New: Business as (un)usual @ SLAB, Moonshine

March 31st, 2008 at 06:47pm Ryan Darragh

I rarely feel the need to look traditionally professional in SL.  You may have noticed that I keep an inworld office, although not, um, actual office hours.  It’s rather casually appointed–there’s no desk, although there is a little-used conference table– and I pretty much use it just for meetings and the occasional interview.  There are times, though, when a man needs to look like he means business, literally, and in those circumstances it’s entirely possible that no amount of themed gear will do.  While a jacket may be optional in today’s “business casual” environments (I can hear Secundus cringing from here), a quality dress shirt is essential.  Pompo Bombacci’s new “Faze” dress shirts come in four office-appropriate colors:  Cream, Light Blue, Green and Purple.  The fabric texture strikes a nice balance between freshly ironed and comfortably well worn.  If not done carefully, the former can feel too “crispy” for my taste, while the later can look like you slept in the shirt, in your car…in the office parking lot.

With each long-sleeved shirt you also get three carefully chosen, coordinating flexi neckties.  Although it’s not at all overplayed, the shirts have the collar button undone, just for comfort of course, and the striped neckties are loosely knotted to match.  I think the shirts work equally well with or without tie, but don’t tell Secundus I said so.  Other detailing includes a small SLAB logo tag on the back, up near the collar.

The only caveat I offer with these is that they come on the shirt layer only, so there’ll be no wearing them untucked or with pants that are less than full height.  I didn’t have any trouble finding some nice full-height belted pants in my inventory, and if you know anything about the state of my inventory, you know how much fun it is for me to find anything in particular.

Permissions are Modify / Copy / No Transfer.  Priced at L$295 for a single shirt with three ties, or L$885 for the pack of all four shirts with twelve different ties.  Available at SLAB Designs (Pahringull 122, 190, 23).

But even Monday through Friday, you aren’t in the office all day.  You might make a quick stop on the way home for drinks with colleagues, and if nothing else there’s the train ride in from and back out to the suburbs, or the quick subway dash across town to your loft apartment with the fabulous skyline view (renovation still in progress).  The new Stranger Coat by Shelly Toonie is a conservative gentleman’s overcoat, restrained rather than extravagant, classic rather than trendy.  It consists of jacket-layer coat top, prim cuffs and collar, and flexi coat bottom with loose, unbuckled belt.  The fabric of the coat, although black, is well detailed front and back, with the look of fine, heavy wool and shading that looks like natural wrinkles, folds and stretching.  The prim collar includes long, notched lapels, and the ends of the belt hang at natural angles that suggest their loose weight.

The flexi coat bottom is scripted for size change.  This is the first time I’ve seen scripting used like this for clothing items, but it appears to be the same as that used for new hairstyles by TOmmy Fairplay that I reviewed recently.  So far I’ve only seen this used to allow the owner to modify prim items that have No Modify permissions, so I wasn’t surprised to see the coat bottom showing in my inventory as “No Modify.”  What did surprise me was when I found that it was physically moddable, after all, which made me suspect that it was only the embedded script that was set to No Modify, and then to wonder if the Modify permission on the prim item itself was a mistake or…hmm.  A quick IM to Shelly brought this prompt reply:  “The coat was meant to be mod and trans, like most of my things except hair.  However, in having my testers try it, their advice was [that] it’s just too damn hard to size something like that.  If you use stretch, it doesn’t work because some prims are already at the lowest size.  The resizer will shrink the prims that aren’t.  So, yep, [the resizer scripting is] totally a convenience.”

Permissions are Modify / No Copy / Transfer, so although you can’t make a copy of the coat bottom before using the option to delete the resize scripts, it will still be conventionally moddable if you want or need to resize it again in the future.  In fact, I used Edit Linked Parts to tweak the size of the main belt loop slightly after I had used the scripted controls to size the coat bottom for a good general fit on my avatar.

The Stranger Coat is available for L$250 at Moonshine (Silver Lake 38, 206, 39).  When I was there yesterday, the coat was still in the New Releases section at the shop’s front entrance.

Disclosure: Seen in World: Yes | Review Copy: Yes | Friends List: Yes (Pompo)

Notes: On Sean: "Dante" skin by Lost Thereian (Naughty). "Poynter" hair by Liam Oliver (Armidi). Flaunt Jeans and Suede Cords by Shai Delacroix (Casa Del Shai). Old Shoes by Fallingwater Cellardoor (Shiny Things). On Ryan: "Antonio" skin by Funk Schnook (FNKY!). "Faris" hair by Aemilia Case (Philotic Energy). mETRO pants and SLAB Shades for men by Pompo Bombacci (SLAB). "Rectech" glasses by Cienna Rand (Primcrafters).

Entry Filed under: Business, Coats, Dressy, Moonshine, New Items, SLAB Designs, Shirts, Ties