Well the last time I was there, I was walking around and saw a display that made me have a "What the Hell, Designer" moment. It was simply put, not a good ad..and it was from a Veteran designer who should have known better....Nylon Pinkney of Nylon Outfitters in...(shudder)....
Here's the display:
Bad Ad! Ad scare CC with lack of contrast! CC can't read! Pastel dresses, pastel background, pastel lettering is a bad mix. Sure, It's Nylon so the dresses are most likely of high quality and easily worth the L$. Most likely she didn't have a second pair of eyes check it out and has a bad monitor or one that could use some calibration. And even if that was fixed, the freaky Supermarionation meets "Tableau girl" model is unappealing to me. Unappealing models means I'm less likely to buy stuff in displays.
And...I'm less likely to support a designer that I partly blame for the plague of freaky cabbage patch, cowboy legged, hammer pants wearing, oversized glasses overusing, frowny faced, overpierced, cigarette equipped..."tableau girls". I call them that because that is where I first saw them, though they also like LAMB, Mon Tissu, Tres Blah and in the old days, Boing Fromage, besides the usual Fashionably Dead, Nylon Outfitters and Clawtooth Tell me that this image of Elka and these displays aren't the ancestors and inspiration for the current generation of even MORE exaggerated you-know-whats.
No girls, you are not being indie anymore, in 2006 being a touch cartoony with slightly wider hips, capri pants and oversized glasses was indie compared to the high heels and party dress wearing barbie glamour girls like me, but in 2012 you are a caricature. Stop it! If I never see a pair of oversized glasses again..... Now if they looked like Zooey Deschanel, that would be another story.
6 comments:
It is totally unfair of you to blame the "tableau girls" for the frowny faced "hammer pants" wearing avs going around the grid. If someone wants to look like that, AWESOME. GOOD FOR THEM. But to blame us for this trend is really, simply put, dumb. We don't control what others do. Do you? Probably not.
And for the record, none of us have ever worn hammer pants in SL.
At least I didn't call them "Lula Girls" which would also be accurate.
I can blame you, because you are their ancestors/inspiration, whether you like it or not. Don't you think shoppers emulate the looks they see on the models in the displays? Because they do. It's happened to other designers and it's happened to you.
You can't possibly believe that if I see frowny pale faces, oversized glasses, and wide set legs on avatars shopping at the stores mentioned and also see such things on the designer's models (who have been in SL much longer) that it's all just a coincidence? Or the fact that I'm looking at a LAMB display ad right now that resembles Prue Lu from Paper Couture. Or if I put your own displays next to FD's, Clawtooth's, LAMBS, NO's the older Paper Couture Displays, that the models would look like cousins? Because they do. I have a marketplace display of yours right in front of me and I can sure tell you've got those legs set wide, though not as exaggeratedly wide as some. You don't think your shoppers get shape ideas from designer's models and then take the whole "faux hipster" thing to an extreme?
If I see a frowny exaggerated blogger and she's wearing Dutch Touch skin and is massively into Paper Couture, what am I supposed to think.
If I was to ask "them" where they got the idea to be frowny with oversized glasses, and then ask "those" people....where do you think the trail would eventually lead? Back to Tableau I think.
But how about a hypothetical. Suppose if you, Nylon, Lamb, FD and PC were to start having your models wear corncob pipes or glasses where the frame has one oversized half and one mini-sized half...what do you think would happen? Are you saying that we wouldn't start seeing those things on your shoppers?
why are you so hateful? were we just huge cunts to you once years and years ago and you've just held onto it or something? i can't figure you out. my av has wide set hips.. and if she started that trend... i honestly don't care. you're transgendered and you get to come into Second Life and have your avatar look just like a woman. if someone wants to come into SL and give their avatar a pouty mouth and wide set hips.. that's their prerogative. if you honestly want to blame tableau or lula for this trend.. by all means go ahead.. what bothers me here is your malicious and rude way of doing so.
if one of us did or said something to hurt you... i'll go ahead and say sorry on their behalf. we are all friends and i can't imagine any of them doing anything hurtful towards you.. but MAN OH MAN.. are you judgmental.
sorry that this trend makes you so incredibly annoyed.. but you should really try to be more open-minded. you're going to give yourself an ulcer.
I'm not sure if your intention is to sound so prejudice but you're certainly coming off like that. If someone decides they want to base some aspect of their av off of my av in anyway, it's not because I'm going out of my way to cause this. You make it sound like this is a big old movement among us "Tableau girls."
