Iris Wants To Know: Where Have All The Virtual Gowns Gone?

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

One of the most recognizable Second Life stereotypes is a female avatar with red lips, smokey eyeshadow, and one hell of a space-devouring ballgown envelloping her. I used to see these gowns all over the place, in stores and on avatars, sources of ire at events... But these days it seems like the craze has died down, or died off completely.

Obviously gowns are still being made and sold and certainly worn, but I feel like I don't see them out and about as often as I used to. It seemed like there were some people who wore nothing but gowns, but now the big gripe at an event will usually be the person wearing the high-poly accessories more than the girl in the obscenely broad gown.

Of course I could very well be wrong; I was never all that into gowns, so the friends I made and places I began frequenting usually weren't either. Maybe at this point I'm just on the wrong side of the whole equation to know for sure. Still, I'm a little fascinated with the idea of ballgowns being some of the most prominent fashion items available in a fledgling (at the time) virtual world, whether they're still in vogue for some or not.

So that's why I want to hear from you. Are you in recovery from your crinoline habit, or do you simply save it for certain occasions? Were you (or are you) a ballgown-groupie, or do you know someone who was? Is the scene in sharp decline, or is it as strong as ever? I'm dying to know the story behind the rise (and fall?) of these virtual dresses.

(Picture courtesy of LC fashion on the SL Marketplace)

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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

[Terry]

I think that because a large percentage of female avatars are in fact real life males, the shift has been to more 'revealing' attire. Clicking the "Best Selling Products" link on the Market Place will prove the point that 'sex sells' and who is the primary audience for that? Males.

[Andilynne]

I personally still wear gowns, although in more of a gothy or darkly beautiful as I like to call it, manner. I also wear mesh breasts and find it very difficult to find beautiful gowns with appliers, especially affordably priced. Big breast seem to equal slut wear, which just is not my thing. It seems every hunt for ladies with these breast involves these skimpy little outfits, so much so that I've been wanting to speak with a few designers about sponsoring a hunt with more conservative gowns. It also seems with the introduction of mesh the flexi gown has gone out the window. And yes, I still wear those billowing skirts at times that smack people in face when I twirl around them. Stick your nipples back in your top, sweetie, then complain to me about it ;-)

[Pussycat Catnap]

I buy mesh gowns for my avatar almost daily (when in SL). I've got so many now this weekend I had to start making sub-sub-sub-folders.
clothing - mesh - gowns - general style of gown.

I see them all over the place in shops. In the places I visit, people on mesh have adopted a more 'normal' fashion though. Hoochie-wear seems to dominate the body-paint crowd... but the mesh people will wear things one might actually go outside in in 'real life'.

And sadly, most gowns to be occasion themed. Last time I had a co-worker who wore a dress to work everyday, I kept instinctively wondering if she was trapped in some kind of fundamentalist cult...
- You just don't see folks wearing them in 'the real world' anymore outside of special events.

Mesh has, for good or ill, caused more people to adopt SL fashions more close to RL fashions.

[Pussycat Catnap]

To add to the above: In the flexi + body paint era, gowns were partly so common because they were one of the easiest attachment using clothing items to make. Simply take a cube or cut cylinder and repeat it around the body.

They were so common because it was a beginning builder item. You could expand on that with belts, ribbons, multiple layers, and such - but the core was easy and in fact, a beginner class at NCI.

But if you look at these things, they're pretty strange. Sit down and it falls through you, move too fast and you walk out of it, and where it meets the body textures often fail to line up. Its no wonder that mesh gowns are so popular - they look so much better. You sacrifice that swirl with the twirl... but you can design to for this by making dresses that are closer fitting or have the appearance of a frame.

And with mesh now, many merchants can just buy a template and color it in. Don't even need that most basic of builder skills if your texturing art skills can hold up.

