Black Moon - Vanilla Sola Design

About business and competition

2010-02-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

Last year I decided to leave SL for a while for several reasons. The main reason has been the death of a very close friend, the second reason was that I didn't want to go on with the stressful business I was keeping up at SL. My shop is not a small one and I had between 20 and 40 models working for me several months while I was in each day designing 12-16 hours and taking care of the models. Even though I dedicated so much of my time to SL I rarely had time to take care of anything else than designing itself. Apart from that I tried to design quality clothing, to do more than one skirt for each dress, not only different designed ones to vary the look but also several sizes to fit most avatars. My opinion was if anyone pays this customer has to be absolutely happy with the design he gets, so I often even made the clothes fit to the customers bodies if needed, of course without charging any extra fees. The customers have been astonished because they didn't find that service before.

I have had some really cute and lovely models and it was a part of my business to ask them to only model for our shop because they have had been representing my design and like real life designers got their top models I had mine. But some of the models did of course cheat and lie to me. Unfortunately for them I always knew it and though I didn't mention it for a while to see if they would go on abusing my patience, I never judge by one lapse. But if someone continuously tried to deceive me I threw that person finally out. Fortunately it had been very few who did really try to use me and those do now work at a designer who tried to do some drama on my blog last year, how could I complain. The stunning thing happened as I came back to SL last december, when most of my nice models suddenly came back to my shop and pushed up my traffic within a few weeks. I didn't expect anyone of them to come back, because I had to ask already a year before for ridiculous workinghours, 60hours minimum a week AFK modelling during the nights to keep my shop and traffic up.

You can be a brilliant designer at SL, if your place is at search at a very low place no one will find you except any friend leads him to that shop. By this LL forced the designers to have either models, or to have a club running on the same land their shop is located on. Another common method is to put in bots that do the traffic you needed not to drown totally. Well and you know best, if you design yourself that it is meanwhile not easy to pay your fee and earn enough because that economy crisis really forced some shops to close already. In earlier days I was worried about people stealing my ideas and redesigning my dresses, but meanwhile I came to realize that most of them have already disappeared from SL because they were not successful. They really didn't understand that you can steal the Eiffel Tower and rebuild it anywhere else, but the people will still love Paris and prefer going there. That's with most copies like that, they are simply not new enough or just not the same quality like the original, so nowadays I don't worry about designers who build their business on low quality copies. But what still concerns me are my models because they are really sweeties, the ones who came back didn't have to do that many hours anymore. Meanwhile I was forced to put bots into my shop to not have that much work anymore myself and because I didn't want to keep asking for so much. I was more than amazed that my Black Moon ladies did put in a lot of hours again just because they love the design, felt so comfy at my shop and we had such fun in there. After a few weeks I had an email by LL that I would have been caught that I would use bots and that this wouldn't be allowed anymore.

You need to know that I had submitted a ticket a year ago and asked the support if bots would be allowed. I never had any answer, work in progress for a year??? My husband went then to the life chat at the support to ask and had the answer that it would be allowed, otherwise we wouldn't have placed any bots at my shop at all. For the time I was not at SL the bots were great to just keep a bit of traffic up. You can imagine how dumb I looked reading now this email that they changed the terms of service but till then I was still quite happy about this news. But then my husband went again to the support life chat and what he had to read then was just unbelievable. The support told him no model may stay at my shop, because all of them cheat on traffic and so they'd need all to register as bots so that LL doesn't count their traffic. HAHA! Best is yet to come: They even asked us, the two of us, the landowners to register as bots, because we stay for a longer time on our property to do our work! We both pay a premium account, we additionally pay the land we have the shop and our working space on and we should register ourselves as bots just to not be counted against traffic on the property we pay for! Are they serious? It seems they are! We ain't no bots and we can resist to register as such, if they suspend us from SL because of that then bye bye LL and SL, then we will let them simply remove us but we won't play, work and pay to be treated as bots! You just need to think about that whole traffic nonsense, LL has created the search traffic list and forced the designers to fight for any bit of traffic they can get. Believe me I’d be glad if I didn’t have to participate in that race for numbers. But put yourself in a designers shoes and consider that land fees in SL are not exactly cheap, and offering SL residents a nice shopping ambience costs its fair share. On top of these investments there is the huge amount of time I have put into my work.

