Evolve or die

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Just the other day, I received a message from my friend Betty Doyle who runs an in-world business called Ingenue. She is a merchant/content creator, specializing in hair, clothing and shoes that are inspired by (but not necessarily direct copies of) vintage fashion from the 1930s-60s. She wanted to inform me that she had a clearance sale going on.

That's no big newsflash these days: lots of merchant/content creators seem to be looking to blow stuff out to get attention, to make some quick jack to pay the rent, that sort of thing. On a purely apocryphal level, I think we are all aware that many merchants are not doing well. It has even become a sad reality that every one of has a friend or knows someone that given up and pulled the plug on their business, or is pretty much ready to.

Getting the news about a clearance sale, I would have thought this was the case with Betty as well, except that her message also informed me that she had just re-done her main store, and had taken on a space in an additional space in a major shopping mall. that many of them are even at the point of pulling the plug and giving up.

You don't do stuff like that when you're on the verge of going tits up.

In fact, it turned out that the clearance sale was of older items--including some of Betty's great retro hair--for crazy low prices, because she is making room for newer items that she considers better made and better looking than her earlier efforts. Betty is one of those people who keeps continually extending her own reach, learning and working with the content creation tools as they evolve, getting new software, always trying to improve her products. So she is giving people a chance to get some of her older items at a deep discount before she retires them.

Having an epiphany while shopping back in Ingenue's clearance shed

And she also tries very hard to keep introducing new items--despite having to deal with the challenge of having a rl toddler in her house, who I understand has mastered the art of rearranging her furniture and playing Edmund Hillary on the dining room table.

So she keeps adopting improved technology, she invests in regularly fixing up and remodeling her retail spaces to keep them fresh, she tries new ideas on how to sell and where to sell, and she works very hard to keep developing new and better content, which continually amazes me because her earlier stuff was nothing to sneeze at. I think her work has always been exquisite and fun (and so I highly recommend you go check out her clearance sale stuff--it's in a little shed behind her main store building at http://slurl.com/secondlife/LoLo/193/97/21/ ). Nonetheless, she keeps trying to evolve as a content creator and look to the future.

And it has results. When I talked to Betty about it, she says yes, things aren't as wild-ass profitable as they were back in the wacky-hypey days of 2006-7, but she is doing alright--pretty darn good in fact.

Of course there are other factors that enter into the reasons that she is doing better than many other merchant/content creators. One is that she has found a niche product that is not being cranked out by everyone and his brother. Making a line like hers requires knowledge of vintage fashion, hard work and a good bit of skill to produce. I know Betty also fights the temptation to participate in every hunt, freebie deal, discount day, and special fashion event that comes down the pike. A lot of people seem to be catching on to this reality--that it pays to choose carefully which give-aways and dog-and-pony shows you'll take part in, which is evidenced in a blog post by Grazia Horwitz and the ensuing discussion. As folks point out in that discussion, there is so much of that kind of stuff going on that it becomes a huge distraction for the content creators, as well as diluting the perceived value of their work.

But I digress.

My point is that there are certainly a number of factors that enable a merchant/content creator like Betty to keep on going, but that ultimately it comes down to churning out good new stuff, adopting the new technology as it comes along, and trying to keep thing fresh.

And that has me wondering if there is a valuable lesson in this for the rest of us who have tried to contribute to life on the platform. For those of us who don't create content like buildings and clothing and hair and machine guns--but who try to foster a sense of community, to encourage social and intellectual interaction, to promote the participatory improv theater that is role playing in SL, to facilitate the sharing of stories and ideas--how can we move forward and not end up getting thinned from the herd?

Obviously we have to evolve in the same ways that the successful merchant /content creators are: we need to keep trying new things; we need to find new ways of using the platform, and we need to find a field that isn't is over-grazed. Just because something didn't work in the past, doesn't mean a different approach wouldn't work now. But this is also true with regards to things that DID work...just because they used to work doesn't mean we can keep the old machine running. We need to be willing to look at the experiments that succeeded as a foundation to build on--or sometimes even as something that we need to throw out completely and move on.

