"6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People)"

Cracked.com isn't normally a site I associate with fashion design (I go there for a sundry of other lulz).

However, recently Emilly Orr, on her The Trainwreck Love Life blog, shared a link to a classic Cracked article I'd not seen before: "6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People)."

As usual, Cracked has hit the nail on the head, doing so in their trademark style.

We forget how fortunate we are in the 21st century to be liberated from the oppression of past women's fashions -- the Cracked article mentions steel crinoline skirts and tightlacing corsets, as an example. Some feminists have asserted that fashion -- the styling of restrictive clothing, hair, makeup, etc. -- has long been a tool to control or distract women from other more heady pursuits, i.e. things men do.

I'm inclined to agree, to a certain extent -- in RL I've simplified my "look" over the years, partly because as a tall woman, it's hard to find clothing that fits well (you'll find my closet full of men's clothing, and my favorite pair of shoes were purchased on the men's side of the shoe department).

What I've discovered in the process is that I've freed up an awful lot of time to get more things done.

Of course, the irony doesn't escape me that part of that free time is devoted to creating historical fashion in SL, fashion which IRL caused women physical discomfort and damage. An odd juxtaposition, wouldn't you agree?

And yet that is the attraction of Second Life for me: we can enjoy the cosmetic beauty of previous eras of fashion without having to endure the real pain and restrictions they caused women. An amazing concept, indeed.

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.

New release: Le Menagere Victorian/Old West dress

New at MNC, Le Menagere (English, "The housekeeper") is a practical cotton day gown with apron, in emerald, sapphire or topaz plaid, for the lady of the house who wishes to conduct her daily chores in a comfortable but stylish dress -- ideal for housekeeping or market day.

Le Menagere was designed to reflect the style of dress adopted by women of the mid- to late- 19th century American West. Shedding cumbersome crinolines (the "hoop skirt") and restrictive bustles for more practical dress lines, women on the frontier had more pressing concerns than wearing the latest fashions.

And now for a little editorializing: Before the invention of sunscreen, pioneer women wore long sleeves and high necklines like those on Le Menagere to protect their skin from the harsh elements. In one of the great double standards of the Victorian era, bare arms and decolletage were only acceptable for "proper" ladies on formal occasions, such as balls -- only ladies of ill repute put their assets on public display at all hours of the day.

This is one of my little pet peeves about Victorian fashion in SL -- lowcut necklines and off the shoulder gowns are not, not, not daytime wear for proper ladies! So don't be surprised if you enter a role play sim and you are mistaken for a "painted lady" and treated coarsely. :)

Le Menagere is of course modifiable, allowing you to tailor the garment to your proportions. The dress is now available at MNC's Caledon Oxbridge Village location, or on XStreet.

About Montagne Noire Clothiers...

If by chance you have randomly stumbled into this blog, I am the owner of Montagne Noire Clothiers, a Victorian clothing shop in Second Life. I've been designing Victorian clothing for women and men (and now children) for a little over a year now.

I am by no stretch of the imagination a fashion designer in real life, though I have acquired enough seamstressing skills over the years to have designed and sewn several historically inspired garments. I would (very humbly) describe myself as an amateur historian, so in researching and designing historical costumes, it followed that I began to study the history and progression of fashion.

Now how does this translate to designing Victorian clothing in Second Life? Good question. I am not an artist in real life, I can't draw worth a damn. But I do have some graphic design skills that I use in my real life job.

Before I took the plunge and tried designing, I traveled through a number of the historical realms of SL, picking up a variety of historically themed garments, both free and Linden purchased, along the way. But it was often a painstaking and frustrating process.

While there were an abundance of shops out there advertising era specific clothing (Victorian, Medieval, Renaissance, etc), more often than not the outfits were an amalgamation of different eras and styles.

I've come to call it the "Sinderella Syndrome" -- more (adult) fantasy than reality, the gowns generally feature giant swirling crinoline (hoop) skirts and very lowcut necklines.

First, let me say that there's nothing wrong with wanting to dress like Cinderella in Second Life. SL is a place where you can realize your fantasies, and for many women, that's dressing like a princess. I myself readily admit to having a few Cinderella gowns in my SL inventory.

But it's problematic when you are the owner of a historically themed role play sim and want to provide visitors an authentic experience. That, however, is a topic for another blog entry...

Some of this homogenized look is the result of technical limitations in Second Life. It's very difficult to recreate some garment styles because of the way the UV body templates are mapped. For those who aren't familiar with how clothing is created in SL, it involves layering textures two-dimensionally in a graphics program like Photoshop. That final texture is uploaded to SL, where you apply the textures onto the three dimensional body of an avatar.

Sometimes the translation isn't what you expected.

So, armed with my interest in fashion history and a copy of Photoshop CS3, I began to tinker to see what I could come up with. And the rest, as they say, is history.