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I don’t usually bother writing up a Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies blogpost for just one item, but I am making an exception for this beautiful ballgown:
Sonatta Morales is a women’s clothing store which specializes in fashion from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. This gown is the free group gift by Sonatta Morales to celebrate their 11th anniversary, and the group is free to join!
This avatar is wearing:
Mesh Head and Body:Altamura Estephania (a former free hunt gift from Altamura; no longer available for free)
Gown: Eleven gown by Sonatta Morales (free group gift; group is free to join)
Jewelry: Arthuriana gold pearls necklace and earrings (a former free Advent calendar gift from JUMO)
Hair: the hair is the Pulled Back Bun (black) from the Library / Accessories / Hair Design Options / Pulled Back Bun folder in your existing Second Lofe inventory—free, adjustable, tintable, uncomplicated.
Animation Override: Tuty’s Southern Belle & Woman in Ballgown Bento AO—hands down, the very best AO for ballgowns with voluminous skirts! I have not yet found another one that can compare to it. You can buy it from Tuty’s store in-world or from the SL Marketplace for L$650.
TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: L$650 (for the animation override)
Many roleplay sims in Second Life offer free outfits for men and women, to help newcomers dress to fit in with everybody else. Today, I will be showing you a selection of free women’s roleplay outfits from various sims.
This is one of the women’s outfits, a flowing Greek dress which comes with a headscarf and even the hair to fit underneath it (I replaced the default black hair texture with a blonde one I already had in my inventory):
One of the Zerzura freebies is this full-permissons Greek mesh gown by Anni’s. You can tint and texture this as you desire! It’s the proper length to wear high heels with, and I could easily wear this at at a modern-day formal event. It would also make a lovely wedding dress!
Alte Siedlung is a German medieval roleplay sim, which offers you a couple of free Middle Ages gowns at the spawn point:
Teleport to Skorde Island, enter the tower at the spawn point, and you can pick up this free, full-permissions girdled fantasy outfit with hood, which even includes the hair! (UPDATE Jan. 30th, 2021:This roleplay sim has now closed, so I have removed the SLURL upon request from the new sim owner.)
But don’t leave just yet! Climb the tower stairs to the second floor, and there are another four free women’s outfits, such as this beautiful medieval gown:
And click on the purple drawer shown, and you will receive a surprise: this lovely Indian sari! (By the way, if you’re in the market for a sari, you can pick up another free sari at the spawn point of Habibi – The Middle Eastern Oasis sim, along with a few other men’s and women’s outfits.)
Our final stop of the day is Taufells, another German-speaking medieval roleplay sim. In the store off to the side are four free outfits, including this medieval gown, which comes in blue and red versions:
The tray with the golden goblets comes with an arms-only animation override, so you can use it with your regular AO. It is the latest free group gift from Antaya (the Antaya group costs L$40 to join). I am serving you up some medieval tavern wench with this outfit! Pun intended 😉
So, as you can see, if you are looking for fantasy or roleplay outfits, you don’t need to spend a penny! Happy freebie shopping!
The Second Life womenswear store Arcane Spellcaster has moved to a brand new sim, and to celebrate, their group is free to join this week, and you can pick up a free L$500 gift card to use on any items from their store!
Just teleport here, click on the group join sign to the right, and then click on the big gift card sign to the left:
Once you have received the gift card, you must wear it in order to use it. It will appear in a corner of your SL viewer. Then go over to the Arcane Spellcaster store (at the other end of the sim), and click on a vendor in their store. Select the Buy button, then select Gift Card. You will see a small picture of the item appear on the gift card, with a Buy Now button. Click on it, and the item will be delivered to your inventory!
Arcane Spellcaster is perhaps best known for its large collection of “Bento-enabled” dresses (which have skirts that look like they are moving in a breeze, taking advantage of some extra hind limb bones in the Bento extensions to the base SL avatar). Just look for the big Bento room at the back of the store, where you can find all those items:
There’s also a room off to the left as you enter, with a couple of free group gifts and a couple of lucky chairs:
Head upstairs and you’ll find some real bargains, such as this Zaida mesh minidress, which comes with optional flexiprim attachments to turn it into a full-skirted ballgown. It comes in blue, black, and pink, for only L$175 each:
With your L$500 gift card, you can pick up two colours for free!
