As I understand it, creating hair is a challenging business. Never having tried it myself (except for the horrifying turn of events hereafter referred to as "The Incident" -- long story), I don't claim to know what issues the process entails. However, I do know good work when I see it. For this post, I've interviewed Six Kennedy and her partner Dominik Bauer, the minds behind Gurl 6, a successful line of avatar hairstyles. Six and Dom were very easy to talk with, no egos involved at all. I heartily recommend checking out their wares!

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity, and in the interest of expediency. Dialogue has not been altered in any other way; these are the words of the interviewees.

Six Kennedy: Hi Akela!

SL Insider: Hi! Nice to finally meet you!

Dominik Bauer: Hi, Akela!

SL Insider: Hi Dominik!

Six Kennedy: And this is my partner Dominik; he runs the man shop and the animations/poses. He also is a big part of the girl part behind the scenes.

SLI: His secret's safe with me.

Six Kennedy: LOL I don't mean like that! He helps me with textures, although I've been known to make him try on a wig or two!

SLI: This is a huge empire of hair you've built.

Six Kennedy: My friend calls it a little hair utopia.

SLI: So, first of all, how did you come to Second Life?

Six Kennedy: A friend of mine told me about the game, I had tried TSO (The Sims Online) before. Once I saw what you could do with your avatars here I loved it and stayed.

SLI: How long did it take you to start doing your own hair? ...so to speak.

Six Kennedy: I had been playing for 6 months, just mostly hanging out in sandboxes watching other friends build and learning basic building, but about 6 months in is when I started actually creating my own hair. I always had millions of ideas for styles in my head and loved the hair out there that already existed; I just wanted MORE of it! That's why I started making it.


More after the break...SLI: How long did it take you to be successful, and are you making any RL money from this?

Six Kennedy: I still don't consider myself "successful", but I think it was about 4 months of making hair and having a store before anyone finally noticed it was there!

SLI: Ah... did you advertise, or was it mostly word of mouth?

Six Kennedy: At first it was ALL word of mouth. I didn't put any effort into advertisement. Then finally I started posting on the forums and that is when people started hearing about Gurl 6. I had been told over and over to post to the forums but I didn't believe they reached too many people until I finally did it.

SLI: Dominik, how did you become involved?

Dominik Bauer: I'm her partner... in every aspect.

SLI: When did you two meet, and did you jump right into the biz with her?

Dominik Bauer: We met June, 05.

Six Kennedy: Dominik is the one that pushed me to start selling the hair I was making, he worked on my hair textures and things I could never work out on my own like alpha layers!

Dominik Bauer: And made the first ads --- total team work. Whatever was needed!

SLI: Why 'Gurl 6'?

Six Kennedy: Oh, well, the '6' part is evident... [it's] my name and I was going to name it GuRL World but then wanted to put my name in it! Really not so exciting!

SLI: So, no connection to the Spike Lee movie.

Six Kennedy: Eeek no! Someone asked me about that before and I hadn't even seen it or anything or thought of it.

SLI: Gotcha. Any plans for the future of the store?

Six Kennedy: Yes. Much more clothing. I am currently working on a full clothing line for the store that's been put on the back burner a little due to the introduction of flexi prims. Everything kind of got pushed back while I have been having so much fun with these things!

SLI: Flexi is sexi!

Six Kennedy: Yeah, I really dreaded flexi at first but now I'm pretty much pushing all flexi hairs out!

SLI: Thank you so much, you guys!

Do patronize Gurl 6, and tell them Akela sent you!