Summer’s definitely still upon us here in Scandinavia, so a casual look just sort of fits and led me to decide to feature two of my newer acquisitons in a brief non-hair interlude. ARAI is a Japanese store that I was amazed with both for its quality and its incredibly low prices. This remains, to me, a hallmark of many Japanese designers and I was introduced to a whole bunch of them at the same time when I visited what I believe was the very first Creator’s Pavillion summer sale. As they had the sale running again this summer, I took it as a chance to visit some old and new stores, and I this pullover shirt with a really wonderful use of a prim to give a sense of bagginess just caught my attention.

Paired with it are these wonderful jean shorts from Naive-Web; I actually visited them because I saw their brand new Tully short denim shorts, but these slightly older, knee-length jeans suit my tastes better. The prim work is quite nice, and readily resizable, and I’m particularly fond with the very realistic wrinkling (on this black pair, it may be too hard to see, but trust me, it’s nice).The price is hard to beat—a mere L$55 for a pair, L$185 (or so, I bought and ran before someone told me that the price was in error) for all four colors. Skins and shoes from Adam n Eve complete the look, and I love these to pieces; right now the M112’s are my go-to shoes for just about any occasion. Apparently, Damen—shoe-maker extraordinaire—has several new men’s shoes approaching release. What will be coming out of the cobbler’s workshop, one wonders?

But the real focus of this review should be the wonderful hair from Bryce Tully of Bryce Designs. I believe the very first, non-freebie hair I ever owned in SL was from Bryce: a long, waist-length flexi hair called Eddie which is now retired and which he said he might redo sometime but as far as I know he never has (*coughcoughHINTcoughcough*). Bryce has not rested on his laurels, and has constantly been improving from those days; comparing his old textures with the current ones does not leave that in doubt. He also incorporates sculpts into his hair, and does so quite nicely I think.

The Wonder hair is the first of the new Hair Fair releases I bought, as this shoulder-length hairstyle was quite different from anything I have. It reminds me of something .... but I can’t place it, really. In any case, the packs are imminently affordable, and most come with three closely-related shades of the same color. Like some other stores, however, Bryce also offers two different packs that offer a range of color options. The Hinder hair on the right features the Bark hair color from the Natural Browns range, thanks to the Macks pack which also features colors from the black, natural blonde, and bold red packs; yes, that’s four different colors in these particular packs, and still at the same low price of L$200. I found Hinder to be the standout hair from this trio, because—among other things—it just happened to fit my avatar perfectly straight out of the box. I love Bryce’s use of alpha textures on the back to give a very natural feel, and the prims up top give the hair a very fresh and modern look to my eye.

And in the middle, we’ve Saul. This one is a new release as well, but Bryce decided to turn it into a color demo. So, 30 hair colors in this great, modern hairstyle from one of SL’s most accomplished male hair designers? L$0. Can’t beat that.