ganguro

i have never ever worn this style before. it's called ganguro, a look that's past its time already. according to the all-knowing wikipedia, it peaked around 2004. it makes me think of a character that would get killed in a horror flick, so i visited the carnival of doom. while i was wandering around i met a few carnies dancing in a barn, all blood soaked, and i laughed at the utter contrast of it all. they were nice though, and i promptly changed into something more gruesome looking.

i think it's an interesting style even if it's already dead and in its grave, because this is what japanese schoolgirl rebellion looks like apparently. it consists of a deep tan, with white lipstick and eyeliner, bleached blonde hair, and loud bright colors.

i have to admit it took me a moment to adjust, because it looks weirdly like a kind of racist blackface at first. i did love the face gems, and this was the first time i have worn false eyelashes in SL. it's funny, just like RL i had to shorten them and adjust them to fit my tiny eyes.

the loud clashy colors took some getting used to. i hardly ever wear this kind of thing in SL. i searched all the images i could find and i was unable to really implement it on my SL body farther than this. but the skin is very lovely, and the eye jewels too, both from Gauze, which is one of the holy trinity of my favorite visual kei-ish stores--those being Gauze, The Black Canary, and Blue Blood.

the rebelliously attired juana-ko sports:

ganguro ginger skin, Corvinus hair, and heart face gems by Gauze
eyelashes by DrL
Frog tee by Meriken
Skull mini skirt by amplify
Flour corsage from 64 set by KS
tropicana hair flower by artilleri
purple legwarmers by BP
blackstripe leg socks by LaynieWear
jeweled satin cuffs from murder ballet set by snatch
absynthe oshun collar by dark eden
ving boots by shiny things

at the carnival of doom, and the china sim

dream of the crimson chamber

i have never read the dream of the red chamber, but i want to someday. i visited the land of illusion sim, not knowing what it was, and the little i know now is that at least some of it is based on this novel, but it's actually by two people named lily and honglei, and it's something like her memories superimposed on the grounds of the house from the book. so interesting...almost like wandering in someone's memories.....

i wandered the house and grounds, laid out in the traditional manner, each wing representing the seasons. and as i wandered i listened to guqin, because i think it pretty, and it seemed fitting for my mood. there were strange little surprises, images visible on one side and not the other......

i'd been shopping at blue blood that evening too, and it happened that the outfit i wore was called crimson. i apparated there, in the store, and a disembodied chat voice behind me told me i looked gorgeous. i turned and it was ghanima uriza herself, a beautiful green loli fairy perched on a chair. she was sweet to me, and gave me several skins to go with the gowns i had bought.....this one seemed very fitting though as it is with all things, i ended up changing what i was wearing midway.

the crimson dreaming juana wears:

crimson outfit and skin by blue blood (ghanima uriza)
collar and curlicue undershirt chichi set by cutea benelli
dreams noir hair by red queen
black widow and carpe noctem boots by nightshade designs
studded leather pants by digit darkes
forbidden 19 skin by lionskins

in land of illusion sim, listening to the guqin.........

to live and to die....tattoos by bakersfield kidd

today (april 26th) i talked to bakersfield kidd, who made the glorious "to live and to die" tattoos. it's a tiny world, i recognized his name because i saw his picture on achariya's flickr photostream. so i saw he had a flickr account and left him a note. he was really nice, and told me something interesting--he hadn't sold very many of those sets. which i can't imagine, because they look so freaking cool.

they are my very favorite tattoos as i said, and have significant memories associated with them too. i was wearing them in the strange citizens post on strange pixels, that grady made, which was a very very huge honor for me.

bakersfield left a really nice comment on this outfit. it was one of the ones i wore for dia de los muertos, which is really like my christmas. i was standing outside the katatonik store, having just bought her dia de los muertos dress, with the matching jewelry by violet voltaire, a custom burnt bones skin made by munchflower of nomine, shoes by gfield, hair by deviant kitties, raven pennyflower hat by nonna hodges, and mask by i forgot right at this second.

another notable event where i also wore them was when i was being sacrificed at my dia de los muertos party, but that's another story. (both these pictures were taken by my friend zorena deckard.)

the reigning cyprian

it makes me laugh, because maybe people forget that "actress" meant also "courtesan" for most of history, and so our modern idol worship of them is sort of funny considering.

second life exists to make the impossible happen, and so for an hour or two my little alter ego was transformed into the celebrated (and most probably unwashed) mrs. juana baddeley, actress and reigning cyprian. it sounds demented but i love reading about the lives and times of these grandes horizontales and so i spent my few hours flitting from 18th century sim to 18th century sim just being mrs. baddeley.

