Tag: Second Life Costumes

A Thousand Vanities

Over the past couple of months, as a way to relax during a stressful time in my life, I have been slowly cleaning through and reorganizing the inventory of what has become my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair (I talk a bit about that here). After almost 18 years, Vanity has almost 900 saved outfits, ranging from old system-layers-and-flexiprim ballgowns dating back to 2008, to modern, fully mesh outfits that I bought recently. In fact, the 21st outfit shown below (the Mary white blouse/long black skirt combination by Belle Epoque) I just bought today!

I decided that it was high time to impose some order on the growing chaos of Vanity’s voluminous inventory. So regularly (especially in the evenings after I get home from work), I put on some soothing music, and put myself into a flow state, sorting, organizing, and discarding some older virtual apparel I know I will never ever wear again. It helps me get my mind off all the troubles in the real world (most of which I have zero control over).

The Firestorm viewer I use to run Second Life on my desktop computer at home has a feature that lets you attach an image of your outfit to the outfit folder, and so I have been slowly taking and uploading pictures of all my saved outfits. I have also been sharing them with the people who follow me on Primfeed, in a continuing series I call A Thousand Vanities. I figure that by the time I finally finish (2029? 2030??), I will have reached one thousand saved outfits, hence the title of the series!

Here is a picture gallery of the first twenty-one outfits in the series (please click on each thumbnail to see the image in a larger size):

Another Fifteen-Minute Second Life Avatar Makeover: Queen Elizabeth I

At the moment I am binge-watching Season 3 of The Crown on Netflix. I love watching the drama, intrigues and scandals of the Royal Family!

And it just so happens that I have a Second Life avatar whose actual legacy name is Elizabeth Queen (yes, I got lucky). Surprisingly, there’s nothing out there, either on the grid or in the SL Marketplace, to make her look like the current reigning Queen Elizabeth II. (Yes, I have actually identified a gap in the vast merchandise machine that is Second Life! Somebody needs to address this immediately!).

So, I decided instead to make her look like her namesake, Queen Elizabeth the First. Here is her before picture:

Not bad, but the look is a bit dated now: a classic system avatar, with system-layers-and-prims clothing. So I decided to do one of my patented 15-minute avatar makeovers (in the past, I have done the same for a nun, a vampire, an elf angel, Mary Poppins—even Santa Claus!)

And here is what Elizabeth Queen looks like now!

This avatar is wearing:

TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: Only L$839!

All pictures are taken in Tudor London at Jo Yardley’s wonderful Time Portal sim.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Queen of Frost

It’s definitely winter here now in Winnipeg. The snow is already blowing around, and it’s chilly outside! We’re settling in for another one of our usual long, cold Canadian Prairie winters. And it’s time for another winter-themed Second Life avatar!

I wanted to share a couple of free hunt gifts that I combined to style an avatar I call the Queen of Frost. The base avatar is the same Altamura Juliet full-body mesh avatar with Bakes on Mesh enabled, which I described here: the Snow Queen. But the hair and dress are new, free prizes from two different hunts.

The mesh hair is a style called Frozen by KMH, which comes in the white-and-blue shown here, or completely blue. It is one of the free hunt gifts of the fall Paripi Hunt, part of the After Paripi Fair (here’s a SLURL):

You are looking for coconuts dressed as people. Here’s a hint to find the Frozen hairstyle: try looking around the fountain in the centre of the park.

And the completely over-the-top Queen of Frost dress is a free hunt gift from BlueMoon Enterprise in the Womenstuff Hunt (here’s the SLURL). You are looking for a brightly-coloured, striped T shirt. Here’s a hint: check the area around the group gifts carefully.

This outfit is more versatile than it looks at first glance. You can take off the skirt and you will still have a very workable minidress for that holiday party! (The sleeves are also a separate, removable piece.)

For shoes to match this frosty outfit, I relied on a pair of free white flats, which are part of a free sample pack of Slink-compatible shoes from Garbaggio, available on the SL Marketplace; Altamura mesh bodies have Slink-compatible feet.

Happy hunting!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Golden Medusa!

In Greek mythology, Medusa (meaning “guardian” or “protectress”) was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those who gazed upon her face would be turned to stone (Source: Wikipedia).

For my final Halloween costume of the season, I decided to build an outfit around the Medusa hairstyle available on the SL Marketplace from EMO-tions for only L$5. The hair comes in a fatpack of colours, and even includes a matching snake for your upper right arm!

The gold dress is actually a Halloween gift from last year from Baiastice, called Absinthe (unfortunately, I checked and it is no longer available). And the four gold-and-diamond snakes adorning this metallic dress were from a long-ago gift outfit from Baiastice (way, waaay back in the system-layers-and-prims clothing era!), called Ancestral Snake! (I repurposed one of the leg snakes to make a second forearm snake.)

With such a fancy detailed outfit and hair, I wanted to keep the footwear simple. The gold/beige boots are perfect! They’re a current free gift from Hilly Haalan, available at the spawn point (the group is free to join). The Angie boots come with a HUD with fifteen different colours to choose from, to match any outfit:

The mesh head is Cleo, a recent group gift from Akeruka. (The mesh eyes are included, and even have the red option you see here! There’s also an option to replace the default human teeth with fangs, although you can’t really see them in these pictures.) The mesh body is Juliet, a recent group gift from Altamura. I do recommend that you join both groups (L$50 for Altamura, and L$150 for Akeruka), and keep your eyes peeled for any future announcements of group gifts! The Cleo head package came with matching Omega skin appliers for use on any Omega-compatible mesh body, such as the Altamura Juliet.

TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: Only L$304! (L$150 to join the Akeruka group; L$50 to join the Altamura group; L$99 for the Omega system kit for the Altamura body; and L$5 for the Medusa hair by EMO-tions)

Pictures were taken at the Mythia Island of the Gods roleplay sim.