Variegated

A dull, dull day. Grey skies. Bare trees. A chill wind blowing from the north. Yes, Tessa suffers from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, and felt that there was no option but to take refuge in SL to restore some color to her life.

Variegated.

That's what she needed to become.

(For those of our AFs who have temporarily misplaced their Webster's, it means multi-colored. The opposite of the dark days of December.)

Fortunately the task was made easy by the discovery that she had inadvertently bought a fat pack of hair entitled "wild card" colors during a recent rape and pillage visit to Exile hair. Tut tut Tessa. Detail. But we have to say that Exile is so good that any inadvertency can be excused, even in one as broad brush as Tess. And the colors are amazing. We don't normally get off on lair hair but this is just great.

By pure coincidence, while browsing round in FAB, she happened to chance upon these terrific outsize glasses in an exactly matching color. What with the big hair and the even bigger glasses she looked like an escapee from Charlie's Angels. Who said that 1984 was dead?

Hair Miss Southern Belle, color Astral, from Exile

Glasses Fab.Pony Nurave color grape

Jeans a comfort cut freebie. Being essentially a slut Tessa tightened them.

The T shirt is My Day Wet T shirt from Little Heaven. We were trawling round LH looking for some hair but evverything seems to have disappeared. Does anybody know what has happened? LH would be a great loss to hair devotees.

Maitreya Green

Thing is, Tess and Maitreya have never been much of an item. No. I exaggerate. The odd item of clothing, even an occasional skin. Where else would you buy boots?

But Maitreya hair? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Of course the fault's all ours. We were accused only today of being a pointy head and, to be frank, it's the pointy-head slider which seems to be most at fault when we put on the Maitreya demo and we have NO intention of changing that.

Conceptually it's fine, lots of wavey bits and hair hanging out in a manner which is meant to be more romantic than disorganised. But somehow it just doesn't work for us. Our greatest accusation aagainst us is that Maitreya hair lacks swish. Tessa loves to swish her hair as she goes along, the sexy walk button firmly applied in the hope of attracting the attention of guys and even the occasional fake woman. Oh yes! Tessa is as het as the next woman but the touch of a man in a skirt is strangely attractive.

So it was a pleasant surprise yeaterday, as we were going off to buy yet another pair of kinky Maitreya suede boots, that we discovered that the new Green demo actually fitted and that we could wear it without having to spend hours shifting prims, hours which could have been much better spent adjusting intimate balls.

We got so excited abiut it that we went and did this portrait in the Babydoll mode. Some people wish they could shimmy like their sister Kate. We just wish we could portrait like Babydoll.

Bush Expose

No. This is not our promised expose on Tessa's pubic arrangements. Oh no! Sorry boys, fake girls and occasional girls, you'll have to wait for that one until the spirit moves us.
No. The "bush" has no pubic connotations at all. It simply refers to the fact that the blogger's urge came upon us as we were taking the air in our hidden valley, a sinuous rill deep in the mountains of Sim Tessa where small animals gamble amongst rampant vegetation and dark damp places. Oh dear! We can almost hear Dr Freud stirring in his grave.
The linge is an oldie but a goodie, a corset and pantie set from Le Burlesque called Ruffle and Ribbon Corset. We just love the detail in  the textures, especially in the panties. Look at them in detail (No! Not you, you naughty fake ladies!). Just exquisite. And we love the little bows. Problem is, as with so many corset setups, you can only wear them for "intimate" occasions and burlesque dancing (as the name suggests). They have too many layers for anything else, mainly because the bra bit and the corset bit are on separate layers. Tessa suspects this is for those moments where the chorus line bares its collective breast for all to examine.
Shape, for anybody who is interested, is crafted lovingly by Tessa.
Skin is Tasha Peach from LAQ (where else?)
Hair is xt cinnamon from Analog Dog

Bobby Soxer

There's been a rash of James Dean movies on TCM lately and after watching Rebel without a Cause (such a stupid movie) and East of Eden, Tessa was forced to revisit some of her fave SL 50s joints, all the while contemplating what a crime it was against 50s womanhood that he was gay. The boys sometimes have all the luck .

