Last call for last call

Does this make her brain look dead?

this is one of those posts where i don't know where to begin. on one hand the passing of an important designer, pillar of the sl community and decent individual is really not the time to be catty or bitchy. i've been catty and bitchy about ginny's work before, and deservedly so. but that's what you say about someone when you are fighting the wave of street urchin cum 9 to 5 cubicle catastrophe which is the fashion taste of the people who followed her releases. what you say about someone as important and influential, and upstanding and decent, as ginny, once she is gone, is quite another matter: sl has lost one of its best residents, one of its most dedicated people, and one of its centers of ideas. it's a hole that isn't ever going to really close up. in a world of fakes and frauds, ginny was genuine.

this is why the statement that this is like versace passing is incredibly amusing and shows just how little the sl fashion world knows about, well, fashion. versace was trashy, what happened when you too the latest celebutante bit of fluff and throw lots of money at her to make whatever advantages of face and figure she had work. versace's spirit is alive and well on much of sl, but please, ginny was never part of trashdom. ginny may not have been inspired, and often wasn't, but she was never gaudy, tasteless or one to throw pixels and bling at a design problem. ginny made clothes that worked.

instead, ginny was mall retail fashion, couture inspired in an off handed way, for sl. her designs were solidly in the range of abercrombie and fitch, fcuk without the color, bcbg. if her clothes were real then wwd would eat them up. She was never quite as earthy as some, and never really got color. but versace is not at all what she was doing. Instead ginny's clothes were the clothes that people standing in their houses on their lots wore when having their virtual friends over for a virtual talk fest. clothes for a slice of sl which, while it does not attract the sensationalism of direct sex and what i do, nor the glittering plutography of big business come to second life, is a huge part of what is done here.

more over, ginny was consistently first in moving this style and making this style work. her business practices were exemplary, customer service was excellent and prices were, if you wanted what she sold, very reasonable.

for different reasons i take this death as a hard shock, because it is only recently that ginny started making cloths that i would buy. somewhere in this dismal summer, ginny had hit on how to make clothes which were both richly detailed, and which were none the less within the range of her buying public. suddenly you could see her clothes on a young elizabeth tailor in national velvet. i've purchased five of her catwalk collection outfits, and wear them regularly with some good effect. from stolid to solid, from timid to sensible, ginny's work burst upward in quality and detail in a startling short period of time.

and that is what is painful to me: this was a moment when the pieces of sl were becoming more as one, where the quality of work had begun to soar on winds of inspiration, and when it was clear that designers wee no longer fighting with sl, but using its features to make artistic statements. ginny's last release was a landmark, and now, it is to be the last indeed for last call. while there were clear problems with how parts fit together, the texture pieces were inspired, and the integration of sculpties was generally sure handed. if ginny's fans are upset because they have lost their fashion pole star, i am more so, because it was clear that ginny had found a way out of the wilderness of the land of bland and into higher realms.

but oh god is that outfit ensemble hiddeous, my eyes hurt just remembering it. if there is anything that makes me feel the pain of loss of ginny so much as looking at her last work with its promise and exquisite workmanship, it is looking at the fashion audience that she had connected with, and was dressing better and better.