Hair Fair’s starting to wind down, with today being the bandanna day—you’ve bought your bandanna, right? I was wearing mine earlier, but I’ve decided that it’s time to start wrapping up my hair fair reviews. Bryce Designs has been producing male hair for a good while, and all that time the designer, Bryce Tully, has been working at his craft. I admit, I had drifted away from his hair for awhile—it was always on my radar, but I just never felt motivated to go out and get it—but his hair fair releases very much caught my attention.

I know, I know. Its another skin review and more naked pixels. But, really, these naked pixels need to be seen. They belong to PXL’s latest skin, Kim, and ever since I saw Grazia’s first previews of the skin on Plurk I have been feeling as if it might be one for me. I was right. Its my first PXL skin, and its been a very pleasant new acquaintance to make.

With the skin I am showing another favourite from Adam n Eve’s new hair collection, the lovely Contessa updo, as well as a stunning necklace from Alchemy Immortalis. Depending on whether you take a bit of SL drama with your breakfast or not, you may have heard some whining related to this brand recently. For my own part, I think the complaints are laughable. What does it matter if someone leaves and returns as another avatar, as long as there’s no shady business going on? And there isn’t. Its just gorgeous, shiny pixels that turn me into a veritable dragon, lusting for new pieces for her hoard.

Oh, and as for the little troll that tried to comment on Ran’s post about Alchemy Immortalis...tough luck, but that one went into the dustbin.

After a long journey—well, okay, not that long…except this heat makes everything crawl along, especially my brain—we’ve arrived at the final of the four new skins from Blowpop, Elizabeth. She’s the palest of the four skins, and she is charmingly freckled in a very natural way. I am showing Elizabeth with the Caroline updo from Adam n Eve, and since she looks lovely in all shades of red and brown I went with this striking bronze colour which really shows off sachi’s new hair textures.

When I went to Zaara to check out the new summer release (featured in my immediately previous review), Zaara’s store manager Strawberry Singh was there with Delora Starbrook of Haven Designs. Somehow, they concluded I’d look great in fishnet. “Hrm,” I wondered, but I wasn’t to wonder for long when Delora dropped the folder on me with an outfit she had made. She also gave me an injunction about wearing only part of it…

I still have a number of hairs to go through while Hair Fair’s still running. As usual, the hair that tends to catch my attention are longer hairstyles, and today’s review is no different.

Sophisticated and oh so elegant, Ava is my favourite of the new N2 skins from Blowpop, just as she was my favourite from the Infinity line. The main reason for this is that she’s such a fabulous fit for one of my favourite shapes, based on my written description of a long-running roleplay character. That shape has not been easy to fit into most skins on SL, but I really like how she looks in Ava.

With Ava I am, once more, wearing one of the new hairs from Adam n Eve. This one is called Jervaise, and it is available in the store rather than just at Hair Fair. It is one of 19 new hairs that sachi released just before Hair Fair, after creating brand-new textures and retiring all of her existing hairs.

Hair Fair’s been extended a couple more days, and no surprise. The sims are almost constantly at capacity right now, so hopefully a whole lot of money is being raised for Locks for Love and a lot of excellent new hairs are being bought. Today I’m going to focus on just one of the hairs I’ve picked up, from Tiny Bird which is run by one of the organizers of Hair Fair 2009, Autumn Hykova.

I don’t quite recall when I discovered Fantasia, but it has been a while now since I started keeping a close eye on the store. Its focus is on fantasy clothing, primarily for Gorean roleplay, but don’t expect to find a store full of silks. In fact, the type of silk that has become most common around Second Life is not at all what Fantasia focuses on. There’s certainly plenty of outfits intended as slave wear, but there are also many far more covering (and thus more wearable outside of roleplay) outfits inspired by fantasy as well as history.

With the two outfits I’m showing today, I am also showing a pair of Hair Fair acquisitions as well as the brand-new and very gorgeous Kim skin from PXL.