[Zaine Karu]

I wear ballgowns to formal events/places. I still wear mostly flexi gowns because I love the way it swirls around me when I dance. I have some mesh and partial mesh gowns but I don't find myself wearing them often. If I'm not going formal-wear-required dancing, I don't wear long (ball)gowns.

[Eshi]

Rigging ballgowns produces unsavory results especially when it comes to dancing. As far as production, I hardly find it worth making dresses anymore because of mesh - and given that mesh cannot offer flexibility and gravity exploits more and more SL clothes resemble RL stuff.

[Alicia Chenaux]

C'mon Iris. How will people see that a girl has a thigh gap you can drive a truck through if she's wearing a big ballgown??

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Terry wrote: "I think that because a large percentage of female avatars are in fact real life males, the shift has been to more 'revealing' attire. Clicking the "Best Selling Products" link on the Market Place will prove the point that 'sex sells' and who is the primary audience for that? Males."

@Terry: A lot of men in SL think that, but they would be wrong. The majority of female avatars are ran by women, (Including the transgendered folks who identify as such) In fact, of all the female avatars I know, and after 7 years, I know a LOT... I know of only two who are ran by non-transgendered men. You can go to any voice enabled hub to see it in action. All those sexed up female avatars? Stay-at-home-moms, part-time students, art-school-girls, gen-x women with flexible work schedules. The fashion designers...women. The bloggers...women.

Now you may be thinking that "Real women would never dress like that.", but you're forgetting one simple thing.

SL is like a permanent Halloween.

You know how women in RL often play with "Sexy" at Halloween. Sexy Nurse, Sexy cat, Sexy Abe Lincoln! Well SL is like that all the time... a safe place to play with "sexy". You know those two adorable ladies from Croatia that run "Boudoir" that Hamlet likes to mention now and then? Go check out their inventory...you will see a LOT of burlesque inspired stuff and costumery along side faboo gowns.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/07/croatian-sl-designers.html

Or Emma Gilmour:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2013/01/mon-tissu-profile-emma-sl-fashion-designer.html

As a matter of fact, the whole ball gown phenomen was a result of the fact that SL is like a permanent Halloween. How many women get a chance to ever wear a pimped out ballgown and tiara? Well in SL...you can.
As Linden Lifestyles tagline used to say: "Our Wardrobe is better than Barbies" What some people haven't figured out is that SL is "Chickworld/Womensworld". LL is embarassed to admit that their Snowcrash inspired singularity-leading Sandbox has become very popular as "Barbie Dream House XTREME" to a lot of women.

Where are the ballgowns? In my inventory.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cronocloudcreeggan/9336885842/

You still see pimped out gowns in the various retro-communities like Dieselpunk, Steampunk, Fantasy and Medieval communities. I still where them now and then, though I also have modern style formals and daytime appropriate things. After all, Audrey Hepburn is one of my RL fashion influences on my SL avatar. I do tend to dress up a bit more than most, it is uncommon to see my avatar in jeans, though I do wear them.

And recently I bought a Pimped Out Ball gown simply because of how over-the-top in size it was. Sometime I'll just slap it on and where it to my social venues or head to Foxxies/Sweethearts/Franks and rock it with a Tiara. That's right, I have a Tiara and I know how to use it.

[kitty revolver]

As someone who played around with making mesh wedding gowns, I actually had a hard time with big gowns and walking. My legs would continue to pop out, meaning, not only legs had to be alphaed but the shoes too (which would also deform the mesh).

Perhaps, as a male, I am not drawn to the gown category. I also never had any formal events that I went to as a female avatar. I would wear cocktail dresses all the time on my first av, but that was about how formal I would get.

[Cicadetta Stillwater]

Somehow, I still pick up a ball gown here and there. It's too easy to do, especially if you're part of certain groups. Even if you're in those groups more for the casual wear (including casual dresses.) And then I rarely find a reason to get all gussied up.

They are still fun to wear from time to time, especially on some avatars. A bunny in a ball gown? Oh yes. But SL ballrooms are just too, well... formal. So there you go.

