abney park concert.

....starring.....the band abney park

and appearing as spectators:
dancien graves, rev eponym, and moi.

so my exhaustive study of steampunk fashion culminated in the abney park concert in dallas, at the venerable goth club, the church. seeing as i had never had the chance to study these creatures in situ, i was of course intensely interested. and the proceedings were even more enhanced because i had the pleasure to meet in real life, two very interesting people of my second life acquaintance.

dancien graves is a very well known and influential second life fashion blogger. he was in "steampunk jihad."

he wore a shemagh (i totally had no idea what that was till he posted it on plurk) with british aviator goggles. (this provoked probably the most hilarious comment i have ever seen in flickr, composed by grady echegaray: "Smiteth the anti-fashionista unbelievers and ye shall have 72 supermodels in paradise!") in the days leading up to the concert, dancien advised me to go to a military surplus store. pretty good advice. i think it gave us a very orientalist flavor, especially when we were holed up in the patio smoking my hookah.

i didn't ask but his shirt appeared to be handmade, or perhaps a poet shirt. (and what happens when my friend poet wears a poet shirt? but i digress) and his boots were very cool as well. i thought he looked very dancien of arabia, ready to lead some rebels. :) and i will say here that in person he is very charming, very considerate, and quite the gentleman, and i was very impressed by him.

rev eponym is a former member of the legendary second citizen forum, and also a builder/libertine/inventor/mad scientist/forumist.

Rev appears in the "Punchcard Networking Engineer"ensemble. the provenance of these things he is wearing is unknown, but he did tell me he was going to a second hand shop to look for something to wear a few days before the event.

i thought it very wonderful, and to me it gave him a very dashing dangerous sort of "strelnikov the revolutionary" kind of look. and of course that soul patch...what can i say....tremendo! in fact i think rev seems to have that whole bad boy cool thing down pat.

but, that is just my opinion, you know.

and then there was me, in the final version of the steampunk nilufer outfit.

although i had vowed not to wear a top hat, a calamitous attempt at a tarpush convinced me otherwise. luckily there were goggles at the bazaar and so i bought them and some seamed hose and fishnet gloves. i wore my spanish mantilla as a hat band, and wore laboriously braided false hair. interesting factoid but the hair added a little bit of bulk to my head and helped the hat stay on better, though rev did his part and assisted me in achieving a rakish angle that had previously eluded me.

as i dressed myself in the hotel room i wondered what people would say or do, as i was in the fairmount, a swanky hotel. but they didn't notice, or at least the bellboys did but they told me i looked "crazy" and "wild." upon further reflection i realize that i probably looked like a hideous mashup/collision of early madonna and generic romance novel cover vague victoriana. but vanity was satisfied because i was complimented a few times, and photographed too. the oddest comment was from a very drunk woman in the elevator as i was returning to my room. she told me i looked very unique.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

at times the profusion of creatively dressed people was staggering to me, a condition probably aggravated by my advanced state of inebriation. and where else do you get into a conversation with a girl about corsets, and end up feeling each other's corset bones????

one word. HOT.

interesting.

rev noted her different interpretation

steampunky nilufer?

so, i am going to see abney park in dallas. i had to have a steampunk outfit. this is not a style dialect that i am familiar with. in fact, i spent tons of time in the SCA *avoiding* victorian-era gear.

after tons of hair-pulling, i think i know what i will wear. and refreshingly it won't entail all that much, just some alterations i think.

btw, please be amused at my highly charming bathroom--i have mirrors in this place but they are in the weirdest places. :)

i am thinking the aggresive gloves might look nicer, and i do have a fishnet shrug that goes with it perhaps. but i think this is what i am going to go with, give or take a few things. its funny, i'd made myself nuts making another jacket, which i tried on today with corset and i was completely swimming in it.

it would look sharp, but its vast. as it is the yelek i am wearing is also way too big. (i have it pinned up in the back) its gratifying but sort of annoying too. the choli just fits, though i broke a few beads on the fringe yesterday while trying it on. i am thinking that it will be more like a rom-ish look. i have a white coin hip scarf somewhere, if not i might buy one. not sure for the hair. i have a long length of uzbeki silk, perhaps i can tie a little turban with it?

or go more with the turkish and wear a little fez and wrap the silk around it?

fortuitous steampunk cinderella

it is amazing when a series of perfectly timed coincidences happen in a series...i suppose technically the word for this is synchronicity...



right now its my mania, and i have just gotten tickets to see abney park in dallas. and how eerily the sim seemed to match, though it was mostly brazilians there, and unfortunately i could only very faintly understand the outrageous flirting that seemed to be taking place.

steampunk cinderjuana wears:

eyepiece and shoulder piece from the
cuprum copperbot avatar set, copper rose tophat,
fusty rusty bangles, archaic choker,
& ironspine steampunk
by cutea benelli/grim bros
dreadlock purple hair by BP
rusted caged dress, coffin ring,
& boots by schadenfreude
egyptian black dress by fumi
doll house skin 25 by lionskins
mayan dream tatoos by garden of ku
apneatic embrace stockings by blacklist

at tepura sim
listening to Wieniawski Mazurka
by Eugene Ysaye
using the chouchou hud