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Why yes, as a matter of fact, it has been as much of a nightmare for me to get around Second Life recently as it has for you; in fact, given that I'm on a little ol' Mac Mini sole processor here in Chicago, it's safe to say that I'm probably having a worser experience these days than the majority of you. Sigh! I have lots of things piled up in the 'SL' page of my "Getting Things Done" Moleskine, including interviews with blues musician srv4u Conacher and podiobook author Scott Sigler; a second chat here with Aimee Weber, about a new charitable organization she's working with; possible future interviews with Warren Ellis and Ordinal Malaprop; a mini-feature on the growing amount of travel services available for the grid; and of course a closer examination of the Caledon steampunk community, as part of our roleplaying theme here this month at ITG.

But alas, alas, technical hiccups and headaches at Linden Lab continue to keep me almost completely locked out of the grid at most times (certainly all evening long, every evening); so I thought for today, I'd instead move up the weekend shopping report I was going to file on Saturday, and file it today instead. Excelsior! You don't mind hearing about a couple of new stores I've checked out, a couple of days earlier than normal, do you? The three stores I visited this week, in fact, all came out of recommendations from the plethora of SL fashion blogs that now exist, way too numerous to count anymore which is why I won't list any in particular. A good place to start, though, are at such search engines as Google and Technorati, as well as SL blog aggregators World of SL and SL News Network. (Disclosure: My blog is syndicated by both of these services, although I receive no money from either for doing so.)

The first place I ended up was this amazing Asian-themed store, six stories into the air, called Musashi-Do [Anton 139/233/94]. And I admit it; I have a weird fascination with picking up and wearing Asian fashion while in the grid, as compared to real life where I could care less (besides being a fan of an occasional anime project). I have this great stockpile of kimonos now, after seven months of now collecting them online; I also have a geisha outfit, some '80s Hong Kong New Wave looking stuff (like neon chopsticks to wear in my hair, which makes me look all Blade Runner and s**t), as well as several Asian-themed erotic outfits. What took me by Musashi-Do this week, though, was actually for a black suit; an outfit the store calls "Midnight Rain," which the original fashion blogger who mentioned it said he really liked, because the designer understands that just plain black on a SL outfit doesn't actually work very well.

And take it from someone who's always on the lookout for black suits and dresses, that that's true; that to really make such a dark outfit stand out in a 3D immersive world, that outfit actually needs to be made in what looks like a chalky gray in Photoshop. That provides the highlights, as well as the look when standing in the full sun; then you can start adding dark areas to suggest shadows and folds, and let the SL game engine take care of the more subdued look when worn at night. Anyway, I agree with the original reviewer, that this is the nicest and most photo-realistic black suit I've now yet come across; it's expensive, to be sure, but you can see above how sharp it is, and how it actually comes as a whole series of different pieces as well, so that you can mix and match whatever look you're going for. (By the way, designers, I like the recent trend towards building standalone prim-based ties, instead of drawing them in with the shirt on one template; I hope more of you will start doing that, so that I can do yet more customized mixing and matching on my own.)

While out, I also stopped by a place (places?) called Roxee & Rummage [Gramela 17/50/25], which has this really cute collection of retro clothes, bowling numbers like out of Swingers, rockabilly costumes and more. Here above, you can see the two new shirts I picked up; good for both my male and female avs, good for anywhere from casual to semi-formal situations. I always love it when one piece of clothing can cross so many boundaries like that.

And then finally, I stopped by this very cool tattoo store just today, called InkD [Ddalgi 95/90/58], after seeing a couple of their full-body designs showed off in one of these fashion blogs I read. Oh Lord, how I do love the full-body tattoos, I gotta tell you! Most of them are expensive, with some getting to ridiculously expensive; but they're just so exquisitely complex, and provide such a great touch. That's the funny thing about fashion in SL, really, is that when you take away the need for sweatshops, trucking unions, and backdoor deals with major national retailers, you're left with this very libertarian free-market system; literally what sells for the most money is what's best crafted, and who spent the most time going into great detail.

Anytime you meet an av in the grid and think, "Wow, whatever they're wearing looks expensive," rest assured that it was expensive, or at least in relative terms (with most outfits, frankly, never getting over five American dollars, a.k.a. three pounds or four euros). This is the thing that a lot of large real-life retailers still don't get about setting up shop here; that their big name doesn't really help them, and they can't just bully the market because they have a gazillion more dollars than everyone else. When delivery of goods is automatic and free, like in the grid, suddenly the entire business model of such industries as fashion gets dumped on its head; suddenly it doesn't matter if you have a whole fleet of delivery trucks and a ten-year exclusive deal with Sears. It suddenly puts the fate of the company in the hands of the creatives, not the suits, a situation that entrepreneurs are used to, that big real-life corporations aren't. No wonder there's such a push/pull relationship between the two groups in the grid these days.