Formally Undead

This is one of my favorite dresses. I like the layers and the texture. It and the next dress are both from Marinoco Fashions which made another freebie I just love, that looks like that Bohemian red glass. They have been very generous and make some lovely dresses. This one is called Green Brigita. The Cordelia hair was a freebie from Vanity Hair in the pink color and I decided I liked it well enough to buy the white.



This richly bottle green dress (also from Marinoco) was called Forever Christmas, but you can wear this green any old time and it goes well with my greenish skin. Because I am so short, you can't see my shoes, which I am not even wearing. Heh! The dress might not look so long on someone of more average height, but at 4'8" it sinks below floor level. I'm in my photo box here, hovering in midair over a posing stand, so you can't tell.



Tee hee! I love some of the quirkier clothes from Kuri Style, who is also very very generous. New outfits often have a cheapie in one of the colors. Not all the outfits are Asian, but this one has a definite kimono look to it and is called, appropriate, Kimono Dress. The Baby Monkey pink and tan Gaby flats went with it nicely. The flats came with a cute handbag, but that's just one more thing to carry. Baby Monkey showers gifts on its group members. I was sad to have to leave the group, but you're only allowed 25 groups!

The hair is from the group lucky board at SyDS. The board is on a three minute timer, so it's worth hanging around for some lovely and then some amusingly oddball hairstyles. You do have to be a member of the group, though. This hair is called Opera Without Music.

The Discreet Charm of the Undead

Purple is my favorite color. I was fortunate to find this waltz-length dress in the Champagne hunt at Bliss Couture. On top of that, it also went with some of that great GaNKed clunky jewelry and the shoes I can barely see now. Those darn little bottles were the dickens to find! I was aiming for this dress, though, so all is well in My Little Virtual World (tm).



This outfit was put together from several sources. I love vintage stuff! I was still wearing a bathing suit from the 1950s during the 70s - but that's because I come from a long line of tightwads and in Real Life I have absolutely no fashion sense. Well, let's just say that I never found a "look" and stuck with it.

The wonderful houndstooth dress is from Chantkare. It's called Baskerville. Ha ha. Get it? Houndstooth. The hat and the hair are Timeless Glamour by Clawtooth. Hey, I've got a theme going here! I think it was on sale. I love the Clawtooth hairs ... but can't afford them.* Someone at the Info International Reference desk was wearing these Oxfords and I loved them! She very kindly told me that they came from Bettie's Vintage Clothing and Footwear and I went straight over and, after fretting there for minutes, paid full price for them. [Faints.] Umm, the black pearls are from somewhere.


*i.e. I'm too cheap to pay full price.

Tacky and Me

This was a sweet outfit that was free from some hunt (I'm sure) from LVs&Co. The hair was a freebie from Curious Kitties, who regularly has freebies. The free color change HUD they gave out conveniently changes all hair colors to something little Lludmila would wear. Nice! Thanks, Curious Kitties! Now each time there's a free hair, I can make it work on Lludmila even if it was some other color!

The minute I unpacked this outfit I knew it was a Lludmila thing and annotated the file folder to reflect that which now reads "Plaid hoodie dress - very Lludmila" and is filed under "babydoll dresses" in the "Dresses, short" phylum. Having over 35,000 items in your inventory cries out for taxonomy. Being of German extraction, this makes my genes hum.

Sorry about the naked feet. I put some flats on later. I had just finished with a book discussion I was supposed to be leading and was having some trouble getting attachments on, so I went for covering the bits and pieces and let the toes wait. Then forgot all about them. In Real Life, the shoes come off immediately and stay off.



I've blogged about Duh! elsewhere (on some other blog or another) and they still don't know how to charge for their shoes, thank Om! These flats are so cute, come in a bunch of colors, and I wear them all the time. Somehow having plantar's fasciitis in RL has put me off high heels in my virtual life as well. Hmmmm. Also, I'm nostalgic for that early 1960s fashion (yes, I'm old enough to remember) of capris and flats. So very Mary Tyler Moore!

And doncha just love garden flamingos? I do. I might not be slutty, but I do love tacky! There's room for all sorts here in the virtual world.

There, I got through a whole post without ragging on someone else's look! [Note to self: go take temperature.]

Not Slutty

It has to happen all the time; I have to find something that isn't slutty. And here it is. This av is lovely. Granted, her clothes are tight, but clothing is "painted on" in SL. Can't help that, really. Here is a lovely outfit on a lovely avatar. No bare midriffs or bums, no neckline plunging below the navel (at which point it must surely cease to be a neckline), nipples completely covered and invisible, classy hair, fancy skin, and she would seem to be in perfect proportion ... if it weren't for the little gnome behind her.

So, let's look at this in depth. Yes, I'm afraid I just can't let a beautiful avatar go by without picking at something.



The wizened creature on the left has a known size: 4'8". It looks as though she comes up to the divine avatar's elbow, which would be short enough, but if you allow for the perspective, you'll see (the vertical yellow bars) that she actually comes up to the other woman's navel. Why she hasn't been shanghai'd to play professional basketball is a mystery.

If the little green imp is 4'8", the goddess must be 7'8", but let's be fair and subtract a bit for the heels ... that should make her 7'2". Now that I look at her feet, they and the hands seem to be a bit small to be on what I would now have to call a "giantess." Or, perhaps, "Barbie." At 7'2", she would be proportionate to a Barbie doll ... well, according to some people, anyway. Others seem to think Barbie would be 6' tall and anorexic.

Rethinking the hands and feet (from memories of my own Barbie), the slightly smaller size would be about right. This woman is lucky to be in SL, where she can find clothes to fit her ... and men tall enough to date her, because she'd be at a loss here in RL.

Slutty Or Trashy?

While waiting for a shop to rez, I came across this outfit (see below and Warning Warning, Will Robinson!), a style which is seemingly popular on the grid, but which I have yet to see in Real Life (tm). It could be that I'm just not looking. We don't have television where we live (we have a television, but no reception) and I don't get out much. This is yet another outfit I will not put on my avatar. It's fine if others want to do it. They can even cross it over to RL (so long as they don't wait on tables near me - I'm perfectly happy to see the tame midriffs just about anywhere except waiting on me at table) if they so choose. I support their right to do so. Just bring a towel if you plan on sitting anywhere public.
Is this some echo of the masculine fad of jail-style pants where the pants hang down below the butt, exposing (hopefully clean) underwear? Or is it a question of having paid 2,000 Linden dollars for glistening and beautiful skin and wanting to show it off? To me it goes beyond slutty and on to trashy.


Danger! Danger!


Danger! Danger!



Danger! Danger!





I did warn you, you know.

What makes outfits like this worse is the AO, the animation override. I've commented before on how unpleasant I find the twitching and presenting of the body. Here's an egregious example:

Ummm, warning again.

Not quite as bad this time, but ... (heh! I said "but")





I know that cropping it like that removes the context. For all you know, she could be about to jump off of a divingboard. Just take my word for it that this was in a shop. This was no quick bend from the hips - it was a long stretch that came up repeatedly. I can hardly get any shopping done, my mind becomes totally wrapped up in the social anthropology of it all. No doubt this is why I never became an alpha-female in my tribe. I forgot to "present my credentials" to the alpha-males and didn't send my minions out to fetch mandrakes (Genesis 30:13-17).

What Do I Consider Slutty, Part II - Daywear

You can dress with the greatest of care, match everything up, and still look slutty. The above av had the loveliest hair, beautiful skin, yet she still went for the enormous lips and a ribcage incapable of supporting the huge, perfectly round tatas, which are firm and taut to the point of looking obviously medically enhanced. If your breasts look like someone cut a honeydew melon in half and glued each half to your chest, you have fake bewbs. If you look like you stepped out of a (ahem) "men's magazine" fully airbrushed, you look slutty.

The (for want of a better word) "dress" seems to be a size or two too small. She is unable to fasten it. I might add that the back of the dress plunged as much as the front, but, as I've said before, why stick to the laws of physics in your clothes when you can free them from those constraints?

I have worn fishnet hose in Real Life(tm) and I can tell you right now that they are painful. To keep from having a permanent imprint on your flesh, it is wise to wear plain flesh-colored hose underneath (just a hint for you who would like to replicate your SL wardrobe in RL).
And, yes, I did lead a very interesting life - dressing up like a showgirl, refusing to shave my legs or anything else and getting away with it while dressing as a showgirl, etc.
Anyway, fishnets are slutty as well as painful. I really don't understand the attraction, especially in SL where the slightest flexion causes the fishnet texture to distort. In this outfit, though, we don't get that because the least stable fishnet texture area is in the crotch region, a failing which this av has avoided by wearing the stockings version.

If you had a close-up of the skirt area, you'd see there is a skirt, a sculptie breechcloth.

What you can't see from this still picture is the Animation Overrider. I rarely put one of these on my av because the standing poses and animations range from jerky to streetwalker. I have seen some reasonable ones, but even they don't appeal to me. They are attention-grabbing and distracting. All I want to do is score me some free hair and my eye is constantly being drawn to an av nearby twirling and "presenting" her attributes. I think I got a picture of this babe in a relatively quiet moment.

All in all, this av has put together and accessorized an actual outfit, yet all I can do is complain about it. She's put time and effort into looking ... slutty ... to go ... shopping.



Here's a good place to shop. Iced tea almost came out my nose when I saw these outfits labeled as "business wear" - I immediately wondered, What sort of business??!! Professional escort? I was shopping in RL a few years back and chose to try on a teal colored top. The clerk commmented, "Oh, you like those jewel tones!" No. I don't. And ... I'm. Sick. Of. Seeing. Them. On. SL. Clothes. Could we have some muted earthtones, please? Or maybe a print? Glowing colors like these scream "slutty" at me. Well-designed slutty, but still slutty.

Just to show that I, too, can look slutty, I append the following picture:



Please note, however, that I am wearing this in the privacy of my own skybox. It would have to be the Slut-Themed Literature Trivia Quiz to get me out in "public" like this.