In today’s both RL and SL economic situation running a business is a hard job. Becoming a serious designer in SL means to make SL a RL full time job. But that is not possible if you’re barely able to pay the fees charged for virtual land from your income. The only choice you have in order to pay your bills is to make yourself recognized by staying among the top places in search. If now all designers and places would be treated equally I’d welcome the most recent change to prohibit measures to increase your traffic. Though there are many places heavily gambling traffic but being ignored by LL obviously on purpose. If you don’t believe me look at the top places in search. And ask yourself how you can get 50k and more traffic if you, your whole staff (including models, DJs, hosts) are registered as bots and not counted against traffic? The answer is simple – you can’t!

The unfair thing is that there are still bots that they can't detect, those run through a place to do the traffic, they don't stay. Those are and will still be used and if you look into search you'll see who uses them. They do make those who can't pay them leave SL. Is this the intention of LL to make only the rich ones stay? I have no problem to leave SL because I don't need it, neither finacially, nor in any other way. But I like the platform and I see potential in it unfortunately this potential will be stifled by LLs business manners. Still we are their customers and paying THEIR wages to provide a service. Nowadays they rather like to play god and seem to forget that the users are what keeps SL alive. So how could I ask any friend who wishes to stay and talk with me for some hours to register as a bot because he is on my land and does traffic? Bots aren't human being to my understanding and if LL doesn't want the humans to do traffic they might risk that there won't be any humans doing anywhere anymore any traffic soon.

I call on LL to rethink their actions and start treating users equally or SL might become a lifeless digital desert very soon.

Black Moon Gowns

2010-01-23T00:41:00.000-08:00

No words needed showing these pictures, new dresses at Black Moon and some pics of designs I recently made. Enjoy the pictures and a big thank you to my Black Moon ladies :-)

New Quality Freebies for SL

2010-01-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

Black Moon has put up more than 134 new Freebies, which are only available
at the Black Moon and are all designed by Vanilla Sola. Those freebies are not only for new ones, they are retired designs and not the usual free stuff you can get at SL. Have fun!

Evening Gowns at Black Moon

2010-01-09T21:48:00.000-08:00

And another time we added some dresses at our shop. A black satin dress with flowers at it's skirt and black lace.
A Peach Salsa Dress, that is designed in the typical mix and match tradition of Black Moon designs. One dress but several possibilities to vary your look.
An awesome white lace dress called lacepassion with lots of pieces, that's too beautiful to only use it for a wedding.

And a black evening gown called After Midnight, it has a corset, diamonds on its skirt and an elegant collar. To take a closer look click on the pictures please. A golden shimmering gown with sequine trims and brocade fabric.
And finally another white evening dress with lace
and tulle and roses around your hips.

A golden shimmering gown with sequine trims and brocade fabric. And today I added a plum dress with jeweled top and laces at its back. The back of the skirt is a bit like a train.

Sale at Black Moon and new dresses

2010-01-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

Age Noir is one of those dresses that comes with so many pieces, that the price at our sale is more than only a bargain.

We have 68 dresses at our sale vendor, so don't miss looking them up ;-)

New at Black Moon is the Golden Times dress, an elegant gown with cute hat and jewelry. And the silver Eleganza Italiano, a sequined gown with lovely embroidery.

Mega Sale

2009-12-27T15:16:00.001-08:00

BLACK MOON SALE

We are having a very huge sale with 68 dresses set on sale. The Black Moondance dress is only one example I will post for you.
Some of the dresses come with heels and jewelry and are so low priced that you would normally pay the price already for the heels only, so it's really worth coming over and looking up the sales vendor.

Tonight is one of 3 new outfits on our Lucky Chairs, that you can get for free. And if you were to our fabulous treasurehunt you'll have now the Memories outfit, which has been one of 8 free hidden outfitprizes.

