Off the Top of My Head: All About Hair

Hair brings one's self-image into focus; it is vanity's proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices.

~Shana Alexander

Every morning when I wake up in SL, I am faced with the prospect of what my hair will look like. In my real life, I am pretty much limited to the hair I have, as messy or incalcitrant as it will be. In SL or IMVU, I have the choice of just about any hair I would want.

As Shana Alexander suggests, hair is the headliner, the opening statement, the engine to the whole train wreck.

What is amazing is that it is one of the least expensive ways to completely change one’s look in either world. Both mediums offer a variety of hairstyles for women (though the complaint in SL is that not enough are offered for men).

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Best Foot Forward

For fashionistas across the worlds, seemingly trivial things become incredibly important. Like where to get the very best shoes.

 

Why shoes? They are the punctuation on an ensemble. They set the tone for the entire outfit and show the wearer’s expertise with the finer details of accoutrement. The shoes alone can tell a whole story—are they scuffed boots, fresh from role playing in a gritty urban scene, or pristine stilettos on long legs, full of sex appeal and class or sweet flats, perfect for a “day off”?

 

Both Second Life and IMVU offer users the ability to enjoy their shoe fetish and secretly indulge in Imelda Marcos’ extravagances without breaking the bank or building a new closet on to the house.

 

Shoes are also incredibly important in both words because the feet in both are dreadfully unattractive.

 

Feet from IMVU (L) and Second Life (R).

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Skin Deep

Across the virtual worlds--especially in Second Life and IMVU—the avatar is made in a way that layers of graphics go over a computer-calculated mesh. Both worlds allow residents to create skins and bring them in world.

This is all a fancy way of saying we can make our faces and bodies kind of look the way we want. However, if we are not pros in Photoshop or 3ds Max, we need to live with the skins given us or purchase them from content creators in our respective worlds. Imagine me without a skin. This photo could not exist…

The skins are the most human elements of the avatar, besides the mesh shapes and animations, for avatars. They mark the difference between being a generic body and an individual persona and skin makers do fine business in both worlds. The skins create the base of the being that we inhibit in avatars and bring the poignancy of our humanness to our interactions. They make the 3D we engage in much more meaningful.

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Winter Wonder

Winter is coming upon us. We are on the verge of the holiday season where we dream of twinkling lights reflected in a glittering snow, a warm bright room with a cozy fire in the fireplace.

I put together two looks from two different worlds to get a feel for the holiday season.

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Harper Beresford's guide: "Style Across the Worlds"

Dear readers, we're pleased to announce the launch of a new column on the Koinup Blog. It will be called: Style Across the Worlds
and it will guide you through the most fashionist people, style, trends that are spreading out (NOW) from the Metaverse. The column will be held by Harper Beresford.

Second Life bon vivant, business woman, and builder, Harper Beresford is the Duchess of RFyre (CMO and Business Manager) and blogger for House of RFyre. A Second Life Mentor, owner of two sims–Avant Garde and Vanguard, photographer, art collector, and jewerly-maker, Harper has made her mark on the virtual fashion scene with her SL fashion blog, A Passion for Virtual Fashion (http://slfashionpassion.wordpress.com).
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Style Across the Worlds

Hiya. I’m Harper Beresford. Welcome to my world—the world of avatars and avatar apparel and enhancement. It’s called “fashion” in common parlance, but it’s more than what an avatar wears. It’s about how a person represents herself in these worlds and the artists who make those enhancements.

In this case, the person is me, so you are subject to my whims and tastes. However, my choices range across a broad swath. I like anything imaginative, artistic, elegant, fun, well-crafted, and/or evocative.

I will be exploring the worlds of Second Life, Frenzoo and IMVU. You will probably see more of Second Life here as I am an established resident there, and frankly, the tools for wearing, exploring, capturing images of, and making fashion seem a lot easier. That doesn’t mean IMVU and Frenzoo don’t have a lot going on and coming up. IMVU has a very lively avatar enhancement scene. Frenzoo puts a big focus on fashion. Let’s see what they have!

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