Now what does that mean in practical terms for educators, musicians, storytellers, roleplayers, non-profit message makers, etc. etc?

I'm not really sure, as the answer is different for each category of social and intellectual content creation...

....but as long as LL isn't yet ready to pull the plug on the platform, I think it behooves us to keep seeing how our uses of it can evolve.

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A Class Act -- Betty Doyle and her retro designs

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Betty Doyle, wearing one of her most recent retro dresses posing in
one of AM Radio's retro-flavored builds (image courtesy Betty Doyle)

I’m was looking again at Hamlet Au’s blogger challenge where he provided a list of “lesser-known” Second Life personalities and asked for SL bloggers to do profiles of anyone from the list. I’ve noted that as of yet, no one has elected to write about my friend Betty Doyle, creator of the Ingenue line of retro-inspired hair and clothing. Well, I figured I’d best take a stab at rectifying that situation, not only because she is a good friend, but also, being as objective as I can, I think she makes some damned good-looking, well-made, classy stuff.

Betty’s focus, as I said, is “retro-inspired” so naturally, with my ongoing interest in history and all things historical as they manifest themselves in this pixelated vale of tears we call Second Life, I have always found her work intriguing, and more importantly, fun to wear. You put on one of her outfits and you’re gonna feel pretty, but not in the hooker-esque way that characterizes so much of what passes for “fashion” in SL. If your idea of “retro” is looking like you’re working a street corner in Newark in the 1980s you can skip going to Ingenue. But if you think retro, and you think Betty Grable, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Betty Davis, Ann Miller, Bettie Page--hey you’re probably gonna find something you can use in Betty Doyle’s stores.

Shopping at Ingenue--a store designed with the customer in mind.

Betty started out making victorian-inspired dresses for the Caledon crowd in the fall of 2006. And when I say “Victorian-inspired” this is an important distinction. She tried to create outfits that had an authentic feel and look, but were not an attempt to replicate in pixel form the precise construction and elements of actual historical pieces. This was in great part due to the restrictive nature of the tools a designer has to work with in SL, but also because if you try to build a dress the same way you build a garment in real life, it’s just not gonna look exactly right, especially when you try to move in it. There are some people in SL who try to build their dresses in a way that mimics real life: they often are very exacting in the attempt to recreate specific real life historical garments. The result is something that may look ok when you’re standing still, but that really gets funky when you move. Betty Doyle’s outfits are certainly appealing from an historical perspective, but they also will move beautifully with you. You can walk, you can can dance--you can live in them.

Betty names her hair styles after film stars or
characters of that era who had that general style
(image courtesy Betty Doyle)

After a while of working with a Victorian vocabulary (and having examples of her garments being featured in an early exhibit at the Caledon library), Betty increasingly shifted to creating clothing and hair from the 1930’s through the early 60’s. This is a reflection of her real life enthusiasm for clothing, films, and material culture of that era. If you meet Betty’s typist, you’re going to see someone who fixes her hair and makeup in ways that go for a 40’s-50s look, and chooses to wear clothing that evokes that period. She has translated her real life interest into a continually expanding line of 20th century vintage products at her main store in LoLo. At the same time, some of her original Victorian-inspired clothing can still be found in smaller satellite shops, located in appropriate places such as Caledon Tamrannoch and Deadwood 1876. A lot of the outfits that I wear in old west sims like Deadwood--and even in Hogwarts when I’m working in the library there--are assembled with skirts, tops, aprons, and other elements of Ingenue 19th century outfits. I frequently use some of her hair as well, since a few certain 30’s--40’s hairstyles (especially one design that involves a snood) are evocative of various later 19th century hair-work.

I don't always look Victorian--if I am going to any kind of formal event, or an "out of character" party, I always wear Ingenue hair and clothing, and I generally surprise the folks who are used to seeing me in buckskins and packin' iron--this ensemble is put together with Betty's "Torch Song" hair and "Put the Blame on Mame" dress, FoxLupine Paz's "Alyssa" cigarette and holder, and Caliah Lyon's "Margaux " draped pearl necklace.