The last picture is a new outfit I created this week, it's a lovely embroidered black dress with a lace skirt and prim roses around the gloves, perfect for the new years evening. Happy New Year everyone!

Treasure Hunt at Black Moon

2009-12-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

Now it's started: The Great Christmas Treasure Hunt, come in and find 8 free outfits boxed in tiny giftboxes and hidden all over our shop.

And here are two new outfits to buy, both with an unbeatable low price. (Click on the pics to enlarge them) I wish you all happy holidays.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

We have some new stuff at the Black Moon shop shortly before christmas and during the coming week I'll add some lovely christmas gifts for you, either as packages to pick up or as treasure hunt, so don't miss coming over ;-)
And here are the new dresses:

Some new dresses

2009-12-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

After a year of having a break we have created some new stuff for you.
For those who had fun a year ago because some stupid kids tryed to attack my design, no that was not the reason I took that break. First of all I couldn't take their statements serious, because they just told lies about missing structures and shading at my clothes, everyone who ever bought some knows that and they even confessed to never had bought a single dress, second the reason was a close friend of mine, whom I loved and worked with a very long time, died.
I still miss Racky a lot. He'll always stay in my heart. He was one of those jewels you seldom find

Tomorrow I'm going to get married to my one and only love Norritt, we met about 3 years ago at SL and lived a few month later already together at RL. And each year our love grows :-)
But now enough about myself, here are the new clothes I've made. Have fun and I wish you all a nice day.

For those who need to save money we made two very wellpriced dresses:
Exciting and the Black& White Gown

And here a shimmering showdress for your great entrance.
And as last new dress we got a golden and bronce evening gown.

Drama

2008-11-21T02:34:00.000-08:00

Sorry that I need to post here now a few pics of dresses with shading although they aren't new at all but some strange comments at my blog force me to show those guys that I really can't do any shading and I never did any and if so I did it terrible lol *looks very ironic
I had no time to react earlier because I got a RL too and am seldom online at the moment and I won't react again after this post. Have fun all and keep the drama going but not at my blog please..lol. BTW the pics might not be super, also not at my shop, but I don't hire fotographers to take pics from my designs and I wrote already why on my blog. And this pics are only a few examples of shading I did, if you did not see any at my shop you should consider buying glasses. And btw the lines fit also together aside at my designs, back and front part of the dresses don't just look different at the shadinglines aside of the body. Not all my designs got shading but that is on purpose because I saw some really dirty looking shading at Sl dresses and it doesn't always fit to the style of the design to add shading, I don't want to look as if I had forgotten to iron my dresses, so I don't add everywhere wrickles. Have a nice day all and excuse please my bad english, I don't want to know how you'd speak my language hahaha. Sorry but I am just a sunny character laughing mostly ;-)

New and final

2008-11-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

Spring Delight a real bargain and it got a beautiful top with rhinestone embroidery and a skirt with shimmering fabric and lilies going around your hips, this flowered skirt is in the tradition of the skirts that Black Moon designed as first shop in Second Life, as well as flowered collars and other cute accessories we added to our dresses 2 years ago already, at a time when only very simple skirts and tops got sold at SL. Two more dresses got added. One is made by purple lace and got a lot of pieces, it's name is Pure Gold because a golden brocade jacket is coming with it, and one is with embroidered pearls and gems and an teal indian fabric and flowered trim, it's called Jeweled.
Next are three sexy outfits in red black or black or silver black available. Sequined fabric and delicate lace. The black ensemble got two more lace tops coming with it. The pics should speak for themselves. Click on them to enlarge.

And here comes a very well priced sexy sequined outfit in gold. Look up the Black Moon shop if you look for a bargain like this.
Two more bargains are Canzone and Lolita, two really nice outfits, one elegant, the other one playful and cute.

Oh my god it's sculpted!

