Fashion Research Institute

Festivities and Fashion

It’s winter – for real. It snowed in RL last night. It’s still there this morning. That makes it winter. We had several friends over for warm winter dinner. We sat and shmoozed and it was wonderful. I’m so fortunate to have wonderful RL and SL friends. My SL friends are also getting me into a happy winter mood. I’m usually a summer beach gal, so getting me to enjoy winter is an arduous undertaking. 🙂

First was Honour. She was making a wreath in response to a friend’s request. She sent it to me for any comments. Oh right, like I am the person to critique Honour’s work. LOL. SHE teaches ME, remember???? *grin* Anyway, I fell in love with the wreath. So simple, elegant, just a touch of color. (Please note – “color”, not “colour”. ) As many of you know, I tend to be very rococco and ornate when left to my own devices. Yet I do really love simple lines. This wreath made me smile and immediately made me think of decorating for the season.

I’m not very experienced in decorating for the winter season. I’m VERY good at fall and summer. *grin* And I’m SUPERB for Superbowl parties. But winter? Hmmm. So it was lucky that was also the day Fricker Fraker gave away his adorable candy cane reindeer!!! OMG!!! It is so cute! I’m in love. I went out and decorated. I suspect I’m “supposed” to have more than reindeer and a wreath, but that sounds so wonderfully alliterative, doesn’t it? Notice that there is still no snow at MY house. But I suppose Bamboo, Mallory, Drake, Bill and I need to think about a season’s greeting card. Sigh, alas, poor Frenis. By the way – Fricker has launched a very cool blog – SL stuff (clothes, gadgets, guy things) for men: “Man on the Grid“. Check it out. I am having envy – I may have to create a male alt. *grin*

It wouldn’t be winter without a winter fashion show. I am actually JUST posting this in time. I am one of the model’s for Missy Lavecchia’s fashion show on Monday, Dec. 7, at 4pm SLT. As always, go to Michele’s blog for all the REAL details. But Missy has created some beautiful gowns. I got a sneak preview of the build last week. While Shenlei and Missy discussed details and such, I skated about the build, enjoying how easy and warm it is to skate in SL. *grin* I hope you come and see us all on Monday – the usual group of gorgeous, talented, fun models will be there. 🙂 Oh – and modest. *grin* We are modest as well. Missy’s gowns are gorgeous and I’m sure you have a few holiday parties on the calendar. Maybe we can convince Shen to leave the build up for a bit so we can all skate some more.

New Horizons: Shengri La Chamomile

You know I adore my friend Shenlei. She is a dynamo, never relaxing, never stopping, one brilliant creation after another. If I want to get to have playtime with her anymore, I practically have to kidnap her. *grin* I think I need to drop another “time-to-play-and-laugh-for-30-minutes” present on you, Shen. When last we saw our heroine – she’d just published a book. Okay, she topped that. She built 4 regions in Opensim. Yep. Four. Gorgeous, prim-full regions. /me grins happily. I have been there twice already, visiting, seeing the sights.

Fashion Research Institute, Inc. and Intel Labs announced their new research collaboration whose focus is exciting, quality content and optimized performance of the OpenSim platform which, together, will provide for an enhanced user experience. Maybe you don’t know how truly exciting this is. Maybe you don’t play in virtual worlds. Maybe you only play in SL. But as one who has been working in Opensim for the last several months – believe me. This is MAJOR. The efforts being made on Science Sim for both content and performance are huge. You know I am not a techie, I’m not really anyone who “knows” much. I am your typical end user. So what I say reflects the masses, not the cognoscenti. These sims are stunningly beautiful. Fascinating to visit. I think that we are looking at another major step in OS’s rise to fame and glory. *grin* Okay – maybe that was over the top. But since I am NOT technical, I do fall back on my liberal arts upbringing.

Quoting from Shenlei’s blog:
This collaboration is currently scheduled to run for a year, during which time FRI will provide increasingly complex, highly detailed, large scale (beautiful) designs which will be showcased in Science Sim with hosting and hardware provided by Intel Corporation.

We think it is important to have active human agency providing feedback to the technologists about the quality of the user experience. As fashion designers from the apparel industry, we think function should also be delivered with flair, and dare we say it, fashionably. With that in mind, we have begun developing the new Shengri La regions on Science Sim: Shengri La Chamomile, Shengri La Sage, Shengri La Thyme, and Shengri La Rosemary.

There is a wonderful video on the front page of the FRI blog. It highlights the Chamomile region. The hauntingly beautiful music is by Kyle Bronsdon (who you may know as Kyle Beltran), and was composed specifically in honor of Shenlei and Shengri La.

At the moment there are sailboats and gardens and landscaping and the stupendous Saltwater House. Also there or coming shortly are works by the FRI interns (hey – they are doing a fashion show in SL in 2 weeks – *grin* you know *I* will be there) and interactive butterfly displays and much more. There is also an art gallery coming, but I’m not allowed to say anything more about that. (Contact me in world – I can be bribed. *grin*) I snuck over and could not resist taking this picture of the grounds about the building. Opensim can be a beautiful space.

FRI Graduation

This is very late. Graduation was back on May 31. I was still recovering from being ill. I did make it to the fashion show, took some pictures, but was still not up to blogging. But I do want to show you the set that was built for the students to model their outfits. I confess – my initial reaction was that I hated it and wanted to leave. I have RL issues with height and falling. I was still fairly dizzy and unstable from my illness. So to be up in the sky on invisible platforms – well – you can imagine. I was NOT happy. I needed a tp to get up in to the actual show and then I was afraid to move.

But as I stood about and chatted with friends, I pulled my camera back. And that’s when I saw the whole build and understood the beauty and talent of it all. This build is what SL architecture and events can be. Think beyond the physical limitations of RL. Floating in air, not chained by gravity or physics. I ended up really enjoying the build and appreciating how it allowed the students freedom to model their fashions.