The Alphaville Herald

Pixel Clothes, Virtual Fashion Summit, IMVU, and HiPiHi

by Alphaville Herald on 19/02/08 at 10:47 pm

The Celebrity Trollop interview

by Pixeleen Mistral, fashionable reporter

IMVU fashionista

Recently, Celebrity Trollop took time from her busy schedule for an interview about the pixel clothes scene in SL, IMVU, HiPiHi and elsewhere. Celebrity also mentioned what promises to be a very interesting event – The Virtual Fashion Summit – a conference for virtual fashion designers, texture artists, prim sculptors, committed virtual fashion watchers and shoppers this coming June.

Pixeleen Mistral: Celebrity, you have been a huge figure in the SL fashion scene – where do you see that going? what is next?
Celebrity Trollop: I think Havok4 and Windlight are going to be the next major technical things coming down the pipe from Linden Lab. A lot of content creators are going to have to adjust to those differences between the SL of now and the SL of 3-4 months in the future.

Pixeleen Mistral: is this going to help the fashion scene or hurt it?
Celebrity Trollop: In general I think it’ll be huge leap forward in terms of framerates, avatar appearance and general grid stability. But on the other hand, most fashionistas have a pretty huge wishlist of flaws they wish would be addressed.

Pixeleen Mistral: *nods* how are you spending your time lately? is SL your main thing?
Celebrity Trollop: Mostly I’ve been running around IRL looking for a new job; but when I’ve been in SL its been mostly on Second Style business. I do spend most of my time in SL, but I also like checking out some of the other VWs – IMVU, or the really rudimentary fashions in places like hiphiphi

Pixeleen Mistral: tell me about the fashion scene in IMVU
Celebrity Trollop: It’s pretty active. One big difference between SL and IMVU is that in IMVU you can use some other’s creators work as a basis for your own extension. This is called a “derivation” and when you sell a work like that both you and the original creator get some of the fake money they use.

Pixeleen Mistral: wow
Celebrity Trollop: It’s also a bit more limited in the sense that the avatar model on IMVU is a bit more limited than SL’s. Everyone knows SLs avatars are a bit long in the tooth, but IMVU has a pretty simplistic avatar model.

Pixeleen Mistral: how is business in IMVU – are you making money there? what are the prospects for growth?
Celebrity Trollop: I’m not active as a content creator there, but there really is a thriving content scene there. Some SLers who are pretty well known also have work for sale in IMVU too. Starley Thereian is probably the best known SL content creator who also works in IMVU from time to time. In fact, some of her skins on IMVU have the same makeup as her Charmed skins in SL.

Pixeleen Mistral: what about HiPiHi?
Celebrity Trollop: Everything’s still in flux there, of course. A lot of the content creation is a little bit undefined because the platform itself is still under construction to a large degree. But I think there’s eventually going to be a really thriving content scene there too — as long as its not too heavily censored by the Chinese government. That remains to be seen – how independent content creators will be treated there.

Pixeleen Mistral: what sort of thing will they censor? we know LL hates Nazi imagery – do they have similar sensitivities?
Celebrity Trollop: I think if you make t-shirts with that iconic photograph of the lone man in front of a line of tanks in tiananmen square from 1989… probably not real keen on that sort of content.

Pixeleen Mistral: probably free taiwan is also off limits
Celebrity Trollop: Or Free Tibet. [smile]

Pixeleen Mistral: what about really naughty sexy things? a lot of people like SL to try on sexual fantasies
Celebrity Trollop: Hmm. Hard to say, but I’d bet that’s probably not something the Chinese government is eager to read about in the foreign press.

Pixeleen Mistral: I understand you have a conference coming up – can you say a little about that?
Celebrity Trollop: In June I’m organizing a RL conference about pixel clothes in my home town of Minneapolis MN. http://www.virtualfashionsummit.com It’s the “Virtual Fashion Summit.” I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get some representatives from other VWs to talk about the fashion scene in those places. I think it would be kind of cool to see some Second Life-only content creators branch out into some other environments.

Pixeleen Mistral: will you cover how to migrate from one virtual world to the next?
Celebrity Trollop: Hmm – we are accepting proposals for both speakers and panel discussions, plus attendees will have the opportunity to arrange their own sessions about whatever topic they want to discuss. I felt like that was something really missing from SLCC (for example.)

Pixeleen Mistral: Well, SLCC seems like it is really over – I think the interesting things will be in other conferences now
Celebrity Trollop: To me SLCC seemed like a conference that was half-way between a business-y conference for suits and a hard core Star Trek convention. It didn’t seem to have made of its mind which one it was.

Pixeleen Mistral: that is not a good thing – you have to know your limits
Celebrity Trollop: Plus being the pixel clothes nerd, that topic in particular got really short-shrift at last years SLCC… so that was one of the reasons I thought maybe having a conference just about pixel clothes would be a good idea.

Pixeleen Mistral: I think you are right and I think the pixel clothes thing is HUGE- I mean – this is how we present ourselves in the metaverse
Celebrity Trollop: Definitely. It’s also just a fun way to explore a lot of different clothing genres without a lot of risk. Ideal body, hundreds of different types of clothing, probably even hundreds if not thousands of different types of avatars. So no doubt that fashion is and will remain a huge content field in just about every VW platform.

Pixeleen Mistral: I think this is also why there is so much grass roots work in this area – I mean its really cool how lots of people make clothes – there is so much to choose from. I’d have bailed out on SL 6 months ago were it not for the shopping
Celebrity Trollop: hehe

Pixeleen Mistral: but it seems like there is a malaise in the SL fashion scene lately – or am I imagining it?
Celebrity Trollop: Hmm – I think a lot of veteran content creators are having some burn-out. The advent of wide spread content theft has also demoralized a lot of designers.

Pixeleen Mistral: its sad
Celebrity Trollop: Yes it is.

Pixeleen Mistral: is there anything else you want to tell the Herald readers?
Celebrity Trollop: I’d just say if you’re feeling a little burnt out on SL for whatever reason, play around with some of these other virtual worlds. IMVU and There.com for example have opportunities for content creators to make and sell pixel clothes too. And besides, it doesn’t hurt to take a step back from SL just to recharge and get away from all of the drama.