2008-10-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

I have to write about this because it was just so very funny and it happens a lot to me. I went out at Second life for a bit of shopping and saw a lady doing some camping at a shop and sitting in a chair with a huge and I mean "huge" sphere on her head, her face was covered and you could only see her neck sticking out and I wondered if she knew how she looks like. I stood there for a while struggeling with myself if I should tell her that she looks like a moster or not ...lol. What had happened? Well I see that a lot these days, people buy sculpted boots, jewelry, hats or hair and end up looking weird because SL doesn't rezz that crap even if you got a great computer hardware and super graphicscard. To them it might rezz because it's an old rule that if something rezzed once to your computer it will rezz easier and faster the next time, but everyone else views it as sphere and wonders what the hell those people are wearing hahaha. I should have taken a pic and be sure next time I will do it, because then people will understand why I almost never use any sculpts and wouldn't buy them. I got the opinion that it's wonderful that Second Life offers the possibility to use sculpties if it would work to rezz it would be even more useful .....hahahahaha, to me it seems like offering someone: Hey I will give you an applepie if you grow me the apples before, could take then a while, but hey ....they at least offer it.

Autumn is calling

2008-10-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

And Black Moon answers with several romantic and exotic dresses. First of them is an country charme Halloween dress called Autumn Pleasures, the texture is so cute that it would be too sad to wear it only at autumn. Second is another roses dress called Tres Jolie and in case that You got a good heating You will love Delilah, a silk of the premium class. It's butterfly lace underwear can be also worn with any other outfit and it's many roses jewelry attachments are beautiful. And next we have a real dark goth inspired dress that fits to halloween too, the Goth Darkness with cloak and skirt to vary your look and spiderheels to make You look real scary. This is one of the outfits I did a year ago and I added now a skirt to it and it's still a real bargain. Click pics to see them enlarged ;-)
For the divas we have a pink lace dress called Summer Night with floating flowers and butterflies and very precious brocade lace. And for the stylish ladies Diamond Elegance, an outfit that has rhinestones and pearls on the top and can be worn with skirt or cloak.

Ready for more exotic wear?

2008-10-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

And here we go with some new exotic indian outfits with sequins and beads on the trims, both are slightly transparent as the real indian silk fabric and one of them has this typical batik colour gradient. For those who love a more elegant exclusive style we've got an awesome brocade lace outfit with embroidery called Monte Carlo. Click the pictures for a closer look.
If You prefer dark teal, gold and black the Dark Heaven dress with all over embroidery will catch Your eyes. I prefer wearing it as pants outfit. As always at the Black Moon dresses You can vary Your look.

And if You love romance we got another romantic dress for all those who love roses and lace.

Did You think now that's all? No of course we've got also a new vintage dress for you, Flapper at it's best ;-) called Chicago and created with a beaded fabric in black. Jewelry and animated cigarette are coming with it.

New Releases

2008-10-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

As each week we've got some new outfits. I won't be able to post all new releases everytime when they get into the shop, so please take yourself from time to time a look at our shop to see what's new. I will post some new things and older things as I mostly do it to show you which kind of dresses you'll find at Black Moon. Private Dancer, Lost in Dreams and My Way are new. Precious Waterlilies and Empress are two historical dresses I created a while ago and Dream Wedding is an historical weddingdress that's also new.

Viva Espania or the latin dresses at Black Moon

2008-10-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

We have a new latin dress, this one is called Flamenco and inspired by the spanish traditional flamenco wear. It's coming with animated lace fan, many pieces to vary your look and even jewelry. We've got several spanish dresses that are worth looking them up, I will add some for you to show you some of the older ones too.

AmericanMcGee Alice Dress

2008-09-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

And here another new release. Click picture to enlarge it ;-)

Asian wear at BLACK MOON

2008-09-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

We always did some oriental and asian wear too. Now we got a new beautiful blue kimono called Blue Butterfly Kimono. I will add some pictures of some of the older kimonos too, so that You can take a look what else we've got if You don't know them yet.

BIG is beautiful !!

