Saturday, January 26, 2008

Let's get this ball rolling

Until I figure out a more holistic way to edit the format, please bear with the standard look of this blog (god, I'm a person with a blog...a blogger...whoda thunk?).

InWorld, I'm known as Solivar Scarborough, one of the proprietors of Second Thoughts (though my firstLife fiancee, Daequix Scarborough, markets under Daeskins, and Gadget Gobo under Gadget, we all fall under the general brand of Second Thoughts). I myself sub-brand some: 2TX was an early variant to cover my "eXplorer wear", Hats A'Plenty more recently to cover the various hats I've made over time.

Let's start things at the beginning, with some of my earliest outfits:
With a brave new world of SL, and most of the clothing I'd seen either extreme goth/fetish/fantasy, or ordinary suburban clothes, I thought I'd strike out in my own direction: producing clothes symbolic of exploration, and for men at that, since so much of the world focused on women's wear (which I've come to understand because men on the whole don't tend to explore much fashionwise, even when it's available, compared to women who tend to change with each day - men can often be found still wearing newbie skins and shapes unless a female friend takes them in hand and forces them to shop). Me, I'm a freak - growing up with lots of sisters, I tend to see shopping as an adventure in of itself.

So, some of the first clothes I made were exploration based: an elizabethan swashbuckler, a deep sea diving suit, and a full set of vintage fieldwear with pith helmet in both a men's and a women's version. I've been meaning to expand on these for some time, but one needs to focus, and I can very easily be drawn astray by shiny baubles Oddly enough, in a sex-crazed world, the very dowdy female version of the fieldwear has been my most popular seller - for men and women. Having had rave reviews by a number of folks on it, I put aside my urge to upgrade it, until some strange woman, claiming to be a stylist for others, sent her copy back to me without any real word. I won't go into what went on, but it was rather ugly. Wrestling now with my plan to upgrade them since I wouldn't want her to think I did it because of her. On the other hand, it's (the upgrade) been nagging me for a long while and I've had so many ideas for accoutrements that I don't think I'll let her have any influence on it (other than maybe making a crotchless version and name it for her) .

I don't mean to kvetch about a customer - they have a right to expect the best, and I will labor to do even better, but her whole approach was so...manipulative - as though I'd tried to put one over on her (even though the outfit was plainly visible in the picture) and as if she wasn't really interested in fixing her problem as trying to teach me a lesson, like some queen diva out of The Devil Wears Prada, and I've never had patience for that sort.

So by all means complain - I welcome criticism as long as it's constructive or if I've totally blown it or even if you just feel like it. It's called feedback, and years in the special effects trenches where the first thing every morning you had to sit and have your previous day's work critiqued in front of everyone tends to thicken the skin.

Cheers!

Soli