SPAM at Second Life

This must be said and I have the feeling it really needs to be said a lot louder and more often: They write into their shoplables or in search as keywords "Luxury" "Platinum" and "Best of SL" and if you enter their place you get fast aware that they got no education, no feeling for social behaviour and they are not any high society at all. By what do we recognize that? By their importunate spam with pop up landmarks and supergreeters, yes even by some tools that want to add you at once at their groups. Some of them spam the chat, some just open blue small windows on your screen and some tell you you could get any free crap if you join. This shows really best that those people running those shops or clubs have never been at any really exclusive place during all their life, more than this it shows that they didn't even grow up with any good education, because otherwise they'd know that this kind of agressiv advertisement doesn't fit to any really good design and exclusive place. Once they lost their reputation by such a stupid behaviour they won't gain our trust anymore.
If we realize this huge lack of education we don't need to be surprised about the social problems at our real world.

Cheap Dresses at SL

There are some new designers offering dresses for 50-250$ and trying to collaps the SL market that already suffers badly by the dollar going down. Besides the fact that the dresses look only on the pics nice and that the designers might even cause that some good designers leave SL, they won't survive for long because noone can seriously want to buy any more expensive items from them when they see before how simple and sloppy the designs were made by buying the lowpriced ones. Cheap means always also that no love was put in and that the designer just trys to make fast money. Of course I bought also already some real cheap stuff, but seriously most went to trash. At RL it is not any different, only very few things that are real cheap got real quality. A designer got not to feel a bad consience or guilty if he sells you crap at a cheap price, you may even not complain, he would tell you: What do You expect at this price? And he is right.
We have had a flood of crapdesigns and still have it at SL and it is now hopefully getting better when the people just don't sell their crap anymore because less people spend much money and most discover the difference between quality and crap after being at SL for a while.
As I came to SL it was hard to find any nice gown for less than 1000L$, we have offered the dresses including accessories and heels cheaper than this and have been one of the reasonable priced designs at SL for a long while. Most of our dresses are about 500L$ and less, but I won't join the new trend to sell at a loss, because my designs are not fast made crap and extremly detailed painted. Thanks to all those awesome people who support our design and love our quality our business is not half as much down as most others and even at a time when shops as Blaze who really tryed to be exclusive and told the magazines they'd live at real life by their design earned not even a quarter of what we earned, so I won't complain ;-) And a very big THANK YOU to our customers, who never did let us down! And by the way I wonder how they lived of what they earned, because truly, they can't ;-) That's just a nice story. Sl design is not enough as only job if you want to live well :-) at least not if you only design and don't rip people off.

My work with models and tinies

I had a great time working with other people at Second Life. I guess about 25% of my work was caring for newbies and models for a while, but the shop really ate up my time, customers messaged me a lot, the designwork took each day hours and I ended up working 12-16 hours and was glad to give some of my work into my modelmanagers hands. They tought the new ones what I tought them before, how to attach clothes, how to get a perfect look and all other tricks you needed at SL.
As time went by the models started to be less at their computer and partly didn't care anymore for any customer. That was not my intention to give campingjobs and they knew that. What they really didn't understand was that my friend is scripter and I could have replaced those models all by bots already long ago. They didn't understand that we were doing this joboffers for helping people to get clothes for work, who couldn't afford buying them. 20 hours of modelling for a 500-1000L$ dress is a bargain if you can be most of the time afk, at least noone at SL offered such a job at this point of time, maybe some really fast made cheap dresses yes, but not real great dresses and if you did the same 20 hours camping you didn't earn more than 500$ either. Otherwise I would have become model insteed of designer I guess.
After I found some models even cheating me I threw them all out and stopped hiring, and am now watching the other shops how they give them work, till they will prefer bots one day. Only a few real friends who didn't stay for dresses are still helping at my shop and they are wonderful people. I am so glad that I got such friends!
I started designing tiny outfits too and I got some real cute and close friends at the Tinies that I love to pieces, about 100 outfits for tinies are still available at my main shop, free ones too and we did some cherity for poor children and people who are ill by cancer. By auctions we collected a lot of money for this.
I will add for you a pic of my true self and one of some tiny dresses I made :-)