Note to self: Wear them more often. Even if that means going bunny or, FSM-forbid, humanoid. :p

[Tracy RedAngel]

I've always found it interesting is that almost without exception most women will wear very formal gowns to even the most modest wedding in SL. I would be lying though if I said I didn't like this, because it's always given me an excuse to wear a pretty frock. I've never worn the huge toilet paper holder gowns, but I have a small selection of gowns from Utopia and Sonia which 3 years ago were THE places to go for really pretty gowns (and pretty pricey at that).
I think mesh gowns are still evolving, but my favorites are from Baiastice. They're also much more reasonably priced than the huge toilet paper roll gowns of old. Rebel Hope also makes some beautiful formal gowns. But as wonderful as mesh gowns are...I STILL love to wear my cha-cha dress from Purple Moon ...I'll never toss that one in the garbage lol

[Terry]

@CronoCloud said: "A lot of men in SL think that, but they would be wrong. The majority of female avatars are ran by women, (Including the transgendered folks who identify as such) In fact, of all the female avatars I know, and after 7 years, I know a LOT... I know of only two who are ran by non-transgendered men. You can go to any voice enabled hub to see it in action. All those sexed up female avatars? Stay-at-home-moms, part-time students, art-school-girls, gen-x women with flexible work schedules. The fashion designers...women. The bloggers...women."

---------------------
I stand by my "large percentage" of female avatars are really men statement... Not the majority, but a LARGE percentage:

"Actual blind surveys show that perhaps 20-35% of the female avatars in SL have male operators."
Source:  http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussions/Why-do-men-create-female-alts/td-p/264691/page/2

"The avatar gender balance in Second Life is significantly different to the other two games. Within the 41 valid Second Life samples, 30 (73%) users played using a female avatar but only 11 (26%) users played using a male avatar."
Source: http://wow.parc.com/blog/playon/2008/07/avatar_survey_gender_demograph.html

Also a female voice is no guarantee that a female is at the controlling end of an avatar with the convincing voice changing apps that have been available for some time now.
Real Time Voice changer software MorphVox Pro video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13t69RVq1YY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Men can so completely role play a female character, that one RL woman believed she was virtually marrying another woman, when in fact it was a man... Confused? Apparently so was she.
Source: http://alphavilleherald.com/2009/05/is-your-second-life-woman-a-real-life-man.html

Now theoretically we should have about a 50/50 split in male to female ratio in SL, but empirically we don't.  Visit a busy sandbox such as Fermi, and count the number of female avatars.  Then count the number of male avatars.

And finally we have Internet Rule #30. There are NO girls on the internet.
Source:  http://rulesoftheinternet.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Flo2]

.."Actual blind surveys show that perhaps 20-35% of the female avatars in SL have male operators.."
Perhaps, but they are counter-balanced by the male avatars who have actual RL female operators...
No kidding, in my SL environment suddenly I experience more and more male avatars operated by RL women. So, that's why suddenly ball gowns are not purchased so much... their owners seek tuxedos instead. :)

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I think creator focus has shifted to mesh, to the extent that we're seeing some really snotty asides about designers who don't use it.

When we get mesh that flows properly, I expect the full-skirted fantasy gowns will make a comeback. They're just too gorgeous to stay dormant. Fashion cycles. Very few things go away forever, though I certainly hope we've seen the last of the Elizabethan ruff.

[Terry]

@Flo2 said: "Perhaps, but they are counter-balanced by the male avatars who have actual RL female operators..."

No, the study showed that while the male operated female avatars are in the range of a 27.5% mean, the female operated male avatars was only in the 10.25% range.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Terry wrote: I stand by my "large percentage" of female avatars are really men statement... Not the majority, but a LARGE percentage:

@Terry: You really shouldn't stand by that, because it's not 1995 anymore. You are thinking that SL is like the internet of the past, and it isn't.

