The Sweetest Things

World Goth Fair begins tomorrow, my sartorial darlings, and this is one that’s close to my heart. Not just for the reason that Skell wears a lot of black, but for the fact that my formative years were spent hanging around with a goth crowd of friends, so the music and the aesthetic infused my tender teenaged years and clung to me as I grew older.

World Goth Fair benefits the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, a charity set up in the wake of the utterly horrendous and senseless murder of a young woman who was beaten and kicked to death purely for being ‘different’. I started to write a summary of what happened that night for this post, and found that I simply couldn’t do it, so instead I’ll link you to this Wikipedia article about it. Suffice to say, Sophie and her boyfriend Robert could have been any one of my goth friends, and apart from the revulsion anyone would feel for what happened, it hit me especially hard.

The Sophie Lancaster Foundation’s aims are as follows:

• To create a lasting legacy to Sophie.
• To provide educational group-works that will challenge the prejudice and intolerance towards people from alternative subcultures.
• To campaign to have the UK Hate Crime legislation extended to include people from alternative subcultures or Lifestyle and Dress.

So I was especially honoured to be accepted as one of the official bloggers for the World Goth Fair in Second Life, and to that end I have a series of posts coming up for you, featuring items from it. The event runs from noon SLT (PDT) April 15th to June 1st, across three sims, and features many vendors whose proceeds go in-full or in-part to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

As with any  event like this, no matter the theme, female clothing and accessories form the large majority of the items available, and the advent of mesh means that even those of us gloriously freaky boys who once happily wore female clothing are now edged even further into the bracket of, “Sorry, guys; you can’t wear this” (oh my god, all the gorgeous corsets at this event that I know would never fit Skell; I could cry for what I would love to have but can’t wear!). Luckily, the goth look in general lends itself to androgyny, and there are plenty of accessories to accompany the male items that are  to be found.

Before I get started on my first look from the event, a word about the build itself. Two regions (Cursed and Sium) form one large adjoining area – Cursed for the larger stalls and Sium for the smaller ones – and a third venue (Port Seraphine; teleport needed to get there) hosts yet more open stalls. I took a wander around all three regions yesterday, and the builds are amazing. You may need to cam up above in order to get your bearings in Cursed (lots of high walls and walkways) but once you’ve got an idea of the general layout it’s simple to find your way around. Also, take note of the landing point at Port Seraphine, because I literally gasped, “Wow!” when it rezzed around me.

Enough of my wordiness and onto the fashion. I had to begin with this great suit from Dark Water Designs, mainly because yay! menswear! It’s a well-fitted shantung suit with a skinny skully tie (absolutely made for Skell, then!) and it gains extra bonus points for having generous sleeve openings that play nicely with Slink hands. (Yes, I make a point of noting that, because so many jackets and coats don’t  work well with those hands.)

Note: I haven’t desaturated any these images; they’re all as-is.

The headdress is glorious  and it’s from one of those stores I could spend a great deal of money at: AD Creations. It’s the Sophie Mesh Gothic Headdress, and ladies you need to leg it to the fair to also grab the stunning dress that matches it. Once the fair opens and the vendors are switched on, I am going to RUN over there myself to grab two other items that I’m desperate to show you, because I absolutely freaked out when I saw them ;-)

The hair. Ah! The hair! It’s one of the ostensibly female styles from Damselfly at the event – Pagan – but it works beautifully on boys, too. Skell’s wearing one of the two-tone shades found in the ‘tuxedo’ colour pack. I’ll be showing you other Damselfly styles at WGF in later posts.

The skin is the Dark Fae Male  skin in ash, by Atomic Faery (love the colour on this; it’s hard to find a genuinely ashen skin that isn’t either too  desaturated or has just a little bit too  much colour left in it) and the eyes are the wearable demos of the Midnight Eyes  by *By Snow*. I adore creators that give wearable demos, because so often it’s difficult to see what an item looks like on your avatar when it’s obscured by giant DEMO text or, even worse, it’s completely untextured or all-white with DEMODEMODEMO all over it so you have no idea  what the texturing is like. So a huge ‘thank you!’ to all creators for wearable demos!

*By Snow* is one store the freaky boys among us should definitely stop off at, because they also have Slink nail appliers. Skell’s wearing the demos [again!] of the Fishnet  Slink nail appliers, plus the (yep, wearable demos) of the Lacuna Eyeshadow. Why the wearable demos for all of these, when there are so many gorgeous colours also on offer? Big hint: the wearable demos are monochrome, and if you don’t know my penchant for black and white by now then there’s no helping ya ;-) Fear not; I’ll feature some of the coloured items later.  Colour… oh gawd… *braces self*

Aaaand finally, for this look, the only two items not  from WGF, and the first are the limited edition Bombers  in coal, from Flite at The Big Show. These have optional lace colours (I went with white purely to top-and-tail this look with white) and either normal soles or fabulous platforms (and, although the footwear is technically sneakers, those soles reminded me of the platformed boots my goth friends used to wear). And the earrings (not very visible here, I know, but still fabulous and worth a peek) are the Chrysalis Earrings  by The Plastik.

World Goth Fair landing points:
Cursed ~ Sium ~ Port Seraphine (Fair opens at 12 noon SLT on May 15th)

Your shopping list for this look at World Goth Fair

Suit: Dark Water Designs – Shantung Suit (skulls tie)* [ shadowed.luik ]

Headdress: AD Creations – Sophie Mesh Headdress* [ aliza.karu ]

Hair: Damselfly – Pagan (tuxedo pack)* [ shylah.honey ]

Skin: Atomic Faery – Dark Fae Male (ash)* [ atomicfaery ]

Makeup: By Snow – Lacuna Eyeshadow (white – wearable demo)* [ snow.frostwych ]

Slink nail appliers: By Snow – Fishnet Goth (wearable demo)* [ snow.frostwych ]

Other items

Shoes: Flite – Bombers (coal) – limited edition at The Big Show [ liam.cole ]

Earrings: The Plastik – Chrysalis Earrings (black) [ aikea.rieko ]

Poses: PDA (no longer available)

*review copy

And here’s your music. Oh god, I had such  a crush on Jay and Michael Aston back in the day XD