Some of you folks out there who follow Betty Doyle’s work and eagerly await the latest offering from Ingenue, probably noted that her rate of production slowed down for a while. The explanation for this is that Betty is one of that elite group of SL ladies who found a guy in-world who wasn’t a flaming goober, met-up in rl, got married and had a baby. Betty tells me that it’s sort of challenging to try to work on a project in Maya with only one hand while holding a small squirming human creature in the other. Now that things have settled and the youngster’s demands can be met through other less labor intensive means, Betty has thrown herself back into generating new content, improving some past work (new enhanced textures for almost all her hair), and shifting a selection of older designs to a discount outlet.

The Ingenue Main store in LoLo--well lit, uncluttered, and elegant:
a great place to shop (image courtesy Betty Doyle)

Mind you, not that her regular prices are all that terrible to start with. In fact, Ingenue prices are pretty reasonable, considering the quality of the work, and how good you look when you wear it. And you will look good in a lot of different contexts. If I am going to a party or dance where a 19th century look won’t quite fit, I put on one of Betty’s 40s formal dresses and some classic movie star hair, and more often than not, stand out from the crowd. You can use a lot of Ingenue products in futuristic environments as well as historical and contemporary social situations. Remember Rachel's hairstyle in Blade Runner? Yeah, Betty has hair like that. And if you’re interested in going the naughty route, I understand that many of the ladies who do a classic pin-up look, or who are working the tony traditional burlesque venues in sl favor Ingenue hair and lingerie.

Betty’s work has garnered some recognition in SL--including winning the tennis outfit design competition held in conjunction with the Australian Open in January 2008--but I don’t thin she has received the attention she deserves. Everybody in world doesn’t have to have the same look.

There are so many delightful creative building blocks to work with in constructing something unique for yourself. If you want to try working with well thought-out and constructed retro elements in your ongoing effort to look good and knock’em dead, you can visit the Ingenue Main store in LoLo at:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/LoLo/193/97/21/


Above, the retro tennis outfit that won the "court coture" contest (image courtesy Betty Doyle)

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Retro Deals!!!

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So you say you like retro?

Holy Moses in his Bathrobe, you are in luck! Betty Doyle of Ingenue, a good friend and well-known maker of first-class clothing and hair from the 1930s to the 1950s, has a lot of her way cool stuff on sale until the 14th of this month. Visit http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lo%20Lo/200/115/21/ for the deals.

Pondering a purchase in the Ingenue main store on the Lo Lo sim:
Note that there is a "50%" off sign on the top of the vendor frame --
please keep in mind that not everything is on sale, so as you shop you
must look for this sign on each item to see if it is marked down or not.

Actually, Betty's sale is part of a sim-wide festival of savings on the Lo Lo sim where she has her main store. It isn't all retro on Lo Lo, but there are some great stores besides Betty's, including Carolyn's Jewelry, Mela's Skins and Shapes, Rose Petal Creations, A Piece of Candy, FD Decor, and My Precious Agnes Finney. Everybody is doing 50% off on selected items. And remember kids, that means NOT EVERTHING IS ON SALE.

So if you are a feckless goober and you don't see a 50% off sign on the item you want, but you buy it expecting a discount anyway thinking, "hey, maybe they forgot to put a sign on it," Do Not Come Crying to Me, cuz I will just tell you that you are in fact a feckless goober and I will have no sympathy for you. And don't go whinin' to the store owners either, cuz life is hard enough for those folks without you making big bambi eyes at them and all that.

So you want to see what I got for a grand total of 137 lindens?

Here it is at right.

And yes, you heard me correctly. Only 137 lindens for the hair and really cute 1940s dress (not including the shoes and glasses -- those I already owned). The dress is called the "Miss Lizzy" in royal blue (87 linden). That kick-ass hair is called "The Grable" and cost me a whopping 50 linden.

Yeah. I know...50 linden for some super hair.

How often have you given someone more than 50 linden as a tip for some really marginal service, or bought a second rate product for more than that, just because you felt sorry for them and simply wanted to help save them from a life of degradation as a virtual escort working at Blingtard Bob's Lag-Storm Mega-club?

Seriously, I hope you guys will go check this out. Remember the sale is going on right now, until August 14.

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