How about some romantic new makeups for sachi Vixen’s Portia skin, some charming new lingerie courtesy of LoveLace, aka Launa Fauna and Nephilaine Protagonist, three great new hairs from three different creators (LeLutka, Analog Dog and Truth) and a lovely set of heart-themed jewelery from Eolande?

As mentioned by Ran in his review, the Renaissance collection from Donna Flora and Ardigraf Designs includes outfits for both men and women. I don’t imagine I need to note that I leapt at the chance of reviewing the female outfits. I was familiar with Donna Flora from before, but Patrizia Blessed was new to me as a designer, and a very pleasant surprise.

The following review covers a great set of entries into historical fashion in SL, and’s certainly worth a look for all the roleplayers and fantasy fans out there.

In a short while the feeds will be full of pink and red as we near Valentine’s Day. Its not a big thing here in Sweden, but a bit of girly romance never hurts even so. The latest release from Sascha’s Designs, Ula, offers quite a bit of that, with a bit of a period-inspired flair.

As Freyja hinted, I’ve my own Ugly Duck review to share, this time of one of Fade Lei’s new male skins: Gabriel. There are four tones available, with the lightest being more of a gothy RP-aimed skin, but the other three—Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael—provide some excellent variations. And it turns out, those variations go along with a very handsome, 100% hand-drawn skin.

This is something completely different from both my usual taste in skins and my usual shapes. The explanation is, once again, those character portraits that Ran and I are doing. This time I needed a skin that would suit a slim, athletic young woman, nothing like the curvy, sensual shapes I normally tend to use. And there really wasn’t anything in my inventory that quite fit the bill.

However, since I had chased off Ran to Ugly Duck to try out the new male skins, I decided to have a look at the female too.

I warned that there would be more skin reviews coming. First up today is the latest release from 5th and Oxford, the lovely Brooke. She launched a few days ago in three tones and five different makeup themes with six faces per theme. In short, Brooke offers lots of great, versatile looks to choose from, so there ought to be something for most everyone.

This week is turning out to be quite the feast for a skin addict like myself, and the timing couldn’t be better. Ran and I have recently revived our project for creating character portraits for our MUSH using SL avatars (the first ones are up here and here), and that means we’re suddenly finding that we definitely can never have enough skins. So, we’re both on a hunt, and yesterday I struck gold when Dutch Touch released SjORs.

Today I am returning to the future for another look at some of the items created for Rezzable’s “The Future is Now” show (read more about it here). I am particularly pleased by the chance to, once again, combine Skin Within and Tekeli-li. I think Ayesha Bisiani’s beautiful and imaginative skins go particularly well together with Tekelili Tantalus’s fantastic creations. So far, they’ve mostly met up in fantasy-inspired ways, but this time we’re talking SF.

Late last night (for me, anyway) a pack of review copies from Luster arrived. Luster is the new brand from Lo Jacobs, formerly of the Church of Luxe. Not, admittedly, a brand I was very familiar with, since “regular” clothing make up a pretty small part of my SL wardrobe. However, I was intrigued by the description of Luster as having a “storybook asthetic”, and when I tried a few of the pieces sent out, I found myself quite charmed.

I’ve had a craving for new skins lately, but I haven’t found all that many that have felt right for me. In particular, I am not finding a lot of faces with real character as well as beauty. I have also, to indulge briefly in some grumbling, encountered far too many demos with excessive demo markings. Too much on the face can really change the expression of a skin, and too much on the body makes it almost impossible to judge the quality of the texturing and how well the seams are handled.

So, after demoing several skins just this week, I decided to stop being indecisive and went to the Abyss (the way they do demo markings is a good example of doing it right) once more to pick up their latest female skin, Abbie Cole. After all, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway, since I’ve got a serious weakness for their current line of female skins. And for the male skins too, just not on me.

I have a weakness for photo contests, especially those with a touch of magic expected in the pictures. Like the ones that have been arranged a few times now by Evangeline Miles of Evie’s Closet and Faery Sola of Studio Sidhe. Today marks the start of another of, called Pirouette, which calls for pictures made using Faery Sola’s lovely Music Box pose prop and the Lyra or Lyra II gown from Evie.

I’ve finally emerged from underneath a pile of Roman curse tablets, and gone straight into the future since it is apparently here now if Rezzable is to be believed. Their “The Future is Now” event opened today with a packed fashion show, and for the next 3 weeks items made for the show will be available exclusively on their Greenies sim.

I’ve got a couple of posts planned around some of the items I picked up, but the first one ended up looking rather more classical than futuristic. But that’s really more me anyway.

Musashi-Do is aiming to be the de-facto choice for men’s suits in Second Life. Certainly, the dynamic creator behind the store has been releasing a dizzying amount of suits, all of high quality, together covering a range of the sort of uses one would put a suit from casual to business to formal. The latest entry is Firenza Blues, for the businessmen out there in SL.

A new hair from Wasabi Pills is always a pleasure. Especially when worn alongside a new acquisition from a store that I’ve never purchased anything from before—and that delay was unconscionable, to say the least!