Twins, ICING Shimmy and a hair Lament...also starring LaDonna Upshaw!

Fashionistas are insane...I've said that before...or maybe it's just me...anyway it goes with the territory.

It all started with someone looking for a veiled hat...and then mentioning Icing Joan which has a VERY nice hat..and Icing Shimmy which is also nice and matches the Joan colors. So I ended up at Icing hoping to run into other fashionistas and hang out and ran into LaDonna Upshaw. She wore Joan, I wore Joan. Which has been seen on this blog before...I love it so. LaDonna makes VERY nice furniture...her dining room sets are to die for so check out her store Sweet Romance Furniture on South Sea Isle! (and yes, she knows I'm blogging pictures with her)



Twins we were...after I decided to go tan and put on ETD Tyra...which leads to our hair lament.

Neither LaDonna or I have found a good replacement for ETD Tyra in the "low sophisticated updo you can wear with a hat" niche. Not Truth, not Damselfly, not Analog Dog, not even Elikatira has one and I expected her to redo it!

That opinion was shared by both of us, but the following opinion is mine alone. It gets worse....I was wearing Tyra in Mahogany....which Elikatira does not have a replacement color for. None of the Elikatira reds are that dark, and they're all dusty and muddy like her browns as well. and not...shiny. I like shiny clean hair! The only reason I haven't returned to Elika as my hair crack dealer of choice is that her reds are sub par. There, I said it, and I've been wanting to say it for ages. I cannot buy several Elikatira styles that I LOVE the styles of, because of that. I want Elikatira Rhythm soooooo bad. If you like blondes or black's or blues or pinks or a few other colors you're good...and I do recommend ETD (I mean Elikatira) to people. But for me..I can't buy her hair.




This is the new Icing Shimmy, square neck, puff sleeves (which might need adjusting depending on shoulders, slim skirt. You can take it cocktail, or you can wear it as vampy office wear with a pen necklace and updo. It nicely shows off teh boobehs without being slutty. The Joan hats work well with it. LaDonna and I look sooooo goood in it. And Yes, I have the fatpack. Miko owns me and my L$ balance.

Shimmy dress is available at ICING

My skin was a A 5th & Oxford Tan Kitty skin

Shoes were G Field Eve Pumps,

I have an alt

I finally created my first alt, to test out Firestorm and for utility/group purposes if ever necessary. And of course one of the first things I did was make her look properly like me:



My alt is the one on the left. :-)

From top to bottom:

That's Amacci Adena hair, a freebie

A 5th & Oxford Fair Kitty 6 skin, L$50

ICING Black Princess Pearls, L$195

ICING Night Mist dress, a freebie

Insolence Carmen grey collection pantyhose, L$299

G Field Eve Pumps, L$220

Oracul Math Teacher AO, which is off, L$150

And of course, my own shapes.

The one thing I really miss are my Miriel Enfield Eyes...sigh...I know they're old and that there are plenty of good eyes on the grid, it's just don't look like me without them.

I freely acknowledge my alt's name, since she's just for utility purposes: CeciliaCreeggan. Makes it easier for folks to realize it's me if I'm puttering in it. Don't intend to shop for it....I just needed a pretty outfit for it because no ALT of mine is NOT going to look properly like me and duck waddle.

Mrs. Lanley portrait

I was watching the ISC group chat and reading Mrs. Lanley's words and decided to take a visit. Like most oldbies I know how to find people, figured she was on her home region puttering around and she was. (I've been there before). She welcomed the company and we chatted as she showed me some of her favorite bits like the new dock she put in, which was nice. Well anyway she was just standing there, and there was somthing about her that made me want to take a photo. (I asked Mrs. Lanley's permission to blog and post photos) So I did my thing and got a few nice ones


This was the first, she was just standing there and I thought the water would make a good picture. I did a quick change to sunrise:



The next is of us together. After I showed it to her she laughed about how much taller she was than me. (We also played around with shape settings a bit later, which was fun.)



Now I wanted to get a photo of myself on the dock, so I turned up the settings, this has shadows and depth of field turned on:



And since I know Mrs. Lanley doesn't have good hardware I wanted a lovely portrait style photo to give her so I did this one with the Paris 2 windlight setting, shadows and depth of field on. Very lovely:



And yes, that's the Icing Joan I'm wearing. And yes, I have it in ALL the colors. It's Icing...It references Joan Holloway...what do you expect.

Great Minds Think Alike...perhaps they should join forces

So there I was in Seraph City...was I watching a Burlesque show at the New Champagne Room where you can always find retro-lovin gals and get more ideas on things to buy? maaaaybe. One of the audience members was wearing what looked like Icing's Puma Jie puffy sleeved blouse and pencil skirt combo...but it wasn't....it was a puffy sleeved dress with a pencil skirt combo named Guro from Ivalde. The lady told me it was a giftie...and turned out...I already had it. So here's a comparison, that's the default red bloused Icing Puma Jie on the left and the Ivalde Guro on the right.



Great minds think alike...red blouse/bodice and black high waisted skirt is a classic look and it makes perfect sense that both would do a version of it, so no saying that one stole the "idea" from the other because they did not. That look is a fashion archetype.

So that got me thinking. If one shops at Ivalde, one probably shops at Icing, and vice versa. (and probably Ingenue, Jet Doll and Donna Flora as well) Same people shop at both...they appeal to the same market segment. So...what if they joined forces or merged. It might be an advantage..focused marketing...larger inventory...more frequent releases because they have TWO people doing stuff so if one takes a break the other is still doing stuffs. It might help with customer service as well, if one isn't online, the other might be. Their skill sets might also compliment each other, say if one doesn't do jewellery but the other does or if one does shoes and the other doesn't. You never know...such things with similar businesses/markets might work in SL....or not. I have been told that one reason they don't is that there's the "trust" factor to deal with. SL doesn't have the trust mechanisms that RL has, so people don't do such things. Too bad...it might be a great way for smaller or medium sized design houses to compete with the larger super shops.


SLURL to ICING main Store in Mischief
Icing Blog

SLURL to Ivalde
Ivalde and L'Abel website

ICING Gala

Of note over the holidays there was an ICING release, not of retro pretty pretty, but something a little more modern red-carpet-y. Gala:

Long skirt (either with train or not, with a very high slit and one shoulder bodice. Personally I like the red the best.







Well worth adding to inventory if you want an "Award show gown".


SLURL to ICING main Store in Mischief

ICING Puma Jie.

I've been wearing ICING's Puma Jie a lot lately, in the fat pack version. The original version came with the red blouse, but later Miko Omegamu released a pack of blouses to mix with the original outfit.

I know it's an older outfit, but I still love the retro classicness of a nice blouse and high waisted pencil skirt. I could probably buy something similar in RL pretty easily. I know I've seen puff sleeved blouses around lately.

I'm wearing the white blouse in these pictures but I like all of them, Peacock, Purple, and Pink too.







And here's a closeup that shows the prim sleeve and the necklace part of the ICING Princess pearls set. I really really love these puffy sleeves, and other people have admired them too. The Princess Pearls set includes, a necklace, earrings and the bracelet. It's also available in black pearls too.



Fleur Allure Kitten skin, ETD Roslin hair, glasses from First Impressions, Shiny Things Classic Stacks pumps.

SLURL to ICING

ICING on XstreetSL