the notebook/fashion diary with an identity crisis.
Merveilleuse. [Fr. merveilleux, marvelous, exquisite] A fashionable woman under the Directory in France at the close of the 18th century, at which time ultra-fashionable people affected extraordinary innovations in costume. Hence, any new style in female costume.
yes. i am into the big dresses. perhaps it is the residue of the elizabethan gowns i used to wear in the SCA. this is a pretty excessive dress. whoa. paging mr. beardsley. it looks like the peacock tendrils threaten to engulf juana and any other unfortunate avatar that might be nearby. however, that's beside the point. i think i am kind of in love with the house of beningborough now, because they seem to specialize in that kind of dress, you know, the showstopper dress that has its own zipcode and upstages all the other people at the party.
i have to say that i really was at a loss where to go in this ultimate statement gown, and was completely surprised at how fabulous the chouchou xvi (the babel) sim was. i have visited a few of the chouchou sims before, but hadn't seen this one yet. i still don't know exactly what it means, or what the boxes are supposed to do, and for the life of me at first i imagined some sort of jacob's ladder with angelic fashionistas floating up and down (but the funky alpha effect kept messing up my dress) and then i wanted to pull out a lighter and sing "stairway to heaven" because i realized how hilarious it was. this whole dream/hallucination of ours has an economy, and juana just happens to be one of the materialistic bottom-feeding shopping heaux that makes sl run. that is, never a producer, always a consumer....
slairway to juana wears:
dancing peacocks dress by house of benington
delilah stockings and glovesby nightshade designs
aztec goddess 2 tattoo by ink blots
tilly (night) hair by truth
nose piercing by avz
rose hairpin suede wine by gfield
abbadon torc by tekeli'li
antracite skull earrings by DECO
thigh high boots by j's
devon 3a skin and visions of death eyes
by rotten toe
if life is a dream, then second life is probably more a hallucination or delerium. it was very hard for me at first to describe this dream-like quality in second life properly, but my dear friend magenta bleac, who is australian, told me a little of the concept of the dreaming, or the dreamtime. i know it does not have the same connotation or the exact same meaning but i find the term "the dreaming" to give a good sense of what i encounter daily in second life.
the most fascinating thing for me is that like a dream, second life lets people create these amazing environments, completely free of all the pesky constraints in real life, like gravity, etc. and when i visit some of these places i very often feel as if i am stumbling into someone's dream. this is very much the case with the sim known as 03. it consists of a gorgeous desolate desert at ground level, with a kind of arena, like ancient ruins, and also a huge chain that tethers a floating object high above. if you ascend to the floating island, you will find an improbably beautiful scene of a snowy wood and a little cottage. in all it is splendidly beautiful.
as usual it was a kind of happy accident that i seemed to be wearing something that matched up very well with my surroundings. i have an unabashed love of i love 13, and this is one of their new releases, the moon dress (night). i am a great fan of that new look i see emerging, a kind of wispy broken doll gothy look, that seems to be a kind of merging of goth loli, and regular goth, and horror, and god knows what. the leading designers in this style seem to be i love 13, violent seduction, rotten toe, and aura falta of tacky star. the hair is from W&Y, which is now my new hair obsession. the skin is from rotten toe, and i'd like to mention it as it is very much one of my favorites, being a dollskin but one that is decayed, and comes with three distinct stages of rottenness, and also a set of pus eyes, though i am wearing the gazing ball eyes from miasnow.
the dreaming juana wears:
i love 13 perfect moon dress (night)
j's boots black
immaculate heart by tekeli'li
neck corset by ru
w&y hair new36
may buried pus stage 2 skin by rotten toe
hair rose by gfield
gazing ball eyes by miasnow
at 03 http://slurl.com/secondlife/REZ/130/9...
i've not been to Mexico, DF. it is one of my dreams to visit, someday. it seems so interesting--apart from the sheer intensity of such a crowded place, there is the unusual geographic situation, and also the weight of history. the residents there are supposed to even have a special character, and have a charming (and from what I read, perhaps derogatory in some contexts) nickname (Chilango). btw, as a completely off-topic aside, i keep up with a particularly hilarious blog called "effective swearing in d.f." which should help me a great deal should i ever get to visit the real Mexico, D.F.
so i thought it very interesting then when i was looking at Liqueur Felix's flickr stream (always the most gorgeous amazing finds and pictures of different places to visit btw) and saw this image of the ciudad de mexico sim, which is apparently a roleplaying sim run by brasilians. upon visiting it in person, i found it really quite lovely, though the observer tag is distinctly hideous to wear (it looks like a fishbowl over your avatar's head). when i was walking there parts of the city reminded me vaguely of nexus prime in 07, and a little of hangar liquides before it moved to insilico. there are three levels to the city, with interesting and mostly empty buildings to look at, but take care. while i was doing my research and exploring the sim, i happened to touch a transport button and it teleported me into an arena on the upper level, into what i think was a beauty pageant that was in progress while i was there. sadly there is no photographic evidence of this caper, as i was so completely flustered i ran across the room and jumped off the building. ah well next time. and now you know this amusing little anecdote.
