“What seems real to the mind can be as important as any material fact. We live by the spirit and the imagination as well as by our senses. Cartoon animation can give fantasy the same reality as those things we can touch and see and hear.” ~ Walt Disney

I know I like to relive my favorite fantasies over and over…but I never knew it was an animation technique.

“Live so your friends can defend you, but never have to.” ~ Arnold Henry Glasow

Reason #43573 my meat does not belong to classmates.com, myspace, or facebook and never will…an actual conversation I had with a friend the other day:

Friend: X is asking again on facebook if anyone’s heard from you since college. Can I give her your email?
Salome: Isn’t X the one you told me went off explaining why Halloween was an evil celebration of Satan last year?
Friend: Yes.
Salome: Are you sure she didn’t mean satin?
Friend: Pretty sure.
Salome: If you give her my contact information, I’ll just confide to her about how I’m worried about your soul and beg her to convince you to give up wicca.
Friend: Why can’t you just say no like normal people?
Salome: No.

I maintain that the people worth keeping track of in high school and college, I never lost touch with. Why do teh interwebs keep inventing formats for you to reconnect with those life naturally sloughed off?

“Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film. They advertise memories.” ~ Theodore Parker*

I am not a fan of this increasingly popular trend to display clothes as if they were hanging on racks, folded in stacks, or otherwise settled into place on RL style shelves and hangers. It’s quite the rage with the “high couture” crowd, but it’s a trend that does a disservice to the consumer.

When you see a display like this one from LeLutka Mode, it is appealing in a trendy ain’t-that-cute-like-RL kinda way:

LeLutka Mode - Seven Dress On Rack

The charm soon wears off as the problems from a shopper’s perspective increase. For one thing, on many of these types of displays, you never get to see the rear of the item: the designer lazily (or, deceptively) uses the same image for the front and back. Second, most of these images, if not all, are not taken from models wearing the items in SL, but from the actual source material in Maya/PS, etc and, as such, you get absolutely no practical impression of what the damn thing looks like on an SL mesh.

LeLutka Mode - Seven

In the case of the Seven dress from LeLutka, from a distance, there wouldn’t appear to be a great deal of disparity. It dresses up or down (with a pair of jeans from Nyte n’ Day) and, despite making me look like I escaped from a late 80′s Pat Benetar look-alike contest, it resembles the display for the most part. The prim belt and top are well sculpted and nicely textured. The system skirt is, well, a system skirt, but it is exactly what you’d expect from the display.

LeLutka Mode - Seven Dress Top Issues

What you can’t tell from the display is that the top is combination of system jacket and prim top. You see these work in tandem on the left, above. In order for this to look as clean as the display, you have to set your avatar bust size to something under 30 (I just slid mine down to zero). If you don’t, the textured jacket layer pokes through the prim in places and disrupts the flow of the prim texturing. In the middle, you can see just the jacket layer and how its textures are not as smooth as those on the prim. On the right, you can see where I’ve removed the jacket and how breasts on normal settings (I generally keep mine around 55) would penetrate the prim.

Would these issues have been better illustrated by a modeled display image? It’s hard to say. We’ve all seen and come to expect that designers will present their wares as best they can with the most flattering poses, lighting, etc. The key to that, however, is that when I look at the display of a model, I can see the position, I can evaluate the lighting and I can scan the image for small imperfections and indications. When clothing has extensive sculpted prim work, or requires things like a body shape change to look its best, I feel there should be more than just a PS image on a hanger informing me as a customer.

Moreover, when a designer has to go to the trouble of getting the item to model properly in SL, it makes them think about the product they’re importing from their crafting programs. If they know they can just slap up an image and not have to worry about the level of honesty they’re communicating to their shoppers, it removes their motivation to innovate or compromise within the platform. This “it’s not my fault, it’s SL” attitude is something you see a lot of with the higher design names, and it’s a growing disservice to consumers.

Certainly, shoppers understand SL has many frustrating problems, and most of us are still amazed at how design in SL has evolved to trump those issues. But, that evolution didn’t come because designers took a “you get what I give you” stance. The quality of SL goods has improved because early designers battled the problems of the format and weighed those frustrations against the possibilities of their creativity.

LeLutka Mode - Deborah Dress On Rack

Deborah is another LeLutka example of the disparity between these types of displays and their functioning reality.