Don't buy again if you get cheated

This blog is about my design but also about me and so I will use it also to tell how I feel about some things at SL. You might have a different opinion or the same one, that's ok for me, I don't expect everyone to agree.
I talked to a lot of people at SL about the problem, that some designers think a serious looking shop and some fake pictures would make a business successful. Even the most stupid one wakes up one day if he or she gets cheated by retuched pictures and a elegant styled sourrounding that doesn't keep any promises. Why don't those people understand that their shops drown by doing that. They even lower their prices then and still don't sell much anymore. Then they close their shop one day.
I am now 47 years old and you may believe me that people remember if they were happy with what they bought at your store or not.
The next thing is that the character you show by the contacts you got and whom you support will always have an influence on your success. This is similar to the mothers telling their daughters not to go out with the wrong people. Of course the daughters don't believe that something would be wrong with going out with them and do it.
If they are intelligent they'll recognize one day which influence that had on their life or other contacts.
However I am no mother and I can only tell those guys out their that having a business is no game at all, even if they believe that stronger each day it won't work.
If I sell freebies, that I never designed myself, no matter if I sell them for only 1$, I do use designs which others had set to free to give it free, not to give such people the possibility to make money with them, and it is not importent how much money I make with this, it is just simply showing a bad character. If I support such people it will show my character too and sorry to say this I would for example not want to have any shop close to such a designer, I wouldn't even buy from him a single item ever.
Of course you can say: Hey that is no big thing, so many do that in SL, how can she get that upset about such a small thing. The answer is very simple: Wrong is and stays wrong no matter how small or big that wrong is and no matter how many do it, it's WRONG! Understood?
The same thing appears if designers change their pics and try to cheat the customers. You can ask all people if they had that case already, that something looked at the picture much better than worn, they had it! This is exactly what makes the difference about my design, the people always told me that our shop is the only one where the clothes look worn better than on the pics. Such customers come back because they are happy and satisfied with the dresses. That's what we mean with quality. It is not enough to write "quality" into search or into your shoptitle, you need to give this quality! I found a lot of shops at SL doing a lot of advertisement and using big words, but sorry to say that: The customers are not silly, after a while they discover which shop is worth coming back. I can only encourage them to expect more and not to buy anymore where they get cheated by fake pics or designs that don't even work at moving or don't fit. You protect others from buying there if you make such shops close by not buying there!

Where Are The Freebies??!

I had a lot of very nice selfdesigned freebies during the last year, people messaged me a lot to thank me and some thought it would be clever to tell me that they didn't find them for so long and that I should put them up at other places which offer more free stuff. Those people did totally forget, that the designers at SL would stop designing if only such people would come to their shops to get free stuff and never buy anything. We couldn't pay our fee and wouldn't survive. I had people at my shop asking if at a free gown wouldn't be any underwear for it too. I almost collapsed how bold those people can be. I had some coming in wearing items as an umbrella they designed and having put out my animation and script of my umbrella and put it into their item, thinking it would be totally ok to use my stuff for their own buildings. As I told them that I would sell animations and scripts seperate to my items if i'd want the people to take and use them, they didn't understand or didn't want to understand. I had a lot of people who had probs with the server which didn't always deliver the items they bought. I can not tell you how rude some have been. My shop offers meanwhile as first shop at SL safer shopping, items get automatically replaced at all no transfer pictures, if you'd like to buy this script for your shop too, go to NXC scripting and get it there ;-)
I did remove my freebies after I had someone rebuilding a freebie for her own taste. I do understand that people can't understand that setting anything to modify means to give a resize possiblity but not to offer the possibility to change the designs. I wanted to give a colourchange possibility because most designers sell dresses in several colours and I never did a dress in different colours like woolworth or other bargain shops. We are a business with exclusive designs although we got reasonable prices, but I never wanted to make more business by selling more colours of one dress. The designs are unique and should stay it. After someone copied my heels I did set almost everything to no modify and added a resize script to allow at least resizing. In such issues SL is not very supporting or protecting, so you'll need to protect and support yourself. Still I am a fighter for rights, good quality, social things, beauty and good behaviour and will always stay it.
To show you the range of different designs I did, I'll add some pictures of the more hot stuff today for you.

Why is this design extraordinary?