2008-09-14T10:01:00.001-07:00

It had been so needed to get finally started on this: I did the first set for very rounded ladies!
I already design dresses that don't ONLY fit this annorexian size a lot of people use at Second Life, but the ladies who got some more hips and curves. Now I have finally found the opportunity to do a nice set of 3 outfits in one for the real big ladies. Those won't fit slim ladies, sorry for them, but there are really enough others for them at my shop. I will add some pics of oldies but goldies for you of those too ;-) Thank you so much Amrita Chakrabarti, who gave me her absolutely awesome shape for building the new XL serie of clothes! I hope You'll all enjoy the new Black Moon XL section, that's coming in by this now.

New at BLACK MOON

2008-09-13T13:50:00.001-07:00

And for all casual lovers we got a new highweist jeans outfit. 4 tops coming with it so that you can mix and match.

Reasonable priced

2008-09-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

Here I got some typical BLACK MOON bargains for You. You'll find a lot more like those at our shop at all 3 floors.

Old and new ones

2008-09-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

I have to mix up some old and some new pictures because that blog is just quite brandnew and I need to show some different designs to those who don't know the Black Moon shop yet.
My model Annyee Lindman shows here 3 dresses I made this year. Above "Une Etude" for piano lovers, brandnew dress, designed last week. Lower "Malibu" and "Fairy of Light"

Some really beautiful dresses from our shop and bestsellers are Lady in Red and Field of Dreams. If You take a look You'll see why.

Handcrafted Fine Jewelry

2008-09-08T05:22:00.001-07:00

Black Moon did some really detailed jewelry for you. The examples on this picture are only a few of the special jewelry we did. YOU DISLIKE LOOKING LIKE A CHRISTMASTREE in the evening at Second Life?
Then this is Your chance to get a jewelry that looks only by it's textures and building beautiful! Seriously turn off the light at other jewelry and most will look terrible. But not this one. I have put work into it to let it look good without turning on "Full bright" which makes everything look as if you did put in a pound of plutonium. And honestly I don't really get it why some of those fashion specialists hate bling but never mention how stupid everything looks at night when it's set to full bright. I mean since when has a skirt or shoes or jewelry it's own lamp inside? lol
And btw I did that mistake myself as I started designing at SL, just because I saw it everywhere used but if you use really good textures it's simply not needed.
And here I got a dress that's about 2 years old now and still one of the most reproduced ideas at SL. Stars float around the skirt above a darkbluefeathertexture, while a sequined neck line catches Your eyes.

New Designs

2008-09-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

As almost each week there are new designs at our shop. Take a look for more at BLACK MOON or at my blogpage.

Everything about the difference

2008-09-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

I have always aimed to have a design that's different to other shops. Not only by our quality or the textures I use, but by the possibilities to match the items that I include at one outfit. One dress is sometimes if you mix and match the pieces different up to 3 or more different looking outfits, skirts are also at several styles and sizes added, even heels or jewelry are very often included and if you look up the prices you won't believe what you get. I will add today two pictures (click the pictures to enlarge them) with several outfits to give you an impression how colourful my dresses are and what makes them different. If you'd like to know more take a look at Black Moon at Insula Inferi West, or look up: http://blackmoon-fashion.blogspot.com/
and my homepage: http://www.vs-design.eu/

Casual but not boring

2008-09-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

At real life I had always been wearing clothes that did get up to date several years later. If I would have become fashion designer at RL I would have set the trends always a bit earlier than the industry. The nice thing about Second Life is that you can create everything you like without being considerate of what's in or out at RL. And everyone can wear everything, because you don't need to have a diat before anything fits, you are as tall as you like and you can change everything anytime.
That's for a lot of people the big fun about SL fashion.
Did you know that most designers at Second Life aren't able to build anything for more rounded avatars and that a lot of ladies are wearing a slim avatar to fit the clothes! We don't join this pressure to be slim, we don't even like it, no not only because it's unnatural, because it doesn't look female at all and because we prefer to build for all kinds of ladies ;-)
We have some really cute casual wear at our shop that you might like too. I'll post here some pictures to give you an impression.

SPAM at Second Life

2008-08-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-26T18:50:00.001-07:00

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??!

2008-08-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-08-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

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/