LeLutka Mode - Deborah

I’m not a huge fan of balloon skirts (they always look like curtains to me), but I loved the colorful textures and Italian Riviera feel of this dress. I was surprised to find the skirt was a sculpted prim and not a fanned out system skirt. The extreme bell shape is very well done, but, like all sculpted prims, lacks movement and makes you feel like you’re waddling around in a mushroom cap. As these types of skirts go (I remember a hideously horrible one from Armidi), you do look amazing standing still, and I have to confess moving around in this one was much less ridiculous than most. It doesn’t swing from hip to hip like a bell with your thighs and legs popping out with every step. The movement is stilted and unnatural, but not ridiculous and, as such, I have to say it’s the best example of a sculpted skirt I’ve seen.

LeLutka Mode - Deborah Issues

I wasn’t wild about the included leggings (why bother?) which were neither glitch pants, nor stockings, and didn’t really offer anything I could see to the outfit. They weren’t included in the display version for this good reason, I suspect. Also not shown on the display was the undershirt that had to be worn. Like the Seven dress, Deborah has the same issue with breasts poking through the prims on regular breast settings, although in this case the shirt texture lines up and matches much better with the prim. The system top has its own sleeves, though, which appear in addition to the scoop neck of the prim. I like this look, but I know many who do not and there was no indication from the display that it would be this way. Unlike the other debatable issues, I feel strongly this would have been obvious on a modeled image.

R2 - Mahie Shoe Display

In contrast to the previous types of display smoke and mirrors, I was happy to find traditional display practices employed at R2. I’m not crazy about R2′s shoes, but they are a nice low-cost store (shoes start as low as L$90) with good sculpted prim work. In addition to photographed displays, there are rezzed samples on the floor, enlarged for shoppers to evaluate.

R2 - Mahie Shoes Worn

The result is much less disparity between what you see and what you get. Go figure!

Before I end this entry, I’d just like to say that I have nothing against LeLutka Mode. Judging from the traffic that was on their SIM, the displeasure I experienced with my purchases is not the norm. They are certainly not the only people who use these types of displays and definitely not the worst abusers of them. They have, however, followed the trend to use the practice and, since my most recent purchases took place there, I held them as example here.

I will continue to post disparity between displays and actual product when this happens with other designers, as I feel it to be a growing consumer issue in SL. Since we do not generally have the opportunity to try on, touch, or otherwise evaluate virtual goods, there is an increased responsibility for creators of virtual content to represent their goods fairly, even while subscribing to their own best interests (sales). This is a compromise designers face as business owners as opposed to creators — but the compromises and how design houses approach them are important parts of virtual fashion commerce and the economy that results from it. In this way, the compromise between advertising strategy and honesty to consumer base is just as important to designer and marketplace evolution as the compromise I mentioned earlier between content creators and the platform they import their work for sale within. The industry is growing up, and it can’t just play grown-up with those aspects that benefit the designer, it also has to grow up in consumer-side issues as well.

It’s worth mentioning, however, that the responsibility for these compromises does not rest solely upon the shoulders of designers. As consumers, it is also our responsibility to reward the practices we approve of and discourage those we do not. It is also our choice to be shopping savvy and recognize when trends are emerging that are against our better interests. If the industry is growing up, shoppers are charged to grow up with it.

As always, polite, appropriate feedback can be a valuable tool and powerful weapon. If your favorite designer is engaging in practices you disapprove of, dropping a notecard expressing your displeasure will resonate, especially if others express similar concerns. Just don’t be an ass; that makes it all the easier to dismiss you.

What, Where, & How Much:

[LeLutka]-DEBORAH – RED – L$350
[LeLutka]-Seven dress(Black) – L$350
LeLutka Mode

http://slurl.com/secondlife/LeLutka%20Mode/9/130/23

Mahie Shoes – L$119
R2 Fashion

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Japan%20Resort%20C2/63/213/22

* I love this quote, and couldn’t remember who said it. According to Google, it’s Theordore Parker, but it obviously can’t be *that* Theordore Parker, as Kodak wasn’t even registered until well after his death. So, either Google is wrong or there are two Theordore Parkers. Should anyone know the proper quote attribution with certainty, please let me know in comments