Just because You won't find this kind of dresses at this quality anywhere else. As I already mentioned a lot of my ideas get used by other designers, but You'll never find this detailed work and the original is always the best. If I catch people imitating my work I give them the same back till they stop, if needed I even make those clothes freebies after designing them. I am a fighter and as I started having a bigger shop at SL a model asked at a SL magazine for fashion if they'd like to write about my design. She talked to some lady who's name was Doolittle, I won't mention her complete name, but I will mention what she said. She seriously said: No we won't write about this design because You do only ugly costumes and no fashion!
At this point of time I didn't design any different to nowadays and if you look up my shop you'll laugh about every single word that this lady said. Meanwhile we are everywhere mentioned as one of the best shops and designs in SL. It is hard if you have to work with people who are totally imcompetent but run any magazine that deeply believes to know about fashion. It's a true shame for SL! Sorry to say this but it is definetely the truth!
Look up some of my dresses and make up your own mind and opinion:

Fashion addicted

First of all I need to mention that most clothes don't look so good in SL because they are copied from any picture at the net and the result is truely poor. I do work completely different.
Second I want you to know that I know what I am creating, means I have been to Italy, France and Florida and other places and the dresses I create are partly what I have worn myself as I was younger.
I have put some pictures for you together showing a very small selection of the about 1000 dresses I created, to see more it's worth looking up our main shop with 3 floors and about 2000 items.
Model Annyee Lindman
Wearing: Symponie
BLACK MOON FASHION













My family collected antiques and as I was young also antique clothes had been at our house. By this I got a lot inspired for designing historical clothes too. While I saw a lot of historical clothes at SL I didn't see a lot that worked well at movements and often they looked more painted than natural. Hard to explain the difference, you really need to wear them and see what I mean. Even wellknown designers do skirts that look real weird because of transparency problems. I have always tryed to solve such probs and improve the dresses. Most of my customers tell me that this would make the difference at my dresses, that they can feel, that I have put much more work in and that they simply look better. I got myself only a very few dresses that I bought from other designers that work this well. I am very picky about quality issues I fear.
Models: Racky Congrejo
and Annyee Lindman
wearing:
Victorian mens outfit
& Divine






You can even see on the pictures that this dresses really work wonderful at movements. Look at the two pictures, that Anniee Li took, my wonderful friend and saleslady at our shop.
Model: Anniee Li wearing: Lavender Romance BLACK MOON COUTURE

How I got started

Oh my god almost 2 years went by till I started at Second Life. As I came in I bought some dresses, that had been really expensive and even of wellknown designers and got very very disappointed. That's why I started designing at SL. It was easy for me because I had been more than 25 years a RL designer and painter and so I never attended any classes at SL. Please forgive me if my english is not always absolutely proper, I am not english, but will do my best.

Ok lets say till today I got the impression that most designers at SL just do design for fun and maybe that is the reason why a lot of designs aren't proper made, maybe only very few are professional while they claim to be it. As I started designing the kind of skirts I did design did not exist and a lot of cute accessories and details I added at my designs weren't used anywhere else. Before I started I looked up all shops at SL even those with only 1 traffic to see what is missing, that took about 3 months, so I do know exactly what existed. After a short time the other designers discovered of course my shop and started to imitate a lot of my ideas and styles.
No I don't go on any vacations and drink pinacoladas after earning my money at SL. I am seriously working here and if you try the dresses on you'll see that they just work better at dancing and walking, that the skirts move with your movements and that not only slim annorexian kids can wear them without having their hips or legs coming through the fabric. And this is the result of working 12-16 hours a day for almost 2 years without a single free day to provide people with outfits for their second life.




Model: Pat48 Barbosa
Wearing: Let's Tango
BLACK MOON COUTURE






Till a few months ago I had besides my work as designer about 50 models during the last year to support them by giving them jobs. No it hadn't been only camping jobs, they had the task to greet the customers and offer help and show off the clothes. After some other designer started giving those jobs too I could finally stop that social dedication and concentrate on my designingwork. I am seriously glad they got now that trouble and I'm free of it ...lol.
There was really nothing that Black Moon did, that wasn't imitated by others quite soon, some shops did even imitate collections of our dresses, but they almost all don't exist anymore, because they didn't offer the same quality. Thanks god the quality survived all those attacks, although a lot got stolen and I do view a stolen idea as well as content theft because an idea can take weeks to be developed well enough.
But lets talk about nicer things, because if we got attacked we defended ourselves very successful till now. You wouldn't believe it but I never had the time for such nice things like posting at any blog about my designs, or putting in messages at the SL forums, some models did even send groupnotes out to my customers because my designing work really ate up my time, although i got no kids and no RL work because I had very early 3 heartattacks and so I could really work all day at SL. And I am blessed by my wonderful partner who always supported me at my work and never complained about this workaholik, who just admires beauty and loves designing at a high perfectionism level.
Now finally after almost 2 years I find the time for a blogpage and I hope you'll enjoy the awesome fashionpics i'll put in for you and maybe you'll enjoy also to get to know me by that page also a bit closer, because normally I am quite hidden at SL ;-) If you'd love to read more visite my homepage: http://www.vs-design.eu/