Time for another lovely Blowpop beauty. This time it is Carmen, the second-darkest skin of the four new lines released this week at Blowpop. As her name suggests, Carmen shows latina influences in both her skin tones and her facial features, but the range of tones and the versatile face certainly does not limit her to just that. Once again I am wearing one of Adam n Eve’s Hair Fair releases, the gorgeous Darci updo.

This Tuesday Annyka Bekkers of Blowpop finally released her four new skinlines. Three of them are quite thoroughly reworked versions of the Infinity skins Elizabeth, Ava and Carmen, whereas the fourth, Maya, is a brand-new release. Over the next week or so (if all goes according to plans) I will be showing off each of the four lines, and I am starting today with Maya. With her, I am showing one of Adam n Eve’s Hair Fair offerings, Cristina.

Everyone’s familiar the Scorpio skin from the Abyss; it took SL by storm in 2007, and it was one of my first skin reviews. Since the initial release, Khai Sinister used the Scorpio line to offer a very wide range of skin tones and a certain post-apocalyptic roleplay flair, and then went on to enhance the store’s offerings by creating some remarkable full avatar sets with some of the neatest packaging I’ve seen in SL. And the boots and clothes and hair are pretty good, too…

But in all that while, Scorpio was the only choice you had for a male skin from the Abyss. No longer.

Another installment of my quest for Hair Fair hairs that looks great for gentlemen of a historical persuasion, and I’ve quite the catch. These two hairs from Maitreya have already appeared all over the fashion feeds, and with good reason. However, I don’t think anyone’s yet shown how well they can look on a male avatar. I’m more than happy to oblige, however, and show it to best advantage with some the beautiful, period-inspired clothing from RFyre that really evokes antique elegance for me. I don’t think my avatars have ever looked better, and certainly their locks have never been quite so artfully created. Hats most definitely off to Onyx LeShelle

Hair Fair 2009 is an addiction, and I’m pretty sure we’re all masochists for braving the lag and buying the hair and bandannas for a good cause. SL’s had its up and downs yesterday, making it all more frustrating, but remember—it’s a two week-long affair! If you just have to get there NOW, however—and I know I did—there’s a few tips for getting around in fashion while doing your part to make the experience as quick and easy for everyone. The faster people are able to get around to buy, the more money that will be raised, so really being low-lag is a charitable act. Sasy Scarborough, one of the organizers, has a few great tips. Two that I’ll emphasize, though: as few prims as possible, and no scripts whatsoever! “But how can I look good without my resizable hair and shoes?!”, you ask. Well, it’s not impossible.

Hair Fair’s upon us! The aggregators are aswarm with bloggers sharing their finds and favorites, as well as the trials and tribulations as lag and borkage rear their ugly heads. I can’t say I’m immune to the siren call of hair fair; there’s so many hair designers in SL that the chance to see a significant (but not complete) number of them in one place just can’t be passed up. As usual, I’ve kept an eye out for hairs that suit my avatars, whom you’ll as often as not find parading about in historical fashions and long, flowing locks. I hope to have more hairs to feature as the days wear on—I’ve already got a small backlog that should last me a couple more reviews—but I wanted to kick things off with the new male hair from Wasabi Pills.

Has anyone reading the feeds managed to miss that Hair Fair starts tomorrow? It will be crowded, laggy and generally crazy, no doubt, but also a lot of fun. And your lindens will disappear faster than snow in Sahara.

Even though it was Midsummer here in Sweden yesterday (its now a few hours into the 20th here), we did not spend all the day dancing around a large, flower-covered phallic symbol while singing about the little frogs. As sacrilegious as it may have been, Ran and I spent a fair amount of time going through the Hair Fair. My first purchases plus some more Adam n Eve hairs will be the focus of this post, and he’ll be covering some of his own finds in a separate post later on.

While on the subject of hair, we thought we’d make a point of noting what sort of hairs we have a particular interest in, should anyone be interested in getting us to review some of their hairs. For my own part that is flexi curls and elaborate updoes or other hairs with a bit of a period feel, and for Ran’s part it is longer male (or unisex) hairs and male hairs with a bit of a period feel.