We had originally planned to do it the easy way by just raping Artilleri. But en route we were waylaid, as so often, at Bare Rose Tokyo, SL's best value anywhere . There we picked up this lovely outfit, straight from 1956. It's called Poodle and comes in several colors for, being Jap, four fifths of five eighths of a very small amount. Look it up on their search first. Bare Rose is hell to find things, row after row of apparently unrelated goods several stories. high.

Suddenly Artilleri seemed redundant but we persisted and liberated some of her opticals, in this case Greta glasses *gray*, They're nice but you can't help thinking that, by comparison with the dazzling array of scripted glasses available elsewhere,they're a little past the use-by date. But we are after a retro look.

The hair is worth a mention. It's Kira from LAQ and is designed specially to go with LAQ hairline skins. It does and perfectly. Tessa admits a total addiction to the flickr stream of the Queen of SL portraiture, Babydoll and if you scroll through her stream you'll find several exquisite examples of portraits using LAQ hair and hairline skins. Just beautiful

Two Lovely Black Eyes

An honest opinion, ladies (and fake ladies of whom we know so many in SL). Tessa is always on the lookout for really dark and sensuous eyes. In RL she tends to the Nordic but she has always had ambitions to smoulder like a sex-crazed nymph of the Mediterranean. Trouble is such ocular attachments are as scarce as the proverbial rocking horse manure.

So when she saw these eyes, which were billed as "anime eyes", she jumped at the opportunity. Black as ebony. You can see the steam rising.

Question, and be frank with me, oh AFs, Tess can take it, do they actually look like anime eyes or are they better than that? The jury is out.

More fash details when Tess is no longer in the grip of the grippe.

Multi Climate Fashion

Many philosophers - of course this includes Tessa - have mused at length about the essential absurdity of SL and its many disconnects from the allegedly real world. The transfers from place to place in the twinkling of an eye, the flying, the skin changes from black to white to brindle, the detachability of dicks, the multiplicity of identity, of sex, even of species. Tessa once had to cease suddenly from having sex with somebody when she realised that it was herself, albeit in a different manifestation. Phew! At least she had the consolation of knowing that her counterparty had appreciated the experience as much as she had.

Which raises the important question of climate. Tess lives in tropical climes, at least in SL. Her garden is a riot of colors, greens of the palms, cycads and bananas, pinks and reds of the hibiscus, golden yellows of the trumpet flowers. The air is filled with the buzzing of bees, the laugh of the kookaburra and the Australian bellbird, and the roar of that freakin sculptie tiger which she lost amongst the undergrowth ever since that last sculptie one prim sale at Lilypili. Like many in SL she is constantly dodging falling coconuts, all the while contemplating the unquestionable fact that anybody who'd been brought up with them would never plant coconuts and certainly wouldn't lie under them (at least not if they valued the integrity of their skulls)

All of this implies a temperature which never falls much below 25 deg C, high humidity and everything that goes with that. Sweat. Red faces. Small fungi growing in the deep folds of the body. But here is Tessa, wrapped in a fur, bare midriff, looking totally comfortable and no sign of tinea vulgaris anywhere. After hours of Thought, Tess concludes that this is a technical phenomenon of multpile climate zones around the body. There must be a button somewhere to control this but Tess is not a techo and has only recently discovered how to stop flying.
All clothes here displayed are gifts with which Mrs Wetherby showered Tess after the Great Sneaky Photo Incident of the year nine (see previous post)
Hair Lydia from Exile
Glasses Genius Peepers from Miel
Diamond Pendant White Gold from Armidi Gisaci
Slacks Journey Tweed Slacks - Metallic Gold from Armidi Gisaci
Fur Brown Fur from Wetherby's
Top Karen wants a Minidress from Wetherby's

Fashionista

Hey! This is a fashion blog so why shouldn't I blog the greatest fashionista of them all, Alejandra Jumanya AKA Mrs Wetherby. This wasa bit of a sneaky little pic. Tess was cruisin' round Wetherby's and happened to cam in upon Mrs. W. Who, I must say, was most understanding about it all and personally gave us a dispensation to publish this. Personally I would've taken Tess over my knee and given her six of the best.

And Tess is pleased to report that after the Great Unpleasantness of October, the new Wetherby's is coming on apace. Lookin' really good Mrs W!