Terry wrote: "Actual blind surveys show that perhaps 20-35% of the female avatars in SL have male operators."
Source: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussions/Why-do-men-create-female-alts/td-p/264691/page/2

@Terry: What, you're quoting someone quoting a study and not the study itself directly? And a post from 3 years ago? Times change, and sometimes people get the facts wrong.

Terry wrote: "The avatar gender balance in Second Life is significantly different to the other two games. Within the 41 valid Second Life samples, 30 (73%) users played using a female avatar but only 11 (26%) users played using a male avatar."
Source: http://wow.parc.com/blog/playon/2008/07/avatar_survey_gender_demograph.html

@Terry: That survey was from 5 years ago! Times have changed. That survey also shows that the PLAYER balance is 50/50...which is what you were claiming as not being true. 20 percent, not being a "large percentage".

Terry wrote: Also a female voice is no guarantee that a female is at the controlling end of an avatar with the convincing voice changing apps that have been available for some time now.

@Terry: Those apps are NOT convincing, I've tested them. They make the voices sound artificial and synthy...haven't found one yet that could get past my ears. The guy who did that video said himself the voices sounded "digitalized" and that you could tell they were fake!

Terry wrote: Men can so completely role play a female character, that one RL woman believed she was virtually marrying another woman, when in fact it was a man... Confused?

No, why would I be confused when Transgender folks exist in RL and I'm one of them. Besides, that was Tabloid Journalism.

Terry wrote: Now theoretically we should have about a 50/50 split in male to female ratio in SL, but empirically we don't.

@Terry: We don't? Where is the data, and I don't mean data from 2008. And why should the split be 50/50? Why couldn't SL appeal more to women? After all you're replying to a post written by a woman.

Terry wrote: Visit a busy sandbox such as Fermi, and count the number of female avatars. Then count the number of male avatars.

@Terry: You want me to judge the SL gender ratio from a..Sandbox? We all know that the Sandboxers tend to be oldbie builder/scripter dudes who think they're no women on the internet...that's hardly a good representative sample of the SL audience in general that will avoid selection bias.

Terry wrote: And finally we have Internet Rule #30. There are NO girls on the internet.
Source: http://rulesoftheinternet.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

@Terry: I can't believe you're quoting that old meme full of thinly veiled geek misogyny in 2013. We both know it's not true, and never was.

@Arcadia: I think you're right about mesh affecting the number of ballgowns made. Hopefully we'll get better flowing mesh...someday.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"Rigging ballgowns produces unsavory results especially when it comes to dancing. As far as production, I hardly find it worth making dresses anymore because of mesh"

I've got tons of mesh gowns and dresses that look great when my avatar dances. Pondering if I should start posting up screenshots of them.

No they don't swirl out when you twirl, but they still look great otherwise.

The whole ballgown thing is not my ethnic demographic anyway - and even if I wanted to go to those places they tend to not allow me as a furry and look down on me as a neko - so I never got into the social scene... BUT places for it ARE still pretty high in search rankings.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"I think creator focus has shifted to mesh, to the extent that we're seeing some really snotty asides about designers who don't use it."

I prefer mesh to the point of basically boxing up almost all my non mesh inventory in a slow process - not just clothing.

BUT such comments are unwarranted in the extreme.

MOST mesh in SL is templates. Anyone with Photoshop or Gimp and the talent to create a texture can become the next big thing in mesh now. No ability to even know what a 3D modeling program is. The array of templates available is far greater now than was ever available for body-paint and sculpty clothing before.

I'm dismissive of pre-mesh clothing, sure. Its bad technology IMO: looks painted on with sculpty attachments looking like 'cheap props for a middle school Christmas play taped onto the kid's leotards'.

BUT the skills to be a "designer" in both worlds are now near identical.

Premesh you had the challenge of making the same old 'texture map' look like something different... but the fallback that you essentially always began with the same image: the avatar UV map or something drawn onto it.

