abundance of creative individuals. We are blessed to be home to scripters, graphic designers, writers, and other content creators. One of our earliest residents just happens to be a very prolific creator of clothing and furnishings, so we’re kicking off our weekly “merchant spotlight” with…Lumina Elvehjem of Luminous Designs!Lumi has been with Steelhead from its inception, so she’s pretty much “seen it all”. She styles herself in-world as an “Elven-Neko” mix, so don’t be surprised to see her sporting cat ears and a tail. Loyal to Steelhead through its various incarnations, she’s a valuable asset with her directness, honesty, and playful sense of humor. Although she’s not active in RP, she’s happy to help with design elements.
First coming to Steelhead to help a couple of RL friends, Lumi jumped into the commercial aspects of this virtual world feet first. Helping the sim’s first owners with building, she found she had a natural talent for prim manipulation and designing for SL.
A RL seamstress and designer, she found herself frustrated with “prim only” creating in SL. She acquired a copy of Photoshop, found some tutