Second Life Avatar Fashion So Confusing & Complicated There Are Professional Makeover Agencies

Before and after with the Makeover Agency

SL social media queen Ms. Strawberry Singh has a fascinating interview with the founder of The Makeover Agency, which is more or less an outgrowth of Second Life's option-laden, confusing, user-unfriendly fashion marketplace and user interface. As founder SarahBeths  explains:

I decided to start it up simply because I was, as all of us once were, helpless when I started, and didn’t know where to turn to when I needed help with getting into mesh, and clothes. I felt lost, and it took me a lot of time to work around it all. I do know now there are some groups, and also specific popular brand groups, but you need to look for that information, and people usually don’t bother, especially if you’ve just joined or returned after a long time. SL is meant to be fun in the end, not looking for informations only to get lost in them, so it’s understandable.

Call me crazy, but shouldn't virtual world fashion be at least somewhat more easy for the everyday consumer than the real life thing? However, as any SL user can tell you, even the simple act of changing a hair style is not a simple snap-to experience, but more like editing objects in Maya 3D. In any case, this forced complexity has at least created a nice cottage industry for people who have finally learned to master the UI and the marketplace: This particular agency charges L$3,250 to L$5,520 per avatar makeover -- i.e., USD $13 to $22.

Comments

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Fashion in SL isn't just something you can just do once and then forget about. You have to keep up, it is an ongoing process. It's a skill that anyone can master, it's not that hard, though a good mentor helps, like in the old days. But if you're willing to do a bit of research and learning you can become an expert. Unless you're a guy avatar of course, they don't shop, unless the avatar is run by a gay fellow or a woman. ;-)

/me puts on a Tiara and goes all Fashionista Drill Sergeant:

You want Fashion? You want to join the Beautiful Elite? Well, Friendly Greetings THIS and Send any complaints to your Mamma because Fashion isn't Easy. Fashion is Pain! You have to WORK, and pay for it in Blood, Sweat, Toil, Tears, Time, and massive amounts of L$. Fashion is you clicking on the buy L$ button and then the L$ rapidly leaving your balance to increase your inventory. You must prepare and learn and practice your Fashion, or when the time comes your instincts will FAIL and you will NOT shop, which goes against all that is right in SL.

Now Rookies, what is Rule #1 of the Fashionista? "No matter how much you shop, you always need more." You think you've done enough shopping? Wrong! You always need more. How many colors do you need? All of Them.

And where do you learn the Skills of the Fashionista? Why from other fashionistas. You will say to them, "WOW, your avatar is gorgeous", and you will ask them were they got everything if you didn't already use the What is She Wearing HUD on them. You don't know about the WiSHW HUD? Well saddle my Water Horse and ride it to Zindra, we got a real Rookie here.

And you will ask their advice, and they will tell you to join Fashion Emergency, Skin Addiction and whatever head/body groups for whatever head/body you get. And they will tell you to find Strawberry Singh's tutorials, for she is Skilled in the Arts of Fashion. And you will ask more questions and you will Experiment and PLAY and acquire mass quantities of demos. Because that is how you will achieve the Fashionista Quickening and become one with the Fashionistas Puissant and Beautiful. The entire grid is your confidence course and your avatar is your Expression of Avatar Beauty.

Because the Most Popular Game in SL is "Dressing My Avatar More Nicely Than Your Avatar" and Fashionistas play to WIN.

[Sarah Beths]

Hello,

I am the owner of 'The Makeover Agency', and would love to discuss with you about the goals of the agency. A lot of people have focused only on the paid services we offer, but we do offer free services for people that are struggling with what we call 'quick fixes'.

Of course, I entirely agree with what you wrote and CronoCould Creeggan's comment, this is a process that has to be understood and learned, and this is why I made the agency. We take it at heart to take time with every people that walk in the Agency for help.
Also, note that I have reached out to popular and not-so popular brands about setting special 'welcome packages' as in low entry-prices items, and even offering our services for free to their customers, and a large majority of them are still having a hard time understanding that it is something that is needed to this days, to smooth the learning process of Second Life.
Hopefully, I had gain some exposure with Strawberry's article and they will reach out to me to work on that.

