Posts by Lam Erin:
Seeking value for your money in Second Life
December 16th, 2009In Second Life, fashion stores exist almost everywhere. They sell everything you may need to dress up your avatar, from shoes and jackets to tattoos, underwear and bandanas. The prices range from zero Lindens in places selling freebies to several thousand Lindens in fashion stores owned by well-known SL brands. It is very easy to find any item you may need at any price you are willing to pay for it. However, it gets more difficult to find items that deserve the asking price or potentially even more.
The latter are items that all shoppers should be aiming for, but these are usually well-hidden in the plethora of clothing sold in SL. You will have to search a lot to find them but it may be worth the effort, especially since value items improve the quality of your clothing and save you lindens. I will be occasionally presenting in this column items which I think offer good value for your money.
1. Musashi-Do has the “Party in Venezia” tuxedo. Avatar Weekly has already presented the tuxedo here http://avatarweekly.net/?p=353.
This is a classy black tuxedo featuring a classic peaked lapel paired with a trendy two-vent style which can be used for any occasion. The jacket cuffs, shirt cuffs, trouser cuffs, lapel, collar, bowtie and jacket bottom are all original sculpted prims. Their size and position on the avi are controlled by a hud to help achieve perfect fit. The textures are hand-painted and high quality.
The price is 599L, which puts it somewhere in the middle of the range for tuxedos (the range for most tuxedos is 300-800L). What makes this tuxedo a great value-for-money product, in addition to its quality, is that the waistcoat comes in 10 different colors, which are all included in the package. Many designers of similar products would have included the different waistcoat colors in a fat pack, possibly asking a price of 1,000L or much more.
Musashi’s inclusion of the waistcoat pack makes this a good value for your Linden.
2. Savvy Avvy designs offers this wonderful business suit. The suit consists of pinstriped jacket and pants and two shirt options: buttoned and unbuttoned. The inclusion of the unbuttoned shirt makes the suit suitable for casual use. The shirts come in black and
white. Sculpted resizable collars and ties in white and black are included in the set. You can wear it with or without the jacket. All parts of the outfit are well linked and sit on the avatar very well. The textures, which the creator says are hand-drawn, are of good quality.
The in-world price for this suit is 499L, but you can find it on XStreet here https://xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=923665
at the special price of 50L. It has been there for a while and acquired a best-selling status. One of the persons who wrote a review of the suit noted that for this price, it is a steal. I agree with him.
3. Kalnins shoes offers a number of casual and formal sculpted models of nice design and high quality. The price for most models is 500L. Their main advantage is that they come in 11 different colors that are controlled by a hud, which also controls the position, size, shininess and walk sound.
The brand offers discounts of up to 25% to good customers. The discount is calculated on the total amount of previous purchases. I do not think you can find a better deal for shoes with the design and texture quality of Kalnins and offering the color variety and functionality that Kalnins products offer.
Let’s try something casual
December 13th, 2009One of the problems that many men face in Second Life is the quality of male clothes. Whilst fashion stores can be found almost everywhere in SL, quality is harder to find. I have on many occasions regretted the Lindens I spent to buy clothes that failed to come even close to my expectations. And many of those clothes were not cheap at all.
In this article I present a casual urban outfit which I made using clothes from various designers who I think meet the standards of good design and quality.
First, I needed a nice pair of classic blue jeans. It was not difficult to find them. Armidi offers the required design and quality. From their jeans collection I picked up a pair of regular classic jeans to complete this part of my outfit. The jeans’ file contained both loose and skinny versions. Sculpted cuffs are provided for the skinny version. For my outfit I used the loose fit, which fit my avatar perfectly. The price of the jeans was 145L.
Next I needed a nice turtleneck sweater. My market research led me to Aura. Aura is a brand selling casual clothing, hair, skins, shoes, jewelry and furniture for men and women. The sweater can be found in the male section and comes in six colors – black, brown, bordeaux, violet, blue and green. It comes with sculpted cuffs and two versions of collar, a basic one and one with a belt, all resizable. I want to draw your attention to the quality and the depth of the colours and the perfect fit of the sweater on the avatar. The price of the sweater is 300L, and it can also be found on XStreet.
Next I needed a nice scarf. Argrace was the brand of my choice. Argrace is a total lifestyle brand designing high-quality male and female clothes, accessories, furniture and other lifestyle items. Their clothes are mostly casual, highly detailed with realistic colours, shades and wrinkles. To achieve this, Argrace makes extended use of sculpted prims. When you wear them, they provide you with a sense of comfort and a real life taste that make them attractive to SL residents who seek quality SL clothes. The prices are affordable. The brand is celebrating its second anniversary in SL and offers as a gift the nice scarf in the photo. You can use the gift to test the quality of their scarves and then select from the range of scarves offered by Argrace. The prices of the scarves sold separately from outfits range from 150-180L. Note that the Argrace items come as transfer, which is very useful as we approach Christmas.
I also needed a fine jacket. I picked this awesome jacket from Gabriel. The jacket is made almost exclusively of sculpted prims that are finely linked. The realism in the details is stunning, as you can see. The jacket comes in four different colors in male and female versions, and its price was 450L. In Gabriel’s store you can find awesome clothes, and jewelry and some nice Christmas gifts. You can also find his products in Mimi’s Choice store.
The next stop was Redgrave, where I picked up this riding knit cap. Simple, stylish and realistic, it had all that I needed for my casual winter outfit. Its price was 80L.
Hats and caps sometimes cause you problems when you have to get them to fit over your hair. Though both hair and hats usually come in ‘modify’ versions which allow you to stretch them to fit your avatar’s head, this outcome is not always easy to achieve. On a number of occasions in the past I spent hours trying get a hat fit my hair but finally gave up frustrated. Though many designers offer solutions to this problem by offering hairstyles with built-in hats or hats with built-in hair, the problem still remains. SF designs offers free hair in various sizes and colors to be worn with hats and caps. Don’t miss the opportunity to visit the SF store and grab the hair. I suspect you will need them.
The last piece was the boots. For this outfit I used the brown urban tactic boots of Tesla. The boots are fully sculpted and use impressively realistic textures with baked-in highlights. The senses of realism and depth are particularly manifested in the hard leather used to make the boots and the stitches used to link the leather parts. The laces are flexi. The boots are a bit shiny but look very nice on the avatar. They are scripted for easy resizing. A demo is available, and their price was 399L.
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