but without the leeches, purges, bloodletting, surgery without painkillers, and useless visits to the baths. oh and without blackmailing feminine companions. mrs. baddeley of course would have to go rehearse her play, and so she did. but sadly nobody was there. it's just as well because it was getting way too histrionic i think. perhaps she'd fight about her salary or something. and avoid her pimp of an ex-husband.

being short of money she might pay a little visit to charlotte hayes' nunnery to moonlight for some pocket change. but very discreet of course....wouldn't want to end up on the list of covent garden ladies.

i must confess, one thing really confounds me. how the hell can you pursue this line of work without getting your heavily pomaded and half rotten 'do from getting irretrievably wrecked in the course of discharging your duties? (yeah i said discharge lol) i mean, it just doesn't make sense. perhaps they knew something special that we don't know anymore about having your hair did so that it lasts.

maybe having exerted herself maybe she might eat something, somewhere fashionable, and then speed off to a very august address, for a very private visit to meet one of her benefactors.

another incredulous modern interjection here: all this without antibiotics? and all sorts of omg disgusting venereal disease floating around everywhere? ewww. ewww. not to mention the whole pregnancy and childbirth without painkillers and aieee back alley abortions from hell. i guess these ladies were just made of sterner stuff that we pitiful cossetted modern girls.

sigh. now time to go home and drink a pint of gin and laudanum, and sleep till noon.

the notorious mrs. juana baddeley wears:

jabot, cuffs, jacket, pants (i made them breeches) and tails valerian suit, and caged bird gloves and stockings by silent sparrow
curlicue undershirt from chichi set , shoes mme renaud by cutea bennelli
black pompadour and mourning tricorne by nonna hedges
snow white skin by i forgot.
giltterati earrings by violet voltaire

death card.

sometimes when i am upset and unhappy, and find the world futile and the future uncertain, i put on my finest clothes, put on fresh makeup, and smooth my hair. sometimes i go out to dance and to drink, and to flirt.

but sometimes i just want to be alone, struggling in the grip of a strong emotion. i often find myself suddenly far from home.

then i just wander around in a daze, walking through darkened streets, staring at people.

in second life nobody sees your rumpled hair or runny nose, and the clothing that you wear can be as insane as you want it to be. and nobody notices or cares either if you wander around. you will meet all sorts of people in all sorts of conditions and it might be a fleeting thing or it might be a messenger fated to meet you in that moment.

i don't know why but to me this is a dress to be angry in. it is so very furious and standoffish, all prickly like a porcupine and sticking out on all sides like a personal force field, keeping everyone away. how lovely it looks in the dreamworld, where prickles don't sting.

the only pain you feel here is mental.

the shoes do not come with the dress, but are from the same designer. they totally feel like they are possessed with a murderous spirit, with daggers for heels and barbed wire decorations and anklestraps. in second life you can look daggers at someone with your feet.

this is the only way to meet destiny, to defy the death card and not feel that you are its slave, no?

grumpy juana wears:

chichi dress and platform dagger shoes by cutea benelli
zydratic complication eyes by tacky star
misa stockings by sugar
forbidden 19 skin by lionskins
dreams noir by red queen
rose hairpin wine by gfield
skull nose piercing by avz
candybleeding heart tat by mia
black gauze armwarmer by gauze

atonement in insilico and at tunnel of light haze club

la tour juana

it may be time for me to flee the palace. but it doesn't matter, i have my compulsions and they make me happy, even if all i have is a blank wall to sing to. and so afterwards i fled, still in my party dress, to the dreamworld eiffel, and stood there, architectural and alone.



and still later, after having been in the sun, and the air, i entered the dreaming again, to the mysterious cathedral, to find atonement. nexus is gone, and hangar liquides is gone, and yet insilico is there. and in her streets i will set my wandering soul.

la tour juana wears:

dress: a matter of truss by grim bros/cutea benelli
skin: forbidden 14 by lionskins
hair: torn noir by red queen
tattoo: artilleri
stockings: misa set by sugar
shoes: carpe noctem by nightshade designs

in sl eiffel tour and atonement cathedral in insilico,
listening to petit blonde de boulevard brune by manu chao.

meiji schoolgirl

LONG HAIRED AND PREGNANT --
Mixing Elements of Seasonal Fashion
in Japan
Originally uploaded by Okinawa Soba

i have been making myself crazy looking for images of meiji-era schoolgirls. and i have only succeeded in finding this one image, and she is pregnant lol. so tomorrow i will try to find another.

it makes me laugh because apparently the meiji-era schoolgirl was considered pretty wild and naughty in their little hakama. from what i understand too, this type of uniform is sometimes worn for graduation in japan. (blogged from flickr:LONG HAIRED AND PREGNANT --Mixing Elements of Seasonal Fashion in Japan Originally uploaded by Okinawa Soba)

i like the mixture of western and japanese elements too.

