Montagne Noire Merchantile in Deadwood

The newly reset Deadwood western RP sim has a great little merchants section within Fort Laramie, the starting point of your journey to Deadwood (in real life about 400 miles, I think).

When the sim owners rebuilt the sim recently, one of the things that was important to them was to get as authentic a look as they could get from their merchant "outfitters," those businesses that in the real life Old West set up adjacent to such places at Fort Laramie to provide prospectors and travelers with the supplies they needed to survive their long journey. So you won't find any flashy or modern looking vendors here.

I finally updated my little outfitter display with vendors that resemble dry goods crates (an idea encouraged by the sim owners). I narrowed the clothing selection to what I thought would be the best fit, so to speak, for role play in Deadwood.

Stop by and see what you think -- and check out the amazing reset of the Deadwood sim at SURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phoenix%20Pass/116/170/767. Its focus on authenticity and providing visitors with actual historical background about the real town without a doubt make it the best western RP sim in SL. The role play is a blast too!

New to the Role Play Collection: miner & soldier

Two new additions to the Role Play Collection are now available: Le Mineur and Cavalerie.

"Le Mineur" is a well-worn outfit based on the clothing typically seen in historical photos of 19th century miners.

This outfit was deisgned specifically with the Deadwood 1876 sim in mind, which will soon be "resetting" itself to 1876.

In the summer of 1876, thousands of prospectors flooded into the Black Hills of Dakota Territory (where Deadwood is located) to seek their fortunes placer mining in the gold fields.

As larger mining interests entered the picture, men were employed to work the large underground mines bored out by large machinery. Before the invention of the carbide lamp in 1892, miners lit the dark passages of the mines with a small oil lamp attached to their cap.

The lamp on the cap in this set is a working reproduction of those 19th century oil lamps. Simply touch it to "light" it, and a flame will appear that will also provide some light for you in the dark. Touch it again, and the flame will be extinguished.

Mr. Ernst Osterham, the building wizard that he is, deserves sole credit for the lighting effect, as my grasp on scripting is still rudimentary.

The outfit also includes a cap without the oil lamp attached, for those evenings your character spends in town, and not in the mines.

Also introduced to the collection today is "Cavalerie," based upon the actual U.S. Army Cavalry M1872 and M1874 uniform pieces worn by enlisted soldiers during the "Indian Wars" of the 1870s.

This uniform was also designed specifically with the Deadwood 1876 sim in mind. In real life, there was a notable military presence in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory (where Deadwood is located) during the 1870s because of continued conflicts between the United States and the Indians of the northern plains.

You'll find two crates in this set: one uniform set is clean for garrison duty and formal events, the second crate contains battleworn garments for the "veteran campaigner."

The "clean" uniform features multiple versions of the sack coat and "pattern" shirt: you can wear the pattern shirt as an undershirt layer, with the sack coat as a shirt layer, which will allow you to wear a large overcoat or poncho for a jacket layer, creating a multi-layered look.

The pattern shirt is also available as a shirt layer, and the coat as a jacket layer. Depending on your physique, one combination make work better for you than the other -- all garment pieces are modifiable.

The "dirty" uniform in the other crate is designed to resemble a uniform that has seen months of service, with dirt, mud and perhaps some dried blood on each piece. It too features multiple versions of the coat and shirt layers.

The set also includes the traditional "kepi" cap, and Mr Osterham deserves credit for creating the sculpty that makes the "slouch" look much more authentic than the prototype I initially built out of standard prims.

So you want to role play a "working girl."

So you are interested in roleplaying a 19th century parlor girl, courtesan, working girl, painted lady, soiled dove, whore -- a prostitute, in a Second life Victorian/Old West role play sim.

Where do most people start? With clothing. Typically, it's the most frilly, flamboyant outfit available on XStreet -- silk stockings, rhinestone bustier, the whole nine yards. It's a fabulous costume, certain to turn the heads of the gents (ahem).

You land at a Western sim's welcome HUB and rush past the signs urging you to read about life in the 19th century American West, thinking you already know everything you need to in order to make your RP debut, thank you very much.

Here you are sauntering down the street, ready to make your big RP splash, when suddenly someone IMs you. "Uh, hello and welcome, you appear to be new -- are you aware that costume isn't really appropriate to wear on the street?"

