I am very happy with my mens line of clothes and have been aching to make my womens designs a second reality. I have sketches in my notebook and have been experimenting with shapes. This dress is a pattern I have been playing with and wearing to see if it works as I wanted.
I was asked to make a special suit for a lovely lady named Cerebal. I based it on the mens black suit, but there are so many changes in shading and the creases that they are not comparable. I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich as I made this, trying to capture the style and sexines. With fine tailoring and finish, it will become a year-round favourite.
After many days work I have made about 20 ties, too many to show here! Here is a small sample.
Here are nine casual and open-neck shirts for wear with one of my open-neck jackets or just with jeans or trousers.
For me, making a suit is quite a long business. I start by making the material and this is usually six or more layers in photoshop. I try and give the material a micro-texture with slightly different colours thoughout. When lit in SL, the various colours are picked out and give my suits a soft look with different colours in the shadows and highlights.In contrast most SL suits are made in a single flat colour or with noise added and look dull or flat.
Once I have the material I cut the suit using Fireworks, a vector painting program. I check the cut using the Avatar preview program and go back and forth making sure all the seams line up. Using a vector based program allows me to make pixel fine adjustments to the positions of each part of the suit.
Once the cut is correct, I fill the cut with material and add a layer of shading (not shadows). The shading is generally dark around the waist and bottom of the legs, getting lighter on the shoulders, bottom and knees. I texture the shading to give a richer look to the material underneath.
I add pockets and trim, then the shadows and highlights. After I add the buttons and buttonholes.
A detail of one of my suits showing the completed texture.
I just put my suits in a new simpler and smaller package with just pants, jacket and one shirt. My large packs remain on sale and these have ties or extra shirts included.
The British Cut suit is a single breasted shapely suit with thin lapels and medium gorge and is subtly shaded to enhance your body shape and made to hang well. The suit is drawn to suggest a fine wool, like cashmere, catching the light.
Waiting for the fashion show to start. Seraphine (shown on left) organised a show at Betria Prims and the Boutique has been given an opportunity to show a few clothes. The main players are Nicky Ree, who makes amazing clothes but is not well known, Starsong, Diva, Insolence and Casa Del Shai.