And so what if there are girls out there who want to have wide hips and down turned mouths. They have a right to look however they want to look without being judged. Is it hurting you in anyway for them to look as they do?
It seems to me that you spend a lot of time picking apart what we do. I'm not sure what it is about us that bothers you so deeply.
I am going to pretend for a moment that you're right and that we *did* inspire some sort of sulk/pouty faced, oversized divorcee glasses, wide hipped super trend in SL...even if that WERE true (which I don't think is the case) you make it sound as though it's a criminal act. You certainly seem comfortable picking people apart.
If we look like "cousins" or similar in any way, it wouldn't be a surprise since we are all friends and like to promote each other by wearing the others items.
Sincerely, Julliette Westerburg and Bubbles Clawtooth
I understand that I'm being McGrumpyPants, the title says so and yes I am being judgemental....But its MY blog and if I can't be judgemental at times on my own blog then where?
Can bloggers not criticize anything anymore? EVen on our own blogs?
Lamb. as far as I can remmember we've never talked.. so I have no grudge personally.
Though I have never liked your displays, sad to say. I know your hair is good quality, but the disconnect between the quality hair and the models makes me go ????.
I guess the whole "i'm so indie and anti-glamazon" got tiresome to me after a while.. I think. I'm not for certain why. Sure it was a good thing in 2006, took some of us glamazons down a few notches with the social commentary of it. Which I approved, by the way. But indie isn't indie when the masses of SL are doing it....badly.
you might want to google "oompa loompa second life" or "IPR second life" or "invisible pony rider second life" to see how the masses are re-interpreting the indie look you and others are promoting. And yes, by having ALL your displays be that pale indie thing...you are promoting it. I'm not the only one that has noticed this...ask around, but I am one of the few to actually talk about it.
You can't stop them from exaggerating it and sexualizing it, but you could use a little more diversity...perhaps use models that aren't pale and waifish, maybe forgo the oversized glasses for a while? Because it's something of a fault of mine that unattractive models make items unattractive to me. Sorry about that, but that's one reasons I have no LAMB hair.
Juliette, I like TB. In fact if you were to ask me what my favorite jeans in SL are right now...I'd say "TB JuJu, get the fatpack if you have the cash"
And Juliette, I'm old enough to remember that the original "Tableau hand drawn casual fashion with cartoony avatar" look was in direct response to all the glamour girls out there. It was anti-model anti-glamazon, intentionally "indie" Go and ask some other oldbies..especially any bloggers that are still around, they'll tell you the same thing. In fact I've been talking about this very fact in SL with some oldbies who say I'm spot on.
It's not a conspiracy per se, more of a reaction to what else was out there at the time. To those who wanted realistic looking casuals it was a godsend. And let me tell you, I saw shoppers altering their shapes to look "indie and kyoot". While I realized it was indie in intent, I didn't really consider it "cute" I thought it was possible to be cute, and casual without the exaggerated cartoony. Sometimes the cartoony poses and whatnot didn't show off the items to their best.
"That looks interesting but the model is doing some cartoony contortion and what is up with that skin." and then: "Oh this looks nice..why didn't the designer use a model and pose more flattering to the item?"
and let me say this for emphasis. The model should flatter the item because selling the item is the priority. And while frowny faces and oversized glasses might appeal to some segments of the SL shoppers, others might be turned off. I don't want all the display models to look like glamazons, neither do I want them all looking like invisible pony riding 12 year olds in big sisters hipster clothes. I mean sure, a indie hipster probably isn't going to go to azul to buy a ball gown, but even ball gown owning me keeps nice casuals around.
And I know that as designers you have your "looks" you've become attached to, but you shouldn't let that get in the way of sales. There is a point where too much cartoony and "difference" makes for a bad display...which really was my original point in showing the Nylon display.
Well, I think we'll have to agree to disagree because I do understand where you're coming from but I love my displays and I'm sure the others love theirs as well. It is what makes us "us." I'm not aware of it turning anyone away from buying anything. I won't be changing the way I make my ads because I actually LIKE my ads. That is my style and of course you have the right to dislike it as much as you do. But there are others out there who will disagree with you as well. I can't and won't please everyone.
It is your blog and you can say whatever you like, for sure. I'm not sure if your intention was to try to understand where we were coming from or just to scold us and try to embarrass us. Whatever your intention was, I am going to bow out of this convo for now and continue to keep on my merry way of doing things how I want to do them. Maybe you'll want to avert your eyes if I wear a pipe blowing bubbles and huge glasses in my next ad, though. Just warning you! Take care!
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