Sl Optics

Tessa is optically challenged. SERIOUSLY optically challenged. Moles, bats and other notoriously ocular incompetents have been preferred over her as guides, even in broad daylight. She once had sex with a traffic light thinking that it was a man in uniform - Tessa LOVES a man in uniform. It was only the noise of the crowd of spectators and the surprising unresponsiveness of the light (Tess has been known to make a dead man come) that persuaded her to cease and desist. Red, amber, green, back to amber then red again seemed to be just part of the natural rhythm of things at first, but as time went on it became increasingly monotonous until Tess started to wonder if the viagra had worn off.
So you can imagine that her total dependence on artificial optical assistance is such that even in SL she feels totally naked without it.
Fortunately SL is a veritable cornucopia of glasses shops and Tessa rapes them regularly. Let's have a look at a few.
Kalnins' are the kings of SL optics. They were very early in the field of sculpties and were the first to put super quality textures on SL glasses. Kalnins' were the first to use a tubular section for the lenses, as opposed to the rectangular box sections previously used. They do both sunglasses and optical glasses and some which pass for both.
Glasses were amongst the first fashion items to be scripted and Kalnins' are particularly script heavy. HUDs do fitting and sizing, on face vs on head is a popular option and you can set them to superfly when you need to discover who it is who is making unauthorised use of your intimate poseballs in the skybox at 800 metres. But Emerald has made their radar function redundant which is good because their radar can quickly transport you to Lag City.
Tessa's fave from Kalnin's is IxisGlasses Ixis from Kalnins', hair Milli black from Analog Dog
Tess is also very keen on Respect and Faust
Glasses Respect from Kalnins', Hair Lydia copper from Exile
Glasses Faust from Kalnins', hair Jenna auburn from Exile
Another odd optical house is Miel. Miel is unique in SL in that the glasses attach not to the nose but to the ear. This means that the optically challenged can wear prim eyelashes. Yes, I know, you can attach the lashes to your ear, your mouth or even your tits if you're patient enough. But in reality land it just never works and you finish up with lashes hanging off your face in the most disturbing ways. Sex in particular is pretty well totally out of the question. And by now you should all know that patience is very lowly placed on Tessa's list of virtues.
So PUHLEEASE! glasses creators (see, Tessa has got the jargon and will make an IT person yet), take notice of Miel and offer the ear as your default attachment point. Then even we white stickers can flutter our eyelashes.
Another odd thing about Miel. As you can see from the pic below, Miel's Genius Peepers are hi fash items well removed conceptually from the world of the Goth. And yet one of the options is to have them stuck together with tape. Weird! Yes, we're a Goth free zone. The thought of coloring our fingernails with the help of an ill-aimed hammer doesn't appeal so we jumped at the option of removing the tape and marvelled more than somewhat that it had been there in the first place.
Glasses Genius Peepers from Miel, hair Faye (surely SL's single most exquisite hair) from Mirone, another gift from Nippon to the rest of us
Speaking of Nippon, we've already mentioned our minor addiction to Nala. Nala are Japanese (and all that goes with that in terms of technical excellence, great design and low price), sculpted and scripted. The hair resulted from our recent testosterone surge which had us combing the sims for boys' hair. This lot is from Kmadd whose owners are well acquainted with the concept of androgyny. Great hair for girls and if you're a boy you can either wear it yourself or give it as a giftie to your VERY special gentleman friend
Glasses Alicia from Nala, hair Maddesigns Alex espresso from KMadd

Glasses Curio from Nala, hair Maddesigns Alex ferra from KMadd

Finally a word about today's pics. Yes, I know that I'm always carrying on about Tessa's scorn for detail and fine work. No brush is to broad. But a confession. She is obsessive about detail in her piccies and treats each one like a special baby. The problem is that SL has sucked like an emptying blowhole the past couple of days and, even at highest resolution, it's sharp corners everywhere to the extent that it just got impossible to remedy it.
Tessa abases herself before her AFs and swears on a stack of Korans that she'll redo all these when things have calmed down.

