I’m not a fashionista, I’m not even a fashionista’s son, so when I saw that The Drax Files episode 9 – Elie Spot was about fashion I thought “We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town, beep-beep” However a quick visit to youTube got that out of my system and I watched the video of Drax’s interview (which I’ll embed at the end).
Now as I said, I’m not a fashionista, so I have never heard of Celoe and Mon Tissu! I have however heard of the Mayfair sim, so that was a plus point. When I was a lad Mayfair was a place in London, a spot on the monopoly board and a top shelf magazine, the internet has taken all the fun out of it for boys and top shelf magazines but I digress, this has nowt to do with The Drax files! What does have something to do with The Drax Files is the interview which is top drawer.
First of all let’s get stereoytpes out of the way, Elie spot is not the media stereotypical Second Life user, for a start she’s a girl, secondly she’s a young girl, thirdly she’s a pretty girl, fourthly she is a girl who has been a busy girl outside of Second Life and finally she has a social life. Take that media!
Elie is the daughter of a game designer and a graphic designer, if this were a Second Life breedable game the hoped for end result would be someone with the design skills of Elie Spot, the couple would be a rare, even an ultra rare so you’d hope their offspring would be talented!
Elie talks of how she is involved with two fashion brands, Celoe, for women who like more edgy clothing and accessories and Mon Tissu for the more casual lady. Early on in the interview Elie talks of one of the things that makes Second Life special, control of how your own land looks. This is the beauty of user generated content, you can design the sim in the image you want, you’re not tied to other people’s images, although you can buy other people’s creations, you have conrol over your own parcels.
Creativity and the power users have over it is a big part of this interview and Elie enthusiastically talks of how she went to sandboxes early on, spoke to people from all around the world and found the whole being able to create your own stuff empowering. However it’s interesting to note that Elie joined Second Life as a 19 year old, who played sports and was taking eighteen credits, she saw Second Life as an avenue to unleash her creativity.
Once again Drax pulls off an excellent interview, showing the Mayfair sim inworld and also adding footage from Elie at home, drawing on a wacom tablet and with Elie talking of how she also works on a blog unrelated to Second Life called Offbeat & Inspired and she also works on a venture called Cake & Whiskey …. Whiskey is generally better than Whisky it should be noted!
Elie also talks about those stereotypes and goes on to say that it’s weird how people make assumptions based on people being in Second Life, how real life and Second Life intermingle, they are not separate entities, which is something I very much agree with.
Elie ends the interview by talking of how Second Life does not have as many hurdles as a real world business may face, how you can quickly get your work to be seen and how, if you want to put the time and effort in, Second Life is a good platform for your creativity.
Another excellent production from Drax and another excellent example of use cases for Second Life.
SLURL To Mayfair Sim: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MAYFAIR/129/119/22