The Alphaville Herald

Fashion “Exposition” Review: Ambergris Baphomet

by matthiaszander on 01/03/06 at 11:38 pm

by Matthias Zander

I just finished attending a fashion exposition (I’d heasitate to even come close to calling it a "fashion show") for the SecondLife designer Ambergris Baphomet.  It was a very mixed set of clothing and raises some interesting questions about the fashion world in SecondLife in general.  Overall, it was an interesting show with some high points and other very low points.

As was done once in the past, I am going to divide this review into three sections: The Good, The Bad, and The Extremely Ugly.

The Good

The highlight outfit of the evening in my mind is the "Lavender Tingle" dress, modeled by Simone Stern.  This dress made its premiere tonight, according to Ambergris, and is stunning.  It was completely hand-drawn, and shows a nice technique.  As one person who attended the exposition put it, "that dress screams queen of all the world".  I couldn’t agree more.

Next up, we have Bubba Ash in a combination of the Abalone Male Silks and Handrawn Bluestone Loincloth.  I couldn’t get a picture of him with the silk bottoms on because he hopped off the posing stand whenever he put it on – and with good reason.  This pose, which was done by Jonny Dusk (as we were reminded with each and every model description), is horrible for this kind of thing.  Whomever picked out which poses go with which outfit needs a pair of glasses or something.  The outfit itself, though, is nice, if silks are your style (or your lifestyle requirement).

The Bad

This outfit is called "Midnight Persia," and features Raven Callisto as the model.  The name certainly fits this – it looks like she cut pieces out of a Persian rug and pasted them on a black material, and then decided to wear it.  I’d definately skip this unless you’re dressing for a "best floor textures applied as clothing" contest.  The prim style is nice, but the textures honestly ruin it.

The Extremely Ugly

This outfit is "Purple Swirl," with Sunid Gorky as the model.  This outfit is based off a texture by Margeaux Mirabeau, an old friend of mine.  However, I am not a fan of this outfit, at all.  First off, it looks like all Ambergris did is cut out pieces of Margeaux’s texture, apply it to clothing, and put it on the model.  The texture doesn’t really even fit clothing, though.  It looks to me like more of a flooring texture – I guess when you combine this with the Midnight Persian dress, you can assume that Ambergris has a bit of a flooring fetish.  However, OH BOY!  This outfit comes in other colors!  I’m shocked and appalled.  My apologies for the bad angle on the shot, as well.  This model was stationary and did not turn (unlike the rest), so she was stuck with her butt towards all of us the entire exposition.

This final outfit is Renee Riva in "Fuscia Sparkle."  Where to begin with this outfit?  It’s more than ugly – it’s fugly.  I believe Ambergris said that this was one of her early outfits, and she has certainly progressed (see "Lavender Tingle," above).  Why show this at a fashion exposition, though?  The prims are horrid and look like a bad cartoon hairstyle, the dress is obviously photosourced (and badly at that), and the stockings are just plain pink with black bows at the top.  Once again, though, this outfit comes in NUMEROUS COLORS!  Can’t you see how thrilled I am?

Another issue I have with this is the pose.  As is very common in poses, the ankles are broken.  By this, I mean that the feet are angled downards at a very unnatural angle, causing the shoes to go through the ankle.  This honestly isn’t that hard to fix in Poser, and is something that pose creators should watch out for and prevent.

Conclusion

I absolutely hated the format of this fashion "show."  What Ambergris did was have the models stay stationary on a poseball each on columns in a square around the courtyard.  This made all of the attendees move, which caused all kinds of lag.  I had extremely bad lag the entire time, as did many others (there were frequent complaints about lag in chat).  Call me old-fashioned, but it’s much more effective in my mind to have everyone sit down, and have the models come out one by one.  This reduces lag because there are less people moving, and makes it much more effective and dramatic.  Here, unless you wanted to stick around for Ambergris’ explanations, you could come, see it all in 5 minutes or so, and then leave, if you could move.

The poses were all absolutely horrible.  They need to be re-done with attention to detail (such as ankles), and better ones chosen next time for a fashion exposition such as this.

Certainly not the worst show that I’ve reviewed, but certainly not the best.  Two out of five stars.