapes at 5'4"...).

And their styles have ranged from professional to casual and never 'skanky'. Which makes them extremely popular in a world of mostly 'hooker-wear'...

So I'm very eager to see their take on fantasy; which is mostly dominated by Gorean and 'lets all pretend we're French and English circa 800-1400AD'.

- While they will probably be in the second of those two camps, they'll probably do it better than most do.

[Damien Fate]

Thanks for the blog Iris!

The featured dress was actually made with materials in mind, so it definitely used them better. The other items were present at Fantasy Faire way back and so were made before materials went live.

@Pussycat - Thanks for the kind words :D We really work hard at making everything fit well, it's not easy! Just to clarify the branding issue though all FATE brands are done by myself alone, whereas coldLogic is a collaborative effort between myself, Zyrra Falcone and Janie Marlowe - it has a different production pipeline completely to how I do clothes in the other stores, and so it is separate for that reason :)

Iris, I know you're gonna love this next set I am working on, it is actually based on your suggestion during a conversation we had a long while ago :D

[Iris Ophelia]

@Pussycat Don't worry I'm definitely planning to talk about EQ Next very soon, along with some other stuff from QuakeCon. :)

[Sash Arabello]

Omg, the feels. Thank you.. I'm speechless :D

[what?]

The clothes are nice, but....

In the Fate advertising you show young men, young women, old men, and .... not old women. Seriously? Are old women invisible? Untouchable?

We are more than half the population of SL. We have money and time and talent and interest. How hard is it to make clothes for old women? Is it beyond your competence or are old women just so embarrassing that you can't imagine spending the time to make something pretty for them.

Ageism sucks. Evolve, please.

[Srs Bsns?]

Who said old women can't wear the clothes even if they aren't used as models in the ads?

Clothesism sucks. Evolve, please.

Fashist.

[Pussycat Catnap]

/sigh...

Somebody send me a stupid notecard inworld...

I've STILL forgotten to go to this place and for the past two nights I've even logged into SL thinking "there's something I want to do... but what..." and ended up just AFKing it...

@Damian: Yeah I know coldlogic is a team and FATE is just you, but from my looking around the common thing is the quality. Your prices are often high for my casual budget, but I rarely worry about -what- I am buying when I do. The stuff always not only fits well, but ALSO animates right...

- And that's another key thing about mesh clothes. I'm sure others have bought a wonderful looking item only to start walking and see things like a skirt tear or an arm bend all funny... the FATE/coldlogic stuff doesn't do that. Its well rigged...

[Pussycat Catnap]

"In the Fate advertising you show young men, young women, old men, and .... not old women. Seriously? Are old women invisible? Untouchable?"

Its rare to find good older skins in SL. I see a lot of youthful 20s/30s, and then granny. Like we go from 'wine' to 'raisin' and skip everything in between.
- And that gets worse, by the way, if your skin tone is darker. If there is an older African or even 'brown person' skin out there, I've not come across it (though I'm sure it exists).