Now, you have the challenge of taking a different image each time and making it look good, but the fallback that your starting 'UV map' more closely fits your finished goal.

I'll be dismissive of the end product of 'body paint clothes' but that's different from dismissive of the people making it. Its a texture artist either way.

If you're a template maker, or one of the few who makes their own original mesh - then you have a technical skill above many of the rest, but you might still completely lack any artistic skill as a texturer. If you happen to have both skill sets, then you're lucky, and somewhat amazing. The number of people in this last camp is probably less than a dozen in all of SL. Most of even the 'original mesh' shops are actually teams of 2 to 3 people. :)

[Pussycat Catnap]

""Actual blind surveys show that perhaps 20-35% of the female avatars in SL have male operators."
Source: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussions/Why-do-men-create-female-alts/td-p/264691/page/2"

First, that link actually doesn't go to a survey. Just to someone saying a survey says such and such. So its not proof of anything. The survey might exist, but link that please.

Second, the other claim, of the women who play males, is not even on that page.

Second, as noted above its very OLD.

Third, if correct, it actually proves the point:

65-80% of those fem avatars are women - that's a high stat.

Fourth... 60-85... that's a massive range. Such a range essentially means an unreliable survey...

10% of women play males - that's low, but not insignificant. There are fewer options for males in SL, and less sociability: so this figure more likely represents people with a reason to stick to the other gender, rather than just enjoying it. But that's speculation on my part.

[Ajax Manatiso]

That study has statistics pulled out of someone's rectum because there is no verified documentation - just guessing -- and whatever sampling was extremely tiny because I have never heard of anyone being asked (and they wouldn't answer if they had). The real number is probably closer to 5%. And as for gowns, come over to Ajax's Romance Garden on a Sat and you will see dozens of ladies in gowns.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I have no idea how to get comments back to ball gowns... :)

Yeah the few times I've had women friends confide in me that their male avatar was in fact them - its come with a story and been relayed in confidential channels.

Its not something commonly said publicly.

Except by builders, clothing makers, and avatar designers - who will casually note their cross gendered avatars as model alts.

**********************
"Terry wrote: Visit a busy sandbox such as Fermi, and count the number of female avatars. Then count the number of male avatars.

@Terry: You want me to judge the SL gender ratio from a..Sandbox?"
-------------
Sandboxes are the last place to go to be 'fashion conscious and social'. Or at least that's always been my impression. Granted, I'm very rarely in one. And I only know one person who visits them regularly - female friend of a female friend.

To draw a counter extreme: If I were to tell someone wanting to know what SL was like to spend a day at 'luskwood', they'd come away thinking this was a place where people into furries go to chat about video graphics cards... That SLers were a bit geeky on the 'build you own PC' side, liked metal music, had a strange fascination with neon-purple, but were generally polite people.

Sandboxes are not a cross-section of SL, they are merely one community. They haven't been a cross-section for many years, if ever.

***** BACK ON TOPIC *****
"I think you're right about mesh affecting the number of ballgowns made. Hopefully we'll get better flowing mesh...someday."
------------------

Go and look for 'mesh tails'... The 'Jerboa Tail' is one I just bought. Consider whether or not whatever it is doing... could be done with a dress.
- There is also an animated on at the shop 'Spare Parts'. And in Marketplace, a maker that puts out some for 'fluffy tails' and demon tails. All three of these are fully animated. But a fourth tail offers another option: texture transparency animated - it flips which faces are opaque to give the illusion of animation.

The 'Jerboa Tail' seems to be the superior method - animated by moving small links in a chain. Visually looks semi-random, but is actually based on timing alternating rotations and a wave like curve. Whoever figured out the math for that could likely make math to do it on a dress - and suddenly you would have flowing gowns in SL. Especially if the math could account for avatar position now versus a second ago. Oddly, of all the mesh tails I have tried, the Jerboa one seems to be BOTH the most complex, and the least script intensive. I can see my FPS go UP when I change from any other tail to this one... and its script mem is lower than the others despite seeming to do more. That just means its well made: I imagine someone else could easily create the same effect very poorly and lag crash a sim...