Sin Seoung

This is totally off the topic of this blog (Memo to Tessa: what IS the topic of this blog?) but Sin Seoung is so incredibly beautiful that I just had to blog this pic. Special thanks to Sin for braving the cold and goosebumps at 700 metres to take this pic

Please to Remember the Fifth of November

Look of the Day November 5
Originally uploaded by Tessa Zalivstok

Tessa contemplates what she'd like to do with the party poopers who banned fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Hair by Jenna Auburn from Exile
Glasses Ixis by Kalnin's
Jacket by Aoharu
Jeans by Skinny Pebbel Wash by Casa del Shai
Boots by Black Dune Maitreya

Nether Regions

Tessa has always like to keep her nether garments to herself. Mind you this doesn't exclude the possibility of a Special Someone's hand reaching over, softly undoing the buttons of her blouse, and running gently across the sheer material of her bra until it disappears into her....
Oh dear!
My computer has crashed. Such a placid little machine normally and now here it is, heaving, sighing and emitting little puffs of steam from those odd holes at the side. Let me give it a moment to compose itself.
Right! Enough of this
Tess got so excited by some of the more recent offerings from Insolence that she decided to show all. This nether outfit is "Iris" by Insolence. Apart from that special someone's soft hands, nothing gets closer to Tessa's LAQs and sculpties than Insolence. It's simply the best and this new corset seems to be following a retro trend which appeals to us. Note to dirty old men. If we find this being linked from sites devoted to the girdle fetish we'll be.... a little excited.
Insolence http://slurl.com/secondlife/Venom/93/133/28
We should also mention the hair. Yes, speaking of fetishes, Tessa is a leading devotee of the hair fetish and owns whole salons full of them. This one is Ciara, Blackcherry from Exile. We found Exile by the simple expedient of using Emerald, clicking on some hair we liked and using the "inspect" function. And what a find! Tess got so worked up that she briefly had to be sedated. We'll show you some of the twenty or thirty styles she bought over the next few weeks. At L$200 it doesn't break the bank either. Or rather it shouldn't if you don't get carried away like we did.
Exile http://slurl.com/secondlife/Covet/175/40/28
You can't really see the shoes but they're from Mrs Wetherby at her usual ridiculously low price of L$20. Never stop, Mrs W!
Wetherby's slurl? Who knows. You can try the one we gave you yesterday but this blog takes no responsibility for loss, generalised anger or even simple confusion which might arise out of using any such slurl.

Days of Our Lives

Like sands through an hourglass........
Yes, we'll fess up. We love a soapie as well as the next girl. Days of Our Lives. The lot. We even had a brief addiction to an Argentinian soapie (or was it Mexican - steak or tamales?) called Rosa de Lejos which was replete with the usual fingernail-biting endings, long sighs, male heros who have a chromosome at least questionable and sudden deaths as one or the other actor arrives drunk on set and has to be written out.
But nothing we have seen on the small screen could have prepared us for the great Wetherby's saga.
In our last episode.
Wetherby's, devotees of this blog will recall, is the child of Mrs Wetherby, aka Alejandra Jumanya. Mrs Wetherby is an excellent person who creates absolutely stunning and colorful dresses. She gives away a freebie every day (to those who've passed the IQ test necessary to get to them - customer friendly easy techs are not Mrs W's forte - see previous posts) and the next day they go on sale at ridiculously low prices. Dresses are L$100, matching shoes and bags can be had for an embarrassingly low L$20. It's couture for the masses and Tessa is nothing if not mass.
The predictable result of this was a store mobbed by masses of gushing females, and more than a gushing few fake females. What tha! It's SL and you can attach or detach a dick at will. Tessa was of course among the gushingest of the gushers and accumulated a substantial wardrobe of dresses and matching accessories in bright primary colors.
Part of the success was that the whole thing was so unbusinesslike. Mrs W is more of a mother hen to her brood than a hard noser. She gushes along with the best of them, asks about how the prim baby is pregressing, and nothing really works like clockwork. An example:
"Let me start by saying sorry for the confusion. Call it construction confusion.
Todays dress is #216
We re named yesterdays dress #215"
Reminds me of the famous correction notice in the Jakarta Times that yesterday's date actually should have been today's. But it's endearing rather than irrtiating and we take it in our stride.
Which was why we weren't all that surprised when we tped into Wetherby's sim one morning to get our daily fix.
No. It wasn't Wetherby's. It was an Indian Reservation. (Shhh Tessa! You'll never learn! They're only Indian Reservations when the lawyers are putting the final touches to the gambling franchise. When it's deeply spiritual like this place it's a Native American shaman spirit wampum exchange).
Just a screw-up as usual? We walked outside. External darkness and gnashing of teeth. Nothing. Not even thundering herds of buffalo as you might expect from the Indian shop.
Then the notice came. It appears that Mrs W had a close and constant companion by the name of Ratshit Arsehole or something similar. No. Let me check. It was "Junkyarddog Yao". Personally Tess would have taken that as a Key Performance Indicator and sought affection elsewhere. But I digress.
It appears that there was a falling out between them which resulted in JYD Y taking his toys and stamping off. From the look of his store, stamping off took the form of a war dance. No smoking the pipe of peace here. One of the said toys was the Wetherby's store and sim. Need Tessa say more?
So Mrs W was left destitute and there was sore weeping amongst the fashionistas, both female and fake female, of SL
Tessa is ecstatic to be able to report to her AFs that sanity has been restored and the show is almost on the road again. Well done to all concerned! Mind you the somewhat singular attitude to informing customers persists. The ever-braying message board is, as usual, full of plaintive cries for a tp to the new store. I know it's a State Secret, but in the interests of avoiding assassination attempts I will give the Slurl below. Meanwhile on her first attempt to find the new store, Tess was as usual hopelessly lost and was forced to ford streams and perform other tasks which are impossible in less imiginative worlds. See fording pic above
Please tell us if you can't find Wetherby's at http://slurl.com/secondlife/5th%20Avenue/142/204/22