"Of course it's appropriate," you reply, "isn't that why they're called streetwalkers?"

I can't tell you how many times I've had this IM conversation with new characters in Deadwood, the Western sim I RP in. Many, many female avatars wander in with a head full of ideas about prostitution in the Old West that they got from watching Hollywood movies.

There are as many myths about the prostitutes of the Old West as there were "soiled doves" (a common term for prostitute at that time).

Probably the biggest myth that new roleplayers buy into when creating a working girl character is that they had glamorous lives and clothing. Certainly the upper class courtesans and parlor girls were dressed sumptuously for their upper class clients. They weren't necessarily well educated, but they could carry on a conversation and knew which fork to use for the salad.

Most of the high class parlor houses, however, existed in larger cities, and only came later to the boom towns of the West as the wealth of the land began to pay off.

How does this relate to fashion? well, in a few weeks, the Second Life sim of Deadwood will be resetting the clock to 1876. Currently, it's 1879. The town has grown into a bustling little burg with theaters, hotels, tea rooms, a hospital. It's all very... civilized.

I should qualify that and say that, despite what some uninformed people have been saying, it has as much excitement as it's always had -- bank robberies, hangings, lost dogs -- but it's a full fledged town now, with a mayor, city council, a town charter. It's still the Wild West, but as in RL, time moves forward in SL as well, and progress -- telephones, railroads, electric lights -- are just over the horizon.

SL's Deadwood has always strived for historical authenticity, and with the reset, there's an opportunity to explore the seedier side of frontier life.

In the early days of Deadwood's gold rush, in mid-1876, it was estimated that approximately 90% of women of the camp were “painted ladies.” Women amounted to between 100 to 150 for the entire Black Hills area, perhaps constituting between 1 percent and 2 percent of the population, according to Watson Parker, author of Deadwood: The Golden Years. That's at the rough estimate of about 10,000 residents at the peak of the gold rush.

When the Deadwood sim reopens, it will be a chaotic, lawless camp, made up of an assortment of tents, wagons and crude lean-tos to house its rapidly expanding populace, which will consist mostly of men who've come to the area to strike it rich in the gold fields of the Black Hills. With that influx of prospectors will come folks with entrepreneurial interests, who will set up shop on the first flat, vacant parcel of land they can find, to provide food, clothing, liquor, tools -- and sex.

The women providing that last commodity in these early days of Deadwood will not be dressed in silk stockings and rhinestone bustiers. They will be women who may or may not have come to Deadwood of their own volition. Some will have been lured there under false pretenses, thinking they would be filling jobs as cooks or laundresses.

Many of them will be escaping already desperate lives, thinking that life in a mining camp couldn't be much worse than what they'd already endured. Some will come to the grim realization that they have unwittingly sold themselves into sex work.

Most of these women will probably have traveled to Deadwood with little more than the clothes on their backs. Already poor, the dresses they wear are threadbare at the elbows, where the sleeve rubs against the washboard. The skin on their hands will be red and calloused from scrubbing with harsh lye soap and carrying buckets of water from the creek to the washtub.

Some will not be able to speak a word of English. Others may be addicted to alcohol or opium. Suicide or murder will be the tragic end for some.

But the lot of the "painted ladies" of Deadwood was not entirely bleak. For some, it was an opportunity to flee the restraints of Victorian society and become a woman of independent means. Historically, there were a number of real life women who came to Deadwood and made their fortunes as madams.

Don't take my word for it -- there are several very good resources about prostitution in the Old West. Get started with "The Painted Ladies of Deadwood," a feature on the "Legends of America" website. Shooting Star Enterprises, a company that specializes in historical reenactment education and supplies, has a informative page devoted to "Entertainers, Hurdy Girls, Soiled Doves and other Ladies of the Evening." A book I highly recommend on the subject is Anne Seagraves' "Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West."

Lastly, I should explain why the typical "saloon girl" costume is not appropriate for streetwear in an Old West sim. "Costume" is the key word here. "Saloon girl" is a loose term for women who worked in saloons as barmaids, dancers, and prostitutes. Depending on the saloon, a woman could serve as all three, or only one or two.

A "saloon girl" dress is essentially a uniform -- a costume worn when a woman is working in the saloon, entertaining. The shiny fabrics and feathers, the short skirt, the low cut bodice and bare arms, are part of the entertainment factor.

