If you missed last week's sampling of menswear and fashions, you can find it here.
Two big ones today! This week, we're looking at Blaze Fine Fashions, and Magellan House - both recommended by a number of SLI readers. We're still looking for places to review, so if you have a favorite men's store which has clothing, accessories, shoes, skins, hair, gadgets, or anything else you can think of, let us know. If our test audience buys something, we'll write it up the store here.
Blaze Fine Fashions - Blaze Columbia
With her concise range of menswear, Blaze Columbia has ensured that she has not substituted quality for quantity. She has produced a selection of business, smart casual and formal outfits for men, all with elegant, understated and attractive handrawn detailing. Unlike with photorealistically detailed clothing, Blaze's garments hint at folds and creases rather than fleshing them out in full, giving a streamlined look more appropriate to Second Life. Blaze's businesses suits are especially popular, with satiny welt pockets in opposition to the matt button holes and a sheen on the lapels for the jacket, and crisp creases permanently pressed into the pants.
Something I especially liked was the layering of the shirts and ties. The shirt is on the undershirt layer, the tie knot on the shirt layer, and the tie itself is a flexi-prim layered over the top. This gives the whole system a great flexibility for combinations of color within the label, and assists with compatibility with other Second Life garments.
If I were to desire any changes to Blaze's work, it would be these: extra cuff detailing on the shirt, and a slightly different effect for the crotch creases on the pants. Nonetheless, I accept that altering the cuffs might make them less compatible with other Second Life clothing, and that considering the way that pants wrap around the avatar mesh, that crotch creases can be quite difficult.
Magellan House - Apparel by Mako - Mako Magellan
Mako Magellan's clothing range has just expanded by quite a large extent, so even if you are already familiar with Mr. Magellan's work, now is an excellent time to check out his garments. The gallery contains snaps taken during the Grand Opening of his flagship store in Caledon, Victoria City. I had the privilege of hobnobbing with the man himself as the excessively polite and refined people of Caledon and surrounds, and other admirers of Mr. Magellan's designs, came together to celebrate the opening. The opening was decidedly well attended, with people coming and going throughout the period between 3pm and 5pm on 11 August, for an average of 20 people, with quite a number sticking around after the stated time.
Mr. Magellan's designs are interesting. Not necessarily historically correct (by design), but certainly with more than a nod in that direction, and with a taste of his own style in addition. From a distance, and even from his own advertising, his clothing may look a little plain, perhaps even severe; however, this misapprehension is soon cleared up from a more usual distance - in fact the clothing has been carefully textured, in some cases delicately, in others, more boldly.
With the introduction of several new pieces, we witness the development of Mr. Magellan's style, as he breaks out into more colorful and dramatic designs intended for everyday wear, as opposed to his previous dramatic "dress-up" garments. Even though the execution is not quite right, in that the stripes do not match up across seams (though, to be granted, RL clothing doesn't match designs across seams either), one of my favorite pieces is the red pinstripe double-breasted suit, a bold and glamorous choice and an excellent concept. The "Sergeant Pepper" outfit I am also very fond of, particularly the detailing on the front of the jacket, although the collar color dos not quite match that of the jacket. Our test audience did not find either of these flaws sufficient cause to not buy these outfits.
A listing of new garments and outfit available, from Mr. Magellan's invitation to the Grand Opening:
Several garments will be on display for the first time:
- A complete riding outfit: black helmet and crop, red 'hunting pink' jacket, and cream jodhpurs
- A plain navy three-piece single-breasted suit
- A brown tweed two-piece single-breasted suit
- A charcoal silk two-piece double-breasted suit
- A red pinstripe double-breasted suit
- A replica of George Harrison's outfit from the Sergeant Pepper album
- A 3/4-length belted double-breasted trenchcoat
- A detailed red patchwork silk double-breasted waistcoat
- A flamboyant purple top hat and tails combination
- An open-necked collarless shirt
- A buttoned collarless shirt
- A creamy white shirt with prim collar and blue tie
And even something for the ladies:
- Four pairs of ladies' pearl earrings
All Fashion Plates:
Skin: Nora Entice - David Almond Stubble
Shape: Nora Entice - David Shape
Hair: Sirena Brad Black - Blackberry
Goggles: Techpanty - Glasses Collection 3
Hat: 7 Deadly Prims - Skull Tophat Twisted collection
Fashion Plates 1-4:
Blaze* Ultimate Wool Suit - Black
Fashion Plates 5-6:
Blaze* Safari Cavalier - Leopard
Fashion Plates 7-8:
Apparel by Mako - Red Patchwork Waistcoat
Apparel by Mako - Buttoned Collarless Shirt
Fashion Plate 9:
Apparel by Mako - Red Pinstriped Double-breasted Suit
Fashion Plate 10:
Apparel by Mako - Sgt Pepper Outfit
Fashion Plates 11-12:
Apparel by Mako - Morning Coat Jacket and Tails - Blue Double-breasted
Apparel by Mako - Morning Wear Trousers
1. Many thanks for the review. I think you sum up pretty nicely. I just wanted to add a couple of comments as clarification.
Seams - just lately I have begun nudging them out by a pixel or two to give clothing a more hand-made, less mechanical look. In addition to this, when trying to match a jacket layer to a skirt layer there is no sure way of getting stripes to align anyway, as the shirt layer below can make the jacket swell or shrink relative to the skirt. This is one of SL's more curious features. Of course, most designers seem to stay away from stripes for this very reason - but in turn that makes having pinstriped clothing all the more desirable.
Sgt Pepper - the background collar colour is the same as that of the jacket - it sometimes appears different because of the way SL tints colours according to their surface orientation, in an attempt to create an illusion of shape and contour. A good illustration of this is a simple single-colour cube - each face appears to be a different colour. Most times this works OK. Also, I certainly used a variety of braid types on this outfit, simply because the original was done that way. Had I been designing this from scratch I would have been much more consistent.
Posted at 1:33AM on Aug 17th 2007 by Mako Magellan