i was really at a loss what to wear--however there are shops when you first teleport in, and i found a really unusual outfit from rfyre, called providence. of course i pared it down a little to suit my purposes. its really quite striking on its own, but i liked very much how it seemed to combine so well with the deconstructed trenchcoat from nomine. i had also found the amazing mirror hair from paradox and alpha, along with their interesting facial piercings in my earlier travels. as it is this outfit turned out to be a collection of new things and my favorite standbys, as you might recognize the rest of what juana is wearing from other posts.
juana the wannabe cyber chilango wears:
providence house of rfyre
deconstructed trenchcoat by nomine
aztec sample bracelets and armlets by otaku designs (group gift)
bone queen bonus skin cutea benelli
mirror c14 hair and P_Stras piercings by Paradox & Alpha
ving boots by shiny things
mayan dream tattoos by garden of kuu (tinted red)
cybermacahuitl by cortech enterprises
so when i saw this hair by alpha and paradox, worn in a joint post by achariya and mourna, i thought it so very reminiscent of the black queen, that i knew i must buy it at once. fast forward a bit.....while messing around in my inventory i somehow managed to put something together from various things that i'd seen in posts i loved, which incidentally i wore last night at TriNala's last show.
the plastik strappybodysuit i'd seen and loved, but had no idea what to wear it with. in one of those happy coincidences, i was standing trying on all the things marked "skirt" in my inventory, and the cellular skirt from avz bizarrely seemed to match almost perfectly. add to this the magic circle sigils (though i suppose more accurately they go over the chakras), which are not new, but i encountered on another shopping expedition....and voila. fear my diana ross fury minions!!!!
the great tyrant of sogo juana wears:
C10 hair by paradox and alpha shiva (creator) skin by gauze strappybodysuit obsidian by plastik cellular skirt by avz boots by j's magic circles set (woahglo) by dark eden machina eyes (unknown) red hair rose by g field
i find myself here, in the second life alhambra, having seen with my own eyes the beauty of the real thing, yet at the time of my visit little knowing its deeper significance. i hope i may be forgiven for it.
i think i realize now the events of 1492 and this place have a deeper dimension that i never really understood fully before. i knew columbus met with the catholic kings in the alhambra before he left on his voyage....in the same room where boabdil surrendered his kingdom. and also in this same palace in the same year was issued the infamous alhambra decree expelling the jews.
this catastrophe remembered, (among others) on tisha b'av. it is early, yet. still too early for tisha b'av this year. the saddest day of the year that i never celebrate...but its the reason i have chosen this place to roam, dressed as an old testament angel of affliction......for the laments and exile and destruction for the moslems and jews. and also the destruction and conquest and visited on the indigenous people in the americas. because i guess the energies that were expended to retake this fortress, never dissipated, perhaps just redirected into different parts of the world...
and so i visit the replica of a place that i have come to regard as the womb of our world. i like to think that all of us, the children of the new world, are the products of the scenes that took place in this magnificent jewel of a palace composed and created in equal measures of beauty and filth, violence and piety, and dreams of paradise....
al-zahra wears:
corvinus hair black by gauze kaballah skin by nikita friede cernwn horns by siyu suen corded neck corset by RU skull pendant by grim bros u-sha fantasie outfit & boots by husky gfx
in al-Andalus Alhambra listening to "todos los bienes del mundo" a villancico by juan del encina
carthalis is sort of a bad influence on me i think. he travels to the most interesting places, and his flickr photostream is like a travelogue, but of the most interesting, picturesque, and fairly dark and magical kind.
so following in his footsteps i went to the omega point sim. i don't quite get the backstory but it appears to be a kind of dark horror semi fantasy maybe futuristic kind of place, with cyber touches. it's amazingly beautiful too. there are many little nooks and crannies there--decadent and sinister places hinting at dark rituals and bloodsucking creatures.
some spots seem just unabashedly off. like the dance floor, which has a glowing green dance pole with a skull on top, among other things. and floating gogo dancer boxes. i didn't hear music but it amused me to float around upside down, in the admittedly beautiful ballroom area.
i found a strange cage, in a lovely pavillion facing the sea. it was set up with cushions for spectators. i was curious so jumped inside, thinking it was for dancing. but no. it was full of gorean type poses, so i guess this is some sort of local naughty hangout place. it seems too beautiful to be anything really all that bad.
music box dancer juana wears: dahlia skin 8 and candy heart tattoo by miasnow infected black satin shirt by rotten toe skull nose piercing by avz tutu from murder ballet set by snatch crimson betrothal stockings by rfyre chichi collar by cutea benelli coffin ring by schadenfreude thigh high boots black by j's dia de los muertos earrings by violet voltaire relia hair by gauze gamine girl stockings by unknown hair rose wine by gfield