Naked Fashion

There are places in more conventional worlds where "naked fashion" is considered an oxymoron. You know. "Naked fashion". "British intelligence". "Marxist economics". "Hong Kong society". That sort of thing.
But hey! This is SL. Before you even get to the undies there's the skin to consider. Unless you're a hopeless noob. you bought that somewhere too. Then there's the eyes. You need to get a pair that really sparkles. And the lashes which absolutely must be long enough to have their own fauna load. (Don't ask, don't tell. We've been there in the louse season.)
Which is why Tessa decided to, at least on the surface of it, reveal all in her latest shot for her AFs.
You see Tessa was absolutely blown away by Linka Demina's (as always) beautiful pic of some hair. http://www.flickr.com/photos/31383018@N05/4058960693/ So being essentially derivative, she hied herself over to booN.
booN
That's Noob to those sensible people who aren't in the habit of practising stset QI.
You've heard me many times before singing, albeit a little too loudly, the praises of Jap sims. Such a creative little people. And booN is no exception. Acres and acres of the most exquisite hair you could imagine. And being Japanese, it doesn't break the bank either. Tessa spent an unbelievable amount of her ever decreasing balance and walked out with no less than seven different hairs. At only L$200 a throw it's difficult to do otherwise. Would that one could do similarly in RL Japan from which Tessa always returns, happy but destitute.
To start at the top.
Hair is JPN670 from booN, color Sand
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zapico/34/170/35
Glasses are *Curio from Nala, yet another quirky little Japanese curiosity which Tessa loves. Myopia has its moments.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Immidae/75/36/29
Skin? We tried desperately to go with the flow and persevere with Belleza. "Jesse" is nice but in the end is there any place which even goes near LAQ for skins? So here we are, exposing to the world our LAQ old dependable Imani. So glowing. It makes poor Tess look good even on mornings like this when she's consumed many more than the prescribed half dozen over lunch.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Laqroki/154/67/23
Nipples..... yes we're getting down and dirty now. We're nipple people, so we were more than pleased to discover these terrific nips. Our old ones had a sort of a base which had a tendency to show if you were anything but extremely meticulous in adjusting them, And Tessa is anything but meticulous. These ones are sort of cigarette butt shaped and you can adjust them in and out for those..... more intimately exciting moments.
They're 3D nipples mk5 from Bojana Fashion. See? In SL nipples are fashion items. Who said I was naked?
http://slurl.com/secondlife/CZESTATE%20Kau%20Lei/145/158/27
Eyes are Shine Lustrous sepia
In deference to her carefully cultivated public image, Tess stopped at the navel so we can't go in detail into her pubic arrangements. Watch this space for an expose of Tess's intimate fashion. It may well be classified under "bushcraft". Or possibly "runway etiquette". This IS a fashion blog after all. Only time will tell.