It’s Part 5 of my Gemme Six series and I want to take you shopping in Second Life. It’s impossible to feature all of my favorite malls, stores and designers but I want to share a few I think you’ll enjoy.
- Role Play in Time
- A World of Nature & Beauty
- A New Englander at Heart
- A Bluesy Kinda Luv
- Shopping, Shopping, Shopping!
- Somewhere Beyond the Sea
5) Shopping, Shopping, Shopping!
The purpose of this trip isn’t to find any particular style of clothing but it is about shopping for clothes. This visit is about the SL shopping experience and that means leaving everything other than buying things from the Second Life catalog (Marketplace). Like many busy avatars, I use Marketplace often but when you consider that each designer not only invests their time in creating great fashions, they also represent their sense of beauty in the way they build and furnish their stores.
A couple of days ago, Strawberry Singh published an article about Debug Settings. It was very useful information and I’ve already implemented two of her settings; however, her outfit looked so cute I felt that urge which no woman can resist. No! I’m not talking about that (*eyes roll*) urge, I’m talking about shopping! And what do I do when I have that urge? I raced right over to Maitreya and got a similar style of dress and boots.
dress &boots from Maitreya. I’m pretending I don’t know
that girl with the Demo boxes on her head. *giggles*
She’s my best friend for life, Leanna. hugs LeLe.
The urge to shop wasn’t satisfied thought. I showed my best friend Leanna my new boots and she figured that these were boots she might need to. Then the two of us raced over to Maitreya’s vast complex of stores and took our shopping to the next level. Ok, then it got complicated. We started looking around at other items, so of which we needed at once. And fun was had by all, once LeLe made her decision on what to buy. I had no such problem. heh
But what do you do when you don’t know exactly what you want. What do you do when you know you want something but don’t know what it is? You race off to the mall or any place with lots of shops.
Here are a couple malls and a couple store complexes that I especially enjoy. Each of these carry very different kinds of fashion, from general interest to more sexy, from Italian fashion to youthful hawt. The places and theire landmarks are: LE LOOK mall, Ambrosia mall, the shops of Armidi and the stores of :SEY on GREED.
It is a real mall with two stories and dozens of stores.
Many top designers have boutique shops here as well.
I love to roam from store to store looking for new things
but don’t miss the north and south corridors for much more.
The stores here are mostly different from the stores
of LE LOOK, and tend to be a little more on the sexy side.
Part of the fun is wandering the streets and passages, finding nooks and crannies.
The merchandise is distinctive and always fine quality.
To fully experience :SEY, you have to head outside
where you’ll find other shops and a lot fun places to enjoy.
Again, there are soooooo many places I’d love to take you. I could say, oh check out these: Dela*, GizzA, Zaara, J.H. Couture, Baiastise, eX, LeeZu!, Fellini, [sYs], INDRYA, GothiCatz, Leri Miles, Carolines, Nicky Ree, REALE, ~Sassy~, AOHARU, Rebel Hope, BabyDolls, and can’t forget the guys with Hoorenbeck, Wilsons and… well, I’m still be leaving off so many places. Ok, I forgot all the shops at Junkyard Blues south. Oh! And there’s skin stores, shoe stores, costume stores, lingerie stores and every other kinda store. And I don’t want to forget to mention that there are many little cafes adjacent to stores, nice to rest your feet and reload your account with more L$. I know a lot of peeps who say, there’s just too many stores. But some of us say, there’s not enough stores! hehe
Coming Soon, Part 6 – Somewhere Beyond the Sea
Agnes Sharple
Botgirl Questi
Bumblebee (Wendz Tempest)
Canary Beck
Carissa Arthurine Somerset
Eva Marie
Fuschia Nightfire
George Coghill
Ironyca Lee
Jeremy Owen Turner
Joseph DeLappe
Kathleen Cool
Katie Vizenor
Krista Hoefle
Kristine Schomaker
Lizzie Gudkov
Aero Bigboots
RMarie Beedit
Marmaduke Arado
Isabella Medici
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nathan Shafer
Pixel Reanimator
Ravanel Griffon
Scarlett Luv
Strawberry Singh
Tabitha Raincloud
Toni Tyldesley
Trilby Minotaur
Vanessa Blaylock
Xue Faith
Yordie Sands
Awesome Yordie! I have to type fast because I have some L$ burning a hole in my purse!
I wanted to clarify a little for any of our authors or readers from worlds other than Second Life.
First: anybody can make stuff. You can make and wear a dress, a t-shirt, a sword, a funny hat, whatever you like. You can also give a copy to a friend. And using the “Linden Dollar” you can also make your stuff for sale.
There are 2 main ways to sell stuff: in-world and online. You mentioned “Marketplace” at the top, but IDK if that was totally clear: “Second Life Marketplace” is a web-based place to buy goods of any kind for delivery in SL.
