Shiryu Musashi has been spearheading something approaching a renaissance in men’s formal clothes with his brilliant InfiniTIE system, using a scripted solution to provide a tremendous number of tie textures to suit just about any look you can come up with. After having spoken to him and offering some ideas—like a standalone tie—I discovered that he already had turned his mind that way. The standalone flexi InfiniTIE does just that. You can buy the tie to suit third-party shirts, but the best thing is the fact that he’s also selling these beautifully, hand-drawn shirts (in classic and modern styles) with tie+collar combinations. You can use your InfiniTIE HUD to position the tie and collar, and then texture the tie to suit. I’ve already lost track of how many different tie textures are available—you can use the textures that come with the suits such as Evening in Roma and Fog over Tornio, and then you can buy separate texture add-ons at a very reasonable price.

The shirts are lovely, and cover just about all the bases as far as colors go. I would not have minded a pin-striped option or two, but there’s room for Shiryu to release those down the line. As you can see, they come with sculpted cuffs as well as the sculpted collar, and in tucked and untucked-versions; although the tucked look is only on the shirt layer (not underwear layer as well) so they’ll only work with high-waisted pants.

I’ve two or three tuxedos in my time in SL, and there’s some really excellent ones out there. I think it’s safe to say that Shiryu’s latest formal tux goes in right among them, and perhaps does them one better. Here, the InfiniTIE system has to take a breather, but the excellent HUD is still there and it’s learned a new trick. Now you can hide the lapels so that you can seem to wear just the collar and tie, allowing you to show off the waistcoat in its glory. There’s no less than ten different waistcoats in the package, and ten matching pants (for the lower part of the waistcoat; you can’t wear the pants separately, suffice it to say). Beautiful work, and the attention to detail is meticulous. This tuxedo is out just in time for those gentlemen getting ready for the big Christmas and New Year’s balls, and want to be sure they’re dressed to the nines.

The shoes that go with the tuxedo are still my go-to formal men’s shoes—they look just spiffy when you’re in a tuxedo. These M110’s are sold in shiny and matte looks, so they go with a wide range of looks. But black? Black’s the standby, as is a lot of shine on it. Yummy.

Last but certainly not least, the aforementioned Evening in Roma (which loaned me the pants for the first set of photos). A slick, laid-back sort of suit, it’s perfect for that night out on the town. There’s ten shirts in this one (some of them are pinstripe variations of the solid colors), and as always they’re beautifully textured. Unlike Party in Venezia, the lapels can’t be made to disappear via the HUD, so you can’t really wear these shirts without the jacket, which is a shame. Still, it’s a terrific look and naturally there’s a whole new set of tie textures to go with it. Honestly, it’s fun just flipping through them to see what Shiryu’s come up with. He’s the God of Ties, in my book.

The shoes I’ve paired with this suit is a little more casual. Kalnins’ Terra shoes for men are beautifully textured, and come scripted so that you can select between a dozen different colors, which makes them a particularly great deal. The sizing of them can be a little tricky, I found, when in a smaller-than-SL-average shape. And the textures are clearly massive 1024x1024 textures, given how long they take to load under normal circumstances. Still, once they’re fully loaded, they’re very pretty to look at, and can easily be changed to match any number of suit and shirt combinations. My only other issue is that the scripted menu just gives you numbers for each texture type—it would have been nice for it to identify the color in some fashion instead.