SLFF Blog Closing Today

The timing may make some wonder, but it’s no joke. After five years and 1400 posts, we’re closing the SL Fetish Fashion Blog.

The posts will stay here - I feel this is a valuable reference even if we don’t add any more to it.

But over the last few months, we started feeling a bit of fatigue, and even some discouragement at how difficult it has gotten to get cooperation from designers.

The daily posts took us about an hour; cheerfully given time, never regretted.

But the amount of time shopping, calling designers, getting no replies where a simple “no thanks” would have let us plan to get something else.. it all built up to this.

We had a wonderful time, made some excellent friends, saw some delightful creations.

Now we’ll take time to enjoy them a bit more :)

We’re still around, don’t hesitate to call.

One project that we have is to share our thoughts about what we learned about doing business in Second Life.

I was thinking of opening a separate blog and pointing to it, but lelo very correctly points out that we can just add those here, with a suitable label.

So do keep an eye on this spot for advice on selling in SL, with a particular emphasis on marketing. And, you know, dealing with bloggers ;)

Thank you for reading us faithfully all these years. We’ll treasure every one of your thank you’s and well-done’s, and meeting readers in-world was always a treat.

Deirdre and lelo

Easter Hunt Starts Tuesday

Last-chance reminder, the Easter Designers Hunt starts next week!

Here's the note Cindy sent:

Welcome to the Easter Designers Hunt a hunt where 4 of Second Lifes best designers have joined together to bring you one hot hunt! The hunt runs from April 1 to May 1, 2014.

You will get 10 prizes from each of the following stores Latex Station, Sassy,  Edelfabrik, and Naughty & Nice!  And a bonus 10 prizes from Latex Station Thats right 50 TOTAL PRIZES!!!!!

Go grab your friends and get your hunting shoes on because your going to be hopping from Mainstore to Mainstore to Mainstore  its time to hunt and hop until you drop!

You can start this great hunt by going to the Latex Station Mainstore at the below LM and looking for the starting hint.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Latex%20Station/172/155/30

Have a great weekend!

Deirdre & lelo

Lelo Is Traveling

My sweetie is on a little weekend trip with her family.

Awesome fetish content will resume Monday.

Lolcats in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow ;)

We Upgraded To The Latest Firestorm

June 2013 saw us move from Phoenix to Firestorm as the new Server Side Baking made Phoenix unusable.

Adventurous early adopters (whom I privately refer to as “unpaid beta testers”) have since then jumped on the Firestorm Beta for the lovely materials and assorted new features. Good for them, but we left that one alone.

The Firestorm team released (to the wild!) the new version, 4.6.1.40478, on March 12th and we installed it on March 15th - nobody can say we’re lagging behind this time!

So for the last three days lelo and I have been enjoying the new Firestorm. In for a penny, in for a pound, we went for the 64bit version.

Once again, the word is all good. Very fast everything: rezzing, teleports, inventory - this may be the HTTP network improvements mentioned on the Firestorm viewer blog .

Materials, of course, was the one big thing we were waiting for. All I can say is “ooo, shiny!” ;) Steph gave a gentle chuckle as I was finally able to see DeVicious leather glisten properly.

The lighting issue also seems to be gone. Facelights had turned into 500-watt flood lamps in the previous FS, but that resolved itself with this upgrade.

Backing up settings, removing everything and doing a clean install, then restoring settings meant I didn’t wrestle with the same configuration questions I hit in June.

The new FS did poke me to get the latest NVIDIA driver - I’m a late adopter there too. So, all good - call it spring cleaning.

Liquid mesh is also included in this release, and we already have designers calling us privately with liquid mesh items.

We’re guessing this version will spread fast (although not quite the way the sudden death of Phoenix forced everyone to migrate) but with its great new features (and some terrific UI cleanup I won’t itemize to avoid boring you) we’ll certainly encourage anyone to upgrade.

Happy Saint-Patrick's

Slow news Friday so we'll leave you with a lolcat and our usual wish.

Have a great weekend and a wonderful Saint-Patrick's!

Deirdre & lelo

Superheroine Or Fetish Model?

I was yakking with lelo tonight, and we got to talking about super heroines and fetish costumes.

What are the odds, right? ;)

Well the next Avengers movie is coming soon, and Scarlett Johansson plays our favorite spy / assassin / leather-catsuit poster child, the Black Widow.

So here's a good-sized version of the movie poster - well, one of them - and the new trailer on Youtube.

Have a great weekend!

Deirdre & lelo

Slow News Week Is Slow

Sometimes the news is slow. 

We could make some up.. but nah. ;)

Have a great weekend!

Deirdre and lelo

Technical Difficulties - Take Two

Lelo's estimable Internet company does maintenance at night, when sensible people are sleeping and not on Second Life, talking to their Mistress because of a six-hour time zone difference.

So while I'm a big fan of going zig when everyone goes zag, this is one of the dangers.

We'll be back tomorrow with awesome, amazing stuff I can't tell you about yet ;)

Deirdre

Murphy Strikes Again

The Evil Magician Murphy (look up your old Xanth novels by Piers Anthony) has struck and got us good tonight.

Here’s a lolcat, and normal awesome fetish content will resume ASAP!

Deirdre and lelo

Kat Clears Up Tax Matters

Kat Fetisov spent a ton of effort getting the correct info regarding the new IRS regulations on taxes for Second Life income.

She kept her blog readers posted on the developments as she went, and summed up her findings in her latest blog post.

This is absolutely essential reading for any non-US resident with a good volume of Second Life sales.

Send that link to all your friends. Oh and go buy tons of Kcreations stuff to thank her for all her work ;)

Have a great weekend!

Deirdre and lelo

The SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lineside/130/238/597

On Playing Fair

You may have seen the book “Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”.

You know, things like “Play fair”, “Don’t hit people”, and “Don’t take things that aren’t yours.”

We’ve told you a number of times about the Freedom Continent and Serjourn Daxter, a well-known SL resident who supports adult content - specifically, BDSM and fetish - with pretty much her every hour in-world.

Search for the first name Serjourn in SL and you’ll see exactly two people; not what you’d call a big crowd. (In contrast, there are seven pages of Deirdre’s).

So running into someone using a two-week old account called SerjaurnDaxter Resident was a pretty bad surprise.

We saw her at a fetish hangout, with an avatar looking a lot better than most two-week olds we meet. No great powers of deduction were needed to guess the account is an alt.

What is this person thinking? It’s difficult to tell. It can’t be fraud, or other deception - it won’t work on any but the rankest SL beginners.

What do you call someone who causes you a loss but gains nothing from it? Well I know how professor Carlo M. Cipolla calls them.

The Lindens, as usual, were ponderously unhelpful. Pray, pray, wherever you live, that the police never starts treating muggings as a “dispute between residents”. Serjourn has abuse reports open, but she’s not holding her breath.

So. “SerjaurnDaxter Resident”, go back to kindergarten, hm? And learn not to take things that aren’t yours.

Good First Week - Just 51 To Go

Short post tonight - we had a good first week and we already have a few goodies set aside for the next one ;)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Deirdre and lelo

Technical Difficulties

As will sometimes happen in live media (well we're live-ish), technical difficulties zapped my sweetie's Internet access tonight.

So I'll give you "lelo's not here" - or close enough, anyway: http://youtu.be/rtDAK7Umk7A and we'll see you tomorrow, with a little bit of luck.

Deirdre

Merry Christmas

Another incredible year comes to a close, and for good or bad, we’re still around, still together, and still posting ;)

We’re up to 1343 posts with this one since September 2008 - if you’re not bored yet, well neither are we!

The world keeps changing at breakneck pace, much of it for the better.

The regularly announced catastrophes - be it in land, residents, or commerce - failed to materialize, and if there are a few less malls and clubs, there is no less excellent creative activity.

A huge thank you to Inara Pey for our Christmas snap location - do yourself a favor and see her blog for a varied, in-depth view of SL.

Our best wishes to our friends, readers, and the amazing designers who make the beautiful things we’re happy to show you every day. Have a wonderful new year in your First and Second Life.

Deirdre and lelo

As we mentioned, we’ll be back on Monday, January 6th, 2014

Latexia Party and Last Karu Holiday Release

This is nearly our last post of the year: we’ll be back on Christmas day with our wishes, then on Monday, January 6th, 2014.

Two cool quickies for you before we go: a winter solstice party at Latexia, and another holiday re-release from Karu Karu.

The Latex Dolls are dropping their latex and gasmasks for a Stonehenge pagan fest.

