Fashion Challenge – Men on a Low-L$ Budget
by Pixeleen Mistral on 13/03/07 at 10:32 am
If all else fails, nothing says tough like playin’ in the buff
by Tenshi Vielle, Fabulous Fashionista
Okay, okay, guys. I finally understand your lament.
After playing about an hour as a male searching for good, cheap clothing… THERE ISN’T ANY. We’re working on a basically free budget here, since men’s clothing is either $1L or $200L a pop. Take your pick. I even went to Wrong since they advertised men’s clothing and… guess what? No men’s clothing! The designer could not be reached for comment. Go figure.
The best place I found to get things at was the Freedove. That was my fallback place of choice when I was a newbie and only $5L in my pocket. I scoured the Gnubie shop – same old stuff. I got my skin there, but I’d never tried those types of skins before… I was horrified when I put it on. It looks like someone took a picture of a black man’s face and blended it together with the smudge tool in photoshop into some semblance of an African Facial Quilt.
I’m sorry, but can’t we do better with the free men’s skins?
Nylon? Toast? I know you guys have some hiding in the back of your inventory you can donate to Gnubie… come on. Guys should be able to do better than this patchwork thing I’m wearing. Oh, did I mention it comes with built in undies? Yay! Now my prim dick can just poke out of my boxers while I’m fucking some little whore at the Boardwalk as if I don’t really mean it. (sigh.)
Boots: Afantasy (Freedove) These boots are really quite well made and remind me of my own personal Old Boots from Shiny Things.
Next up, we have:
The outfit’s a little feminine looking, but if you’re masculine enough you can pull it off. Jana’s Classic Designs (Freedove)
Same, from Jana’s Classic Designs. I’m starting to become fond of her stuff; it really isn’t bad at all! Nice and clean looking.
Also, found these prim shoes from Hansen.
They’re well made but include bling, so beware!!
Of course, should any of those other options fail, you could wander around like many newbie SL men do – naked. Nothing says tough like playin’ in the buff, right?
So why the lack of men’s clothing?
“Most designers don’t spend a lot of time making big lines of mens’ wear, and one can’t really blame them because it seems that men in SL spend less on clothing and change less often. Many are content to just wear jeans and a t-shirt for weeks on end.” Jonathan Sprawl says, giving me a pretty good insight into the desert of men’s clothing… however, it still just doesn’t explain it for me.
Barnesworth wasn’t much help on the matter either:
Tenshi Vielle: I’m doing my article for the Herald on freebie hunting for men, and … it all sucks. Honest to god.
Barnesworth Anubis: torrid has some nice shirts for men.
And that was all I got out of him. He must be building or something.
I’m sick of this crap. I’m off to work on some good men’s freebies. I don’t care about profit. The men in SL have some kind of desperation going on, and it isn’t good.
xoxo
Signing off,
Tenshi Vielle
Zarithi Federko
Mar 16th, 2007
Check out http://www.second-man.com the premier men’s blog I would say…and there is definitely some awesome menswear designers out there…but you may have to pay for it. I know I played as a girl for my first couple of weeks in SL just because it was easier to find things for a girl avie. Now my inventory is chock full of awesome stuff and I keep adding, check my profile in game for some great men’s stores.
Zarithi Federko
Brace
Mar 16th, 2007
Tenshi I acknowleged the fact this is about freebies. I get that. The point is, freebies get really good when business is good.
Designers can afford to toss out decent versions of their stuff for free, if they’re doing well on the flip side of things.
As for advertizing, all those things I mentioned: Those ARE advertizing venues. Granted, maybe it might take a little bit more effort to find menswear, but it takes effort in general to shop specifically in SL.
So despite my snappish method of imparting info, its valid.
Consider. There might have been many others who HAD been advertizing their menswear and to no avail, and have since given up.
So again, it IS all about support. Making the effort to get out there, shop, speak to the designers, make suggestions, give out info if you know of innovative venues and/or methods of advertizing.
Sponsor a big old OMG Menswear event. anything.
It DOES trickle down. You are successful in your menswear sales, you have no problem tossing out quality freebies.
Its all connected.
Jesse
Mar 16th, 2007
Hey, i sell a TON of shirts/dress tops a day at my shop, Renown. on the aitui sim.
I dont think i have anything over $150L, cept my skins.
3 freebies. But to sit and make high quality things just to give it away for free? No thanks.
Randy Vallely
Mar 19th, 2007
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The male skins sold by Naughty Designs comes with a great prim buzz style hair (at least the one I bought did). Not sure how well it looks with other skins, but they carry very good skins anyway.
Anise DeSantis
Apr 18th, 2007
Robin Sojourner makes the flannel shirt. She also has an ambiguous “low ponytail” hair that will work for either gender. If I rememeber correctly, she also has some western-type jeans, but I don’t know if they look right on a man. Folded on the display table, they reminded me of the Marlboro man from old advertising: tight Levis. It’s in Benten-31,105,28. Name of the store is “Robin (Sojourner) Wood’s AV Shop.”
Terrence Grigorovich
Oct 9th, 2008
“Guys pay special attention to this post cause… you’ll go mad when you see all the male gifts at MADesigns. There are tons of gifts from different designers on a table in the main store.”
I don’t know how long will this last.