Or, instead of Marketplace you can “physically” sell stuff in-world. (and yes, many peeps have their stuff available both ways)
Selling in world can be very simple or very elaborate. You could just rent a wall somewhere and put a 2D picture of your stuff and let peeps click to buy.
Or you could get a bigger space and build a whole store. A small store. A huge store. A store with different departments. You could get a big space and sub-lease some of it to “likeminded” designers (or anyone who will pay you)
In addition to a box to click to buy your shoes or dress or whatever, you could also rez 3D versions of the shoes, perhaps oversized, in-world. You could also hire “real” models (that is actual human-avatars, not bots or NPCs) to model your clothes for the public. You could allow your models to be AFK, so they’re essentially living mannequins… or you could pay them more and require them to be present and interact with customers. “Oh you’d like to see this dress in green instead? Let me put that on for you.” Or, oh, yes, that’s over in our Contemporary Asian section, let me show you where that is.
haha… I got carried away as usual.
Mostly I just wanted to explain the difference between “Marketplace” (online) and In-World “physical” stores.
A lot of designers do STUNNING work. And some of them, a few at least, make a lot of money. I heard that the haute couture shoe designer Stiletto Moody made US$1 million in 3 years.
This is really a separate point, but I’ll just mention very briefly, that while this economy is wonderful, and OH YES, I too do love to shop!
That there is also a downside. SL is a world where absolutely anyone can make their own absolutely anything. There’s easily accessible physics, springiness, wind response, etc, galore if you want to make your own tail that reacts to your walk and to the wind… you can make the most glorious textures ever in Gimp / Photoshop… or the funnest quick-and-dirty textures… And there are places around the grid that offer free classes in how to do it. Plus VidTuts online.
Like RL where any of us could make our own clothes, but few do, there is something gained, and also something lost, by turning this activity over to “the professionals.” Like you Yordie, I’m a Maitreya addict. I’ve spent plenty there and I’m still thrilled with every purchase. While I’d realistically never make work of the complexity and beauty that Onyx does…
If I’m upset that the UK’s threatening to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy… or upset that Pussy Riot’s going to prison for 2 years for “upsetting the social order”… or if I’m happy that Becky’s BFF is getting married… I can take or make a sign or logo and put that on a t-shirt in about 2 minutes and be wearing it as I walk down the virtual world.
When we give up our right / ability to DIY to the pros, we gain convenience and quality, but we sacrifice voice. Our very occasional iRez contributor, and frequent VB/CO cast member Agnes Sharple started an in-world group called “Look What I Made” where anyone can join and send out stuff they made to the gang of co-participants. I doubt I’ll ever stop spending those juicy Linden dollars, still, just for myself, a group like Agnes’ is the true beauty of this world.
Yikes! Yipes! Where do I begin and how do I proceed? Oh Vaneeesa, there’s so much in the reply. I know what, tommorrow! That’s where I begin. Hugs & Love, you media genius, you.
Being so busy lately, I’m finding the Marketplace to be my main port of call when I’m shopping. I do, however, miss the feeling of walking (or camming) around a stylishly decorated store and having the experience of finding an unexpected treasure just around the corner. I know the Inworld shopping vs MarketPlace debate has been well trod, and I’m not aiming to start that up here, I’m glad we have both.
No question about it, Marketplace is the place to go when you are in a hurry. But for sheer pleasure of shopping, I can always go to one or more of these great shopping locations and wander endlessly shopping.
here’s something I want to add on too. Some content creators don’t have stores at all and while I know that upsets creators who’ve invested in stores, if the content is good then no problem.
Otoh, for content that isn’t good, if there is a store there is someone with more substance behind them. However, in SL, that doesn’t mean you’ll get resolution.
I’ve been burned occasionally, but not often at all. I once paid for a tank and got no delivery and no reply from the merchant. I paid L$3,500 for the tank and was pretty disappointed.
Even “expensive clothes” are so inexpensive by RL standards that I think on the rare occasion when you get burned, the most effective use of your time is just to move on.
BTW, I was just riffing on some ideas, but I totally love your post and, DUH! 😀 love to shop!
On Marketplace I think I’m with you and Becky. Marketplace is faster but somehow it’s not an immersive experience. It is “fun” to go to “real” stores and look around.
Actually I think I have the same shopping experience RL & SL, that the 1st 1/2 of putting a new outfit together is a lot of fun and excitement… but totally finishing it off winds up taking forever and becomes tedious and while I wasn’t looking the fun thing became a bit of a chore.
Of course, when you’re virtual closet’s full’a’crap, you can just buy a nice dress and dig out all the accessories FIONA DOESN’T WEAR ANYMORE! 😛
Darn… everybody has my new dress. So i went and got a pink one, but in a nightclub it looks kinda beige. I guess i need something spectacular like orange or something. hehe