The date: Saturday the 21st of December (that’s tomorrow!) starting at 8:30 SL time. The location is Latexia, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fetish%20VooDoo/149/131/1003

If you don’t like slurls, the landing pad at Latexia has a cool, multiple-people teleporter to the party location. Look for a silver oval booth at the left side, and have a seat!

Full details at The Latex Dolls' own blog:
http://sisterhoodoflatex.blogspot.com/2013/12/solstice-bdsm-event-and-extra-long-party.html

And our last fetish outfit of the year is Jennie, Holiday Edition by Karu Karu. It’s a little more daring than Ilona, even featuring an open version. It’s for really, really happy holidays, I guess ;)

The Karu Karu SLURL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Karu%20Karu/128/185/22

Have a great weekend!

Deirdre and lelo

Mall Page Progressing Satisfactorily

We added locations, we added slurls.. received a few tips, added those.

The Fetish Mall page is growing, and with luck, turning into something useful.

We’re still debating what would be a good prize for a contest.. I’m thinking cash, it goes with everything ;)

We’ll be polling designers - if anyone knows malls, it’s people who sell in them, n’est-ce-pas?

We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Deirdre and lelo

New Page - Fetish Malls

They’re lag fests, sometimes labyrinthine, sometimes clean and easy to navigate. Sometimes they’re around a big store, sometimes they’re just rows of booths.

I’m talking about malls, of course.

A spot in a good mall remains a great way for a Second Life Designer to be seen, and in particular to display their newest items and lure shoppers to their main store.

There are old malls, fixtures of SL that have been around for years and years; Latexia Space Station, say. Others are built around a club, like Venustus mall, or Rubber Room.

Malls need traffic, so they’ll usually be around a big draw, like Bondage Ranch.

Big malls have waiting lists, but small malls will solicit designers, to the point that we often see profiles saying “no mall invitations”.

Events draw people to clubs and to the attached malls, benefitting the stores - smart malls can take advantage of those.

A good mall layout makes it easy to browse quickly and even try things like furniture and poses.

You can spot something unexpected in a mall; Marketplace, in contrast, is for finding something specific. A good mix of content makes an interesting browse.

You can also meet people in malls - that’s where I met lelo, at the Desperation Isle mall, *ahem ahem* years ago ;)

We’re starting a page tonight, listing the fetish malls we know, and we’re sending an invitation to all our readers and friends: tell us about any fetish-themed malls we don’t have in our list.

We’re even making it a contest, with a serious prize - we’ll announce it as soon as we decide what it is. Suggestions welcome.

A few contest rules

1- You must tell us about fetish-themed mall, not just plain clothes

2- It can’t already be on the page - you must check before sending it in

Send IM’s to lelo recreant in world. We’re nowhere near capped, so no worries.

The Fetish Mall page : http://slfetishfashion.blogspot.com/p/fetish-malls.html

Thanksgiving Day In Canada

Hi everyone! It’s Thanksgiving day day here in Canada, and we’re taking a brief blog holiday.

We’ll be back tomorrow with more awesome shiny fetishy goodness, though - no rest for the wicked, or very little at a time, at most ;)

Hope you all had a wonderful time with your family if you’re in Canada.

If you’re elsewhere, um, don’t feel bad, we’ll be under two feet of snow soon and you can laugh at us then ;)

Deirdre and lelo

RL Fetish Weekend Is Fetishy

To digress briefly into Real Life, Labor Day weekend is also the Fetish Weekend, an international event drawing fetish lovers from everywhere to the exotic, distant lands of Montreal, Canada :)

One of the more spectacular events of the weekend is the Photo Tour, where participants take the subway across the city to snap pictures in some of the more spectacular outside locations in Montreal.

I dropped by the starting point to snap a few pictures myself - trudging across the city in fet gear is fun once or twice but I wouldn’t make it a habit - and I was lucky enough to catch Tanis, the organizer, being interviewed by La Presse, the largest French daily newspaper here in town.

Sure enough, the video was on La Presse's Web site this morning ;)

If that little anecdote doesn’t signal the demise of dead trees media, I don’t know what will. 

You can have a peek at the 2011 Photo Tour on Youtube: http://youtu.be/T1PXKrDOhwE

Labor Day Weekend Is Here

No earth-shattering Second Life fetish news to share, sadly.

We’ll probably celebrate Labor Day by not working, like everyone else ;)

Here’s a dangerously adorable lolcat - have a great long weekend!

Deirdre and lelo