So the secret to making flowing mesh gowns -IS- out there... somebody just has to convince one of these mesh tail makers that there is $$$ to be made by adopting their technique to another use.

[Terry]

CronoCloud said: "That survey was from 5 years ago! Times have changed. That survey also shows that the PLAYER balance is 50/50...which is what you were claiming as not being true. 20 percent, not being a "large percentage".

5 years ago is still well within the current generation, dated to be sure, but what has changed in human behavior in 5 years? No, my assertion is that a LARGE percentage of female avatars are controlled by real life males. I've never said the majority.

If you do not think that 20% is a significant amount then please forward me 20% of your salary. ;-)

You have obviously misunderstood - The 50/50 male/female is for RL people, not SL avatars. The SL avatars was 73/26 - 73% female avatars when only 50% of real people are female??? Hrmmmm.... think think think, what is wrong with those numbers??? Well, they don't add up to 100% for one, but too easy... care to guess? (Hint: 50/50 male/female 'players', 26/73 male/female avatars)

A few years ago LL did indeed run a survey when you logged in to the viewer (I took part in it), that asked if you were playing the same gender yadda yadda. The posted results of the time were that 20% of males are playing as females, and that they believed this number to be much higher due to dishonest feedback. I have searched online and cannot find any published surveys. If you do locate them please reference. Contrary to popular belief however - everything isn't online.

CronoCloud said: "You want me to judge the SL gender ratio from a..Sandbox? We all know that the Sandboxers tend to be oldbie builder/scripter dudes who think they're no women on the internet...that's hardly a good representative sample of the SL audience in general that will avoid selection bias."

Logical fallacy. I checked Little Blue today - the female avatar count was 12, males were 7. All but one female avatar was just dancing in place, not building or testing a scripted item. If you happen to find anyplace in SL that has a sampling crowd other than a public place such as a sandbox or a dance club, please let us know as most of SL is a ghost town.

CronoCloud said: "We don't? Where is the data, and I don't mean data from 2008. And why should the split be 50/50? Why couldn't SL appeal more to women? After all you're replying to a post written by a woman."

Ruling out 5 year old data because it is 5 years old is also a logical fallacy. Do you rule out the 2000 population census because it is 3 years old? It will be 10 years old before the next census. As you say - prove me wrong. Where is your data that refutes that a large percentage of female avatars are male controlled? All you have given is an opinion based on a small circle of 'like' friends.

The internet rule # 30 - I had hoped it was obvious I wasn't serious, next time I will be sure to add a smiley face, just to be safe not to offend anyone.

Anyway, back to ball gowns, never bought one.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"If you happen to find anyplace in SL that has a sampling crowd other than a public place such as a sandbox or a dance club, please let us know as most of SL is a ghost town."

This is not so much because SL is a ghost town, but rather it is not a single community. SL is a series of different fragmented communities that have a number of crossover connections but are largely independent.

Its going to be hard to get a sample that can generalize to SL no matter where one looks.

I think that's also why this blog article exists... Iris has likely shifted communities over time, consciously or not, and is simple no longer pulling impressions from the same sample as before. So ball gowns seem rarer to her now because, among the samples she sees - they are not the meme.

What circles you travel in will have a LOT of impact in SL. Communities that in RL are a lot more separated, or that exist in private hobbies, exist here in SL both still very separate, yet also easily colliding...

(Tinies and Goreans for example: nothing in common, completely separate communities. SL can let a person in each have a completely different perception of SL... On the one hand they are more apart here than in RL in how they can wall themselves into their own echo chambers. But on the other hand the nature of SL lets them randomly collide more easily... and in fact I count among my closest SL friends a Tiny who regularly builds alongside a Gorean in joint projects who's final results end up made for two unrelated markets... but they met randomly in a builder class as newbies...)