Arcane Spellcaster tends to have original mesh designs which I haven’t seen anywhere else on the grid, such as this stylish belted Delia top, which comes with a HUD to change the colour of the shirt to 20 different shades, and the belt to 10 different colours, all for just L$275:
According to the group notices for the Arcane Spellcaster group, the free group join and free gift card are only for one week, so hurry down!
My regular blog readers already know that one of my favourite pastimes in Second Life is to pull together an entire avatar look based on a theme, from head to toe. Sometimes, I will even take older classic avatar looks I had created many years ago, and give them a completely modern, mesh-body makeover. Some recent examples are this nun, a vampire, an elf angel, Mary Poppins, even Santa Claus! It gives me a creative outlet, and I find my quirky little hobby deeply satisfying.
Some avatars lasted only a couple of days before I deleted them; others have been with me since the very beginning of my adventures in Second Life. Witches and wizards and wolves, pirates and painters, sergeants and satyrs, barbarians and ballerinas, harlequins and hippies, gladiators and geishas… my hobby has given me endless hours of pleasure and escape. Some were exclusively for role-play purposes; others were just a means to live inside somebody else’s skin for an hour while strolling the grid. Others were created specifically to evoke reactions from passers-by. I could be whatever I wanted, and I was: an angel, a fairy, a goth girl, Elvis, Queen Elizabeth the First, Lady Gaga, Santa Claus, a supermodel, a hobo, a spaceman, a Na’vi from the movie Avatar, a medieval minstrel.
Sometimes, a single article of clothing in Second Life will send me off on a wild goose chase across the grid, to search out and find individual items and use them to pull together an entire outfit. And today, my starting point was this free Jessica Rabbit dress from COCO Designs!
So I decided to build a whole look for my main avatar (and Second Life supermodel 😉 ) Vanity Fair avatar based on that dress!
It was so such fun to play with the body adjustment sliders on my Maitreya Lara body to see how close I get it to resemble Jessica Rabbit’s curvy figure! I think I came pretty close, although I couldn’t make her waist any smaller, without making the entire avatar look too thin overall. Please note that this is not Vanity’s usual shape; normally she has much more realistic proportions. Remember, I was going for a cartoon look here.
And I was very pleased with the results!
Vanity Fair is wearing:
Dress: Jessica Rabbit gown (free group gift by COCO Designs; the group is free to join)
Gloves: Formal gloves applier by my friend Jasmine Moonflower Gardner of Sweet Tea Couture (L$199 for an eight-colour HUD); Unfortunately, this particular gloves applier does not come in purple like Jessica Rabbit wore in the movie, but fuchsia is close enough, and it looks great too!
Shoes: Gigi pumps in crimson by Garbaggio (my favourite shoe!)
Daria skin by The Skinnery (which has a red brows option to match the Jessica hairstyle; normally Vanity wears brown)
and my favourite forest green Darcey eyes by Suicidal Unborn
UPDATE Oct. 15th: I noticed after I took the pictures I posted above that Jasmine Moonflower Gardner does indeed sell a purple pair and a lilac pair of Bento mesh formal gloves at her store Sweet Tea Couture for L$199 for each single colour. The mesh gloves have an auto-hide for Maitreya so you don’t need to alpha anything out! You could also use the free group gift of purple gloves from COCO Designs’ gift wall, but those gloves do not support Bento hands, and you will have to alpha out your hands completely if you decide to use those instead. Lots of options here!
Here’s another shot taken at Sweet Tea Couture, next to the mesh gloves display. I am wearing the lilac gloves (the purple ones looked a little too dark):
In my opinion, Jasmine makes the best gloves on the grid, whether they be mesh or appliers! She also sells some seriously cute stockings, socks, shoes and dresses. Be sure to check out her store! She just recently returned to Second Life after an absence due to her job, and she has a number of brand new items for sale. The texture work is superb! Everything is very high quality and I recommend Sweet Tea Couture highly.