i am very fond of nonko romankan kimono. they seem to have a sort of antique vibe going. i am still pretty shaky as to what differentiates meiji from taisho, but these antique style elements seem to be pretty influential in today's fashion.

the brash schoolgirl juana-ko wears:

skin: willow pale smokey by eat rice!
hair: yuuki by zero style
hakama set: Nonko Hakama set 01 by Nonko Romankan
hair ribbon: TAISYOU_HAKAMA A Ribbon by tesuya volmar
april hair ornament: april kanzashi by mameha's
shoes: miriel granny boots by illusions (siyu suen)

at any rate, i own several outfits from nonko, but the one i wanted to wear today was the hakama set. i have an affinity for hakama anyway, since i like heian era clothing, and hakama (i guess more properly nagabakama) started out as heian era women's underclothing.

and the lure of the cherry blossoms is to strong to be ignored.

stay beautiful

i wandered the dreaming this evening in this gown. it elicited several comments from people i like and respect. but the most trenchant came predictably from a complete stranger, in a place so strongly imbued with of memory and meaning. i was in the jeweled garden, in the ruins of nexus, the city that i sort of regard as the omphalos of my second life personal geography.



and in my pixel hands i held the city's tombstone and epitaph, my most treasured possession in this world.

she apparated suddenly, falling right in front of me, and in the brusque way of the noob told me that my av was amazing. and then asked for a landmark. her parting words to me were, "stay beautiful." and then disappeared.

if only it was so easy as that, no?

the pensive juana wears:

disturbia gloves, stockings by catwa
audrey gown and hat by alb
blood beads earrings by spica
midnight oshun collar by dark eden
amaya armwarmers and arm belt by gauze
skull nose piercing by avz
dreams noir by red queen
Whispers of Night Deathly F Lost Gloom Stalker

alice in wonderland/strange girls

i was bored and went to the alice in wonderland ride. it was odd but not creepy.

i was bad and jumped off the ride and wandered in the display. while there i met an avatar named avril bosshart. she was nice, and gave me a radioactive cookie. this is the first time in recorded history that i have worn a cookie like that. but it seemed fitting.

there were other very interesting displays. i wished though that you could be shrunk or be turned into a giant, when you passed the "eat me" and "drink me" signs. it reminded me too much of the disney cartoon version, in the end.

juana in wonderland wears:

sade dress set & carpe noctem boots by nightshade designs
dream hair by red queen
forbidden 14 skin by lionskins

it seemed the sort of place to wear this outfit. it reminds me a little of the RL alice and the pirates label that i see often in the gothloli bible.

and then this is where it gets a bit odder. i found a big top circus stage set up. it seemed the thing to do, to put on a saloon outfit, and do a little dance. i was in the middle of something and then i realized that avril was there. she'd found me, and so i asked her if she wanted to be in the machinima. she changed into a really lovely deadly clown outfit, and then we did our little strange girls thing in the big top.


the strange girls wear:
on juana:

midnight victorian and amaya kimono cuffs by Gauze
rose suede hairpin (wine) by G Field
black coffin ring by Schadenfreude
goth hat by unknown
aDiva couture temptress hat by aDiva
platform dia de los muertos shoes by Grim Bros
susie leather choker
june hair style by Catwa
forbidden 14 by LionSkins

on avril bosshart:

shoes, dress, hat, parasol, and skin from Carnival of Doom
Machette hair by Deviant Kitties

i am a very, very, very bad jew.

it's passover, and it occured to me to dress juana up like the angel of destruction, and roam an ancient egyptian themed sim.

i am not normally so bloodthirsty but found a really cool new skin called "kaballah" on xstreet by Nikita Fride.

it has various kabbalistic symbols, but my fave is the huge hamsa on the back. i wear hamsas in real life, pretty much keep them everywhere, and found it funny that the second life logo is a modified hamsa.

i was making an outfit to go with this splendid new skin when the hilarity of this idea struck me, and i just had to do it.

in lieu of a seder, the ritual meal where all the foodstuffs have a meaning, i purposely included a few things to serve as a kind of visual/clothing seder. so i suppose this is my utterly vain, profane, and probably semi-sacriligious passover observance this year.

• the bands are symbols of slavery
• amusingly enough the belt of the skirt has an anhk on it, a reminder that we must mourn the egyptians, because they were suffering too.
  