Thank you for your article,

Sarah Beths

[YsabelleStewart]

I love CronoCloud's response. Fabulous. I'm also interested in Sarah's reply - you said something about brands offering your services for free to customers. Do you mean doing the same thing you're doing, or in some ways using your agency (which I understood to be a paying service, though you offer free quick fixes too)?

[Sarah Beths]

It is something that I still to work on with them, as I now gained some exposure so they might be more willing to accept to find a compromise with us. Being a 'new baby' in the SL market, and moreover offering something that is completely new and unusual in this virtual world (services and not items), it is really hard for me to stand a point on that situation, and even just talk with popular brand owners about it.

What I meant was finding a way to use my agency to help residents in general, letting aside the paid services we offer. For example, helping store's customers with quick fixes and problems (something like store owners referring us for help, for free), set a full service directly in-stores, have trained people being available for support about mesh in general, create learning classes, etc... There are many ways we could be collaborating, even with LL directly, but as I wrote, this is something that brands are not yet willing to do, mostly because in the end, they are sellers and this is a market, I understand that.

However, in my opinion, for everyone's benefit, it would be great to collaborate and join forces on something that can be so trivial and hard to understand and learn at first, which is why I'm offering some of my services for free, and am willing to work on free services too with brands owners and/or Linden Labs, to offer the best support we can as SL residents.
Maybe it is because I have an outsider point of view on all of the SL economy, and market, but this is really something that we all need to work on at some point, Linden Labs included.

I hope I replied to your question, I apologize if it was quite long. You can reply here or email me, I'd be happy to talk further with you about this.

Sara

[YsabelleStewart]

Hi Sarah, thanks for getting back to me on that. I might contact you inworld at some point. I do think you raise interesting points.

[Clara Seller]

No Hamlet, you're not crazy. It shouldn't be this difficult to dress an avatar.

SL has reduced the baseline avatar function to that of a quadriplegic. It's a hard sell "experience" to the general population to require classes and therapists to to dress yourself to the new normal.

I appreciate the aesthetic exploration of fashion and all of the expertise that might come with that, but to view the act of getting dressed as an elite club that requires a filtering process is a little too "concentration camp" for my view of where a functioning world or business should be setting it's goal posts.

My solution is to wear uniforms in SL, anymore. I used to love fashion, but I find the current process mind-numbing.

[Pulsar]

And to think that once you could create your own hair style straightly from the viewer sliders, as well as everything else (you still can, but it's outdated). Creative users took advantage of each update and new feature to improve their avatar looks, sometimes even with hacks like the "invisiprim". Avatars became prettier and prettier, even incomparably better, but on the other hand fashion became more and more complex. Instead of sliders, you had to edit your prim or sculpt attachments, then you had to use alpha layers, then merchants who sell their rigged mesh without setting the attachment point , so you have to care to "add" (or to add to another attachment point) instead of to "wear", in order to not end up naked just because you grabbed an ice cream; then appliers, various HUDs, then you have a bunch of products from different brands and that aren't compatible with each other, as well as legacy content, so you have to know what's compatible with. I loved those updates from the start, experienced users maybe are used to that and someone never needed any help, but it's objectively more complex, especially for a newcomer.
Now if there are people who need learning classes, that speaks volumes of the lack of user friendliness. Imagine if you are new to a game and you would like to try it, but you need learning classes to change clothes to your character. How crazy is it? Yes, ideally it should be much easier.
However the agency sounds like a good initiative, given the above, that could make the life a bit easier to some merchant and to people in general, as Sarah says.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Clara, only my first paragraph was serious. The rest is tongue in cheek.

Also I had an interest in things Fashion BEFORE I joined SL, so the effort is less daunting for me. I'm also an oldbie so I don't have the same learning curve a new person would have, for me it's been a more gradual curve over the years.

[Christie Yamaguchi]

😒 Second Life is Difficult for no reason. What about people that don’t want to edit and create? I’d rather click what I want it applies and move on. But nooooo I have to click and go through each individual folder and blasé blasé…
The only cool noteworthy thing is y’all can walk and go through homes. But you can’t go through multiple rooms at a time, trying to change ANYTHING on your avatar is a whole textbook operation like 🙄 very aggy. I mean y’all spend actual money for a headache. Games should be stress free lol

IMVU seems to be easier since I wasn’t looking for a part time job. And now I gotta give $10 to replace the credits she gave me cause I think her game is stupid. Lol

SMH. No need to reply- im not coming back to the forum.