This stands in sharp contrast to the "proper" fashion of the day -- long sleeves, high necklines, ankle length skirts.

Here we get to one of the double standards of Victorian fashion -- while modest clothing was expected of respectable ladies conducting their daily business in public, at formal evening events it was perfectly acceptable for decolletage and porcelain shoulders and arms to be put prominently on display (pale skin was a sign of a woman of better means who did not have to do manual labor outside in the elements).

Meanwhile, a prostitute might be seen in public doing her day to day errands with a low neckline on her dress -- this suggestive attire being a not-so-subtle advertisement of her profession.

As the Deadwood reset draws closer, I am currently working on some "working girl" dresses that will hopefully fit into the rough and tumble world of 1876 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Stay tuned.

A mountain by any other name...

The redhead steps down from the stagecoach, gazing at the rough-hewn frontier town ahead of her, drawing her cloak around her as the bitter winter wind greets her. Mais, fait-i, fré, ogniet [But isn't it cold today] …. She hopes the welcome she receives is not so chilly … Vère dja, mais pas tant comme hiaer [Oh yes, but not as cold as yesterday] …

She wonders to herself if it was the right decision to come here… to start over … but it is too late for doute.

Where she should even begin? something to eat, perhaps…. Then enquire about available properties. Yes, that is it, she thinks. Make introductions, settle in, get to work, put my mind to other things…

Later in the day, she is standing before an empty building in a quiet corner of town by the river, imagining the interior adorned with lace curtains, Oriental rugs, racks of rich fabrics and... rows of dresses. An abundance of gowns. She had seen the attire of some of the ladies in town as she made her way down the street with her new landlord. I have my work cut out for me, she mused.

But what to call this place? She stood in silent contemplation for some time. As her eyes lifted to the stark hills surrounding her, her mind wandered back to a time and place on another continent, where she could see dark peaks rising out of the earth with the same kind of defiance.

Ah... Montagne Noire [Black Mountain], she said out loud, the sound of her voice drifting off into the hills. She smiled to herself as she turned to make her way back to Main Street. There were so many things to do now.

The story thus far...

I am but a character in a virtual world called Second Life. Perhaps you have heard of it?

I found this new world in December 2007, and like most everyone else who arrives on these virtual shores, spent my first few weeks trying to find my footing. I initially took the standard path: camping, blingy shoes, clubbing.

That got old pretty quick.

Then it occurred to me that as a virtual world, there had to be more to it.

I was fortunate about that time to wander into a place called Neko Gardens. The garden's caretakers, Jett and Jade, took me under their wing and it became my first home in SL. At the time, I had no idea what a Neko was. It had never occurred to me to be anything else besides human in this virtual world.

Neko Gardens was a delightful blend of feline, fairy and zen. One could sleep in a giant flower or swim in a sapphire waterfall. That might seem silly, but it was just the kind of escape I needed at that time.

Sadly, Neko Gardens, at least in the incarnation I knew it when I first met Jett and Jade, is no longer. But that sense of community they fostered there has stayed with me. I am so grateful for their kindness and generosity. It set the tone for how I have led my life in both of the worlds I reside in.

But back to the garden. As I settled in I began to broaden my horizons and explore other sims. I started plugging various search terms in -- and to my delight, one of the search returns was 22 Baker Street, located on the Victorian sim, Caledon.

From there, I began to wonder if such a thing as "role play" existed in SL. It did!

I drifted through many amazing times and places, all fantastically re-created down to the last pixel, until one day I finally discovered an era that spoke to me -- the Victorian Old West.

So, one frigid February afternoon, a finely dressed redhead descended the steps of a rickety stagecoach, stepping into the slush and snow covered street of a little mining town in the Black Hills of South Dakota... Deadwood, circa 1876.

There, Astolat Dufaux, seamstress, failed actress, refuge seeker, was born.

...

I chose the title of this blog, "The Victorian Closet," because it seemed an appropriate description for what will be my musings about Victorian fashion, both as a designer of Victorian clothing in Second Life, and as an amateur historian in my "First Life." I use the term fashion in the broadest sense -- not just clothing, but customs, attitudes and ... well, those things one might find literally or metaphorically in a Victorian closet.

Welcome! -- I hope you enjoy following my train of thought.