• the bones and skulls on my shoes reference both the bones of the slaves that were crushed to make mortar for the pyramids, and also the scorched lamb bone of the seder plate.
• the horns are for the common misconception/mistranslation that jews have horns.
• the bracers and torc are from the "abbadon" set. "abbadon" supposedly means destruction in hebrew.
  

michal the second life angel of destruction wears:

skin: Kaballah by Nikita Friede
horns: i don't remember, by Siyu Suen (illusions)
hair: fluff by jet doll
bracers, earrings, torc: abbadon set by tekeli'li
armbands: from amaya set by gauze
belt, silks, legbands: naughty isis set by nightshade designs
shoes: Dia de los Muertos platforms by grim bros
top and bottom: murder ballerina set by snatch

murderous ballerina

everything old is new again.

at least it seems that way. but my infatuation with visual kei continues unabated. this is an old dress, and an old outfit, remixed.

though this reminds me more of what juana might throw on in the middle of the night to run to the drugstore to buy razors and tampons.

despite the expression of despair, it was a happy occasion, being a shopping excursion to a new place i'd not been before.....made in hell.

the disheveled midnight ballerina wears:

skin: forbidden 20 by lionskins
hair: rQ Coy Noir
Collar from Ouka Saki Some ni Keri, armbands from the Amaya set and gloves from Gauze set by Gauze
Immaculate heart necklace by Tekeli'li
Candy tattoo MiaSnow
Murder Ballerina tutu, pants, and top by Snatch
Cut Stockings Brood Set by KC Fashions
Black Widow boots by Nightshade designs
Coffin ring by Schadenfreude

badass

Originally uploaded by al-zahra

grady wore this incredibly badass outfit at club baby seals.

:)

not to mention the other luminaries in attendance, such as momo and isa.

incroyable

i have always loved the crazy clashy mad exaggerated styles of the incroyables and merveilleuses of the directoire.

but then again when i was younger and more impressionable i had a mild obsession with the french revolution and napoleon too.

i really love visual kei. sometimes i think that the people who wear that style are like the modern versions of the incroyables (and merveilleuses, in drag).

in the dreamworld, where one can dress as madly and as improbably as one wishes with impunity, some of the meaning of this style i think is lost in translation. it is nothing to go shopping and toss together a vague facsimilie of incroyable fashion.

in particular i hate frock coats and tail coats in second life because they never fit my stumpy little avatar. and ditto with the jabots. on the bright side this is a style that requires one to look exaggerated.

so i did as best i could, and found a funny napoleonic sim to play around in. it was literally named "napoleon's empire" and had a profusion of mostly empty little palaces to loot, ships in the harbor and also circling the waters of the surrounding sea.

there was even a little guillotine in the little fortress, and a rustic looking in, complete with a little rat that would crawl around the floor in an endless loop.

it amuses me too. the real incroyables were rebelling against the revolution--they were royalists, and therefore really expressing themselves quite dangerously with their crazy clothes.

it's sad that in this insipid second life version, there is no political subtext. i suppose if i were wearing a bush/cheney button instead of a cockade it might come close, but i'd rather not. i fear that this outfit is way too restrained for proper 18th century incroyable-ness, but it's only second life, and we must make allowances for that.

jeanne the second life incroyable wears:

napoleonic bicorne hat ( i totally love the cockade) by illusions
coat, jabot, cuffs, from Pearl set & Lovebound tails by the black canary
rQ Torn Noir by Red Queen
Copper Sand Pants fall front pantaloons by Ravenswood Regency (To a T)
forbidden 20 by LionSkins
stockings (harajuku doll) and fallen disgrace boots by nightshade designs
napoleonic hussar saber by Moyer's Military

i couldn't leave that sim without trying out the guillotine. sadly there is a bit of a predjudice apparently against short avatars, because it rather inhumanely would mean that only the top half of jeanne's head would get chopped off.

but i'd rather have half my head chopped off than suffer a bush restoration.

dj tedi sound and the furry ^^

dj tedi sound and the furry ^^
Originally uploaded by al-zahra

tedi had another show tonight. it was a furry themed one. i am not a furry, and so it was hard to start from scratch, but i didn't want to look like everyone else. After searching i managed to find a vampire chihuahua AV by Shaduhka Druart on Xstreet. sadly it's not mod so the wretched hair had to stay and i was in a total hurry so ended up wearing a men's Rfyre outfit--a gothy toreador thing, that made juana look vaguely eastern european. it was such a horror finding boots for this av. I had no idea what it takes to dress a furry. It's hard! but i had an ugly pair of boots i found in one of those scary little fleamarket-like malls that sort of worked. and I added a tekel'li torc and bracers.

troy looked really scary, he wore a very intense little bunny av. I daresay he looked *crazed*. it was interesting to see all the different furry avatars too--a variety of them were there. But you can totally spot the "born furry" from the poseur furries.