- But you wouldn't get a good sample from a builder class either. Most SLers don't end up in them... Go to one, and all you really have is a sample of people who like building...

Which becomes the problem of any sampling for SL. It just becomes a sample of the theme for where it was taken. Even in an infohub...

[Terry]

All good points and well taken Pussycat. Perhaps if another survey was added to the login screen (after logging in, it pops up). Of course that would mean that LL would have to implement it, and I don't think they care as long as lindens are spent.

[Selina Greene]

Going back to the post itself...
I have only worn formal year for the past five years or so. My hems are all covered in horse poop from tending the breedable horses in my gowns! However, I'm a vintage avi who only wears clothes from 1910s-40s so I've never been a fan of the enormous skirts as in Ophelia's picture. I wear a mixture of mesh and flexi gowns but have to say I prefer the look of mesh when I move. I'm personally glad to see the decline of the super-skirt because I hate disappearing under someone else's apparel!

[Adeon Writer]

That lady in the pic must have some really long legs!

[JJ]

The whole man controlling female avatar thing is an idiotic discussion. It doesn't matter what the percentage is. It would only (possibly) account for a decrease in gowns if the percentage had substiantially INCREASED, and there is no evidence that it has. In fact you yourself defend the use of old data.

THAT is YOUR "logical fallacy."

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

I hope Pussycat is right that flowing and swirling mesh gowns will come to SL, because Kitty is definitely right about the drawbacks of flexiprim skirts. I can also sympathize with Andilynne; there is a growing number of breast attachment-friendly clothiers making gowns and non-slutwear (yay! and bless them, we are forever in their debt) but we of the busty community often, aside from some cases where careful mix-and-match has decent results, can but look in the windows of Rebel Hope or Nicky Ree with big puppy dog eyes, wishing we could wear some of the gorgeous clothing there.

I'll tell you the store I miss: The Crystal Queendom, an amazing store chock full of ornate and beautiful gowns, the sort of thing you'd imagine wearing on a parade float, especially for Mardi Gras.

[Wolf Baginski]

My first "virtual world" account is old enough to vote. And FurryMUCK is still running. They were joking about the number of female characters run by men even then, and that was far less common than you might think. Some of the women playing expressed some startlingly extreme sexual fantasies, and I had seen that in other places a decade earlier.

"Oh, that's really a man," is often a denial that a real woman would want to indulge in sexual fantasies.

As for voice, I have a rather high-pitched male voice, and I use a voice-changer to drop the pitch of my voice a little. The male/female difference is more than just pitch: there are shifts in the resonances of the vocal tract.

There are certainly people who claim to be able to hear voice-changers in use, and I can believe that. Whether they're right to attribute the use to a fake female, I am uncertain. Is the desire to change the sound in Voice any different from the desire to get a good visual Avatar.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

P.S. For Andilynne and others: Maggie Bluxome's blog and Busted magazine are the places to go for info on clothing for use with breast attachments. https://maggiebluxome.com and http://busted-magazine.com respectively.

[Terry]

JJ said"...In fact you yourself defend the use of old data."

Data isn't obsolete until it is replaced by new relevant data. As this information apparently hasn't been gathered for some time, it is what it is. Apparently you need to look up what logical fallacy means, as you begin your post with one.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I haven't noted any real discrepency in tastes between men playing as women and women playing as women. A male friend of mine played as a female mage and always dressed in voluminous, concealing robes. Meanwhile, a female friend always insisted on finding the skimpiest bits of leather for her archer.

So even though an indefinite but not insignificant number of female avatars belong to male players, that doesn't necessarily correlate to fashion trends of sexy vs formal (ignoring the fact that a high percentage of "formal" in SL and RL is VERY sexy). That linkage is being taken for granted with no hard evidence that it's valid.

