Fashion in Second Life

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FASHION IN SECOND LIFE

The Fashion Runway with an International Audience

"We're in the virtual world because we're passionate about design – of products, places, and ideas." – Herman Miller

"I get inspired by pushing boundaries and this is one of those opportunities to experiment and learn." – Giorgio Armani on Second Life

Fashion enthusiasts of all kinds have found a new platform for creative and entrepreneurial expression in Second Life. Designers, models, photographers, agents, and marketers use the Second Life platform to develop exciting new work and expand their audience.

Designers

Second Life designers create a booming trade in fashion and decor. Looking to add style and personality to their avatars, Residents flock to inworld stores and buy clothes, hair, avatar skins and all the accessories to suit any tastes from casual to counterculture to couture. Designers get unique effects by uploading their own textures and manipulating hundreds of appearance settings built in to the Second Life creative tools set. Creating virtual goods has turned amateurs into professionals and resulted in real income for some designers. Their stories and more are reported with panache in Second Life fashion blogs and magazines. Many feed resources capture hundreds of fashion blogs run by Residents of Second Life, examples are http://designingsl.com/, http://www.fashionfeedofsl.com/, http://fashioncentric.net/ as well as http://www.whatsnewsl.com/, http://iheartsl.com/. Each blog will usually contain a blog roll allowing you to expand your fashion in Second Life knowledge.

Brands in Second Life

Second Life is the virtual world of choice for fashion icons like Adidas, Calvin Klein, Reebok, Lacoste, and Jean Paul Gaultier; high end lifestyle brands like Herman Miller, BMW, and Mercedes; as well as companies like IBM, Intel, and Coca Cola. Equally important are the brands that have been developed by Residents in Second Life like [LeeZu!], Shapes by Kira, TRUTH, [AngelRED Couture], Corrupted Innocence, MichaMi, Hucci,1 Prim Wonders, FAD, Kakaue Kreation, Venerare, Jimmy Chau, Renegade, Paper Couture, FNKY/ Cake, Sidewalk Clothing, Eye Candy, Tesla, BareRose Tokyo, Digit Darkes, Miao, Icing, Popfuzz, Nicky Ree, Stellar,Enkythings, Maitreya, Dutch Touch, Dark Eden, DE Designs, Simone, Dela, Persona, Adam n Eve, LeLutka, LDizzy and the list goes on. Second Life allows you to open a store, develop your brand, and start selling your designs. Become one of the thousands of Residents making all or part of their income off of their inworld business.

Creative Tools

Built-in, easy to use creative tools give every Resident the power to change the world. Professionals and beginners designers alike can quickly learn to make anything from hairstyles to shopping malls, fashion photo galleries to elegant virtual runways. Second Life offers an environment unlike any other, merging many of the best qualities of the Web, online games, social networking, user-generated content, creativity applications and telecommunications technologies. Residents also benefit from these tools and features:

Build & Script

Residents use simple 3-D modeling tools embedded in the Second Life platform to create clothes, fashion accessories, buildings, landscapes, sculptures and whatever else they can imagine, and they can animate objects and avatars using the built-in scripting language. Because everything happens in real time, creative work can be highly collaborative.

Images & Textures

It's easy to convert digital photos and designs from popular graphics applications into a Second Life-compatible format and import them to the Second Life servers. All images can be applied as "textures" to objects and avatars for an infinite variety of creative results.

Intellectual Property Rights

Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, decided in 2003 to break away from industry standards and allow Residents to have intellectual property rights over what they create inworld. Built-in features allow creators to label work as their own and flag it with the level of copy permissions they want to assert over their work, e.g., all-rights reserved or freely modifiable and transferable. You own your work, so you can start your virtual brand with confidence.

Micropayment System

Since you own the rights to your work, you can sell and trade your objects, scripts, and animations for pleasure or profit. The inworld micropayment system (Linden Dollars) allows you to easily pay other avatars for products, services, and entertainment. Similarly, the audience at a concert or fashion show can pay a "tip jar," or event organizers can charge for admission. Some talented Residents have been able to quit their day job and live off what they make selling their goods and services in Second Life.

Second Life offers professionals and amateurs alike a vast canvas for imaginative expression. Fashionistas from around the globe have already made their mark on the virtual world, and the wonders have only just begun.

See also

• Clothing Tutorials