The SL Clothing Fair benefitting RFL opens tomorrow at 3 PM SLT. Just as last year the fair will consist of a total of 9 sims, with 8 of them built to represent the theme of “fashion cities of the world”. Each participating designer will have at least 4 RFL items in their store (and do make sure to shop from these so that you can take part in the photo contest) and many also offer exciting new releases. Its a fabulous chance to browse some of the best designers in SL and raise money for an important cause at the same time. It is, of course, also a fabulous chance to experience first-class lag, so make sure to travel lightly in terms of attachments.

The press preview isn’t actually starting for another hour, but I am going to be a little sneaky and at least offer a look at some of the new items offered by Adam n Eve at the fair. I’ve been itching to share these for a few days now. Plus, a new Exile hair and a brief look at Tuli’s Eva skin, which will be released on March 18th. I expect to do a more in-depth review of that soon.

Quite recently, Ran reviewed the latest male skin from Nomine, Noam. The release saw some fairly significant changes in the style of the skin which we both felt made them work on more shapes, and naturally I started hoping that a new female release might be on its way too. I’ve liked the look of a lot of the previous skins too, but they’ve not quite worked for my shapes.

Yesterday, then, saw the release of the new female skin, Mosaic. I ran over to check them out and found a face with just the right blend of youth and attitude for me, so when Munchflower offered me a sample pack for reviewing, I was more than happy to say yes.

I do like an excuse to get naked save for some jewellery. In this case the excuse consists of Launa Fauna’s special Lapine skin for the thought-provoking Melt installation and Siyu Suen’s first new release for the Accessory Fair.

At last, I can show the full skin tone and facial hair range of Noam, now that Munchflower Zaius has rolled out the full line. Besides the addition of many additional facial hair/makeup options, there’s been a number of tweaks between this and the pre-release version I reviewed earlier.

It’s been awhile, but Munchflower Zaius of Nomine has released a brand new male skin, and it’s ... well, it’s quite pretty, which I think is the plan. Before I go further, though, note that this skin is from a preview release, and Munchflower is not entirely done with the skin line. So, on to the particulars.

It’s been awhile since I’ve picked up a new skin, so when I saw that LeLutka had a new male skin following their earlier release, I had to check it out yesterday. And today? I took the plunge, and will explain why below.

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.

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.

Before Christmas, I took a closer look at the sultry Kass Calypto skin from the Abyss, and found myself quite taken with her lovely, olive-skinned form. Her newest “sister”, the fetchingly named Lila LaRue, is nothing like her except in that she, too, is quite the vixen. But now its a matter of sophisticated, movie-star beauty rather than exotic sensuality.

(And btw, I just have to say I find myself rather enticed by just the names of these skins, they have so much character. So yes, evocative names can definitely catch my attention and get me to take a closer look at something.)

There’s been a string of gorgeous female skins from the Abyss of late, such as Kass Calypto which Freyja recently reviewed. They’re beautiful to look at, but for a male avatar, well ... they don’t quite fit. ;) Fortunately, Khai Sinister has given the guys something to appreciate with his newest lines of male skins, Steve Law and Dave Gears. One other was released awhile ago, but I dithered on getting it for various reasons. I couldn’t take it any longer, though, and I’m now the happy owner of the Adam Crius skin in its darkest tone, Deep Tan.

Male skins from Iki Ikarus is certainly something new in SL, and was certainly worth taking a look at. I admit, at first I didn’t find the skin to my taste—a bit too much of a spotlight look on the face, I thought. And that mouth? So wide! But when some fellow bloggers started discussing the skins, I figured I’d actually tweak a shape to the demo to see if I could make it suit better. And, lo and behold, it did.