It might be true. It might not be. We don't have any real proof either way. And we certainly don't have enough to establish that it's a substantial input into market trends.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"I hope Pussycat is right that flowing and swirling mesh gowns will come to SL, because Kitty is definitely right about the drawbacks of flexiprim skirts. "

The code to do it is there, in the mesh animated tails. Someone who knows what that jibber-jabber in the script files means could make some serious $$$ porting the concept those tail makers are using over to dresses.

Makes me wish I had that level of technical skill. I'm an idea person, Big Data / analytics / etc at a professional level. I see forests, but I can't spot a tree even if I'm climbing in it...

[Pussycat Catnap]

"Some of the women playing expressed some startlingly extreme sexual fantasies, and I had seen that in other places a decade earlier."

Some men who think women have no interest in these subjects, and anytime anything is "interesting", "fun", "technical", or even smart...

Need to get out of the cave more often.

Some of them might do well sneaking into a lesbian book store and seeing what's on the shelf, and who's writing it (and not JUST the erotica section). Then looking at who wrote some of the original programming languages. And then who wrote some of the great works in Science Fiction. And then try a romance novel or two...

Geeky menfolk have some peculiarly Puritan Princess views of womenfolk...

My first MUSH character was created in 1990... though I didn't find the format so interesting... it wasn't mono-gendered even then...

[Arcadia Codesmith]

@Pussycat, I hate, hate, hate that. Anybody who gives me that vibe is prime fodder for a friendly fire incident. Oops, the safety was off. Tee-hee.

[Satui]

Mesh killed them ... as they are very hard to do in mesh so they work ...
and the market in general gets more monotonous ... as only a limited amount of people can do mesh and the template makers are not really into gowns ...
i saw some attempts to join mesh gowns with flexi-prims or layered gowns so the rigging flaws get less ... but all not convincing yet

[Shaw]

I probably don't count for anything since I'm just returning to Second Life briefly(?) to check on "my community" after a prolonged absence. I'm surprised to hear that ball gowns are going down in popularity; they will most likely remain my second choice of attire everywhere except sandboxes/changing rooms. (My first choice of attire is impersonal stuff like full-body invisibility or abstract animations. Yay social anxiety!) That's how I'd present myself in real life if I didn't have pragmatism, social norms, and laws of physics to consider! Of course the space-eating monster skirts never much appealed to me, especially with a small avatar, but humanity will take anything to silly extremes given the opportunity. I found it humorous to see other people drowning in their skirts.
I did notice that the marketplace seems to be more full of revealing clothes than before, which I hadn't thought possible. (I never really understood that kind of thing in the first place.) But I assume the mesh stuff makes that easier to build for the time being, or something like that. It's been kind of interesting to watch normal prims get overtaken by creative use of flexies, and those get overtaken by sculpties, and now the mesh things I know next to nothing about. Here I am still struggling to use the original prims correctly! I wonder what will come after meshes and how it will affect the fashion world.

Sorry to ramble.

[Jaqua]

I'm seriously thinking of joining SL as a late adopter newbie, and as someone coming from the Daz/Poser 3d community we have dealt with mesh for the last ten years, the best solution for the ballgown with mesh is called dynamic cloth, meaning that the mesh is nonconforming but only in a few places on the body, and it needs no scripting what so ever and is a dream for animation

[Iris Ophelia]

@Jacqua Unfortunately there are pretty harsh limitations on mesh in Second Life, it's MUUUUUCH more restricted compared to how it is in Poser. It's restricted by what SL code itself supports, and as far as I know dynamic cloth (at least of that nature) isn't supported. Generally the only way to get something to flow or move dynamically in SL is to make it out of flexible prims, and only certain kinds of prims are allowed to flex, with mesh items not even among them. Flexible prims also clip through the avatar. A garment with loose fabric that could move and fall and most importantly collide naturally with a figure is essentially impossible in SL as it is now.

It's also probably worth mentioning that Second Life technically uses Poser 2 models IIRC, so faces and hands can't even be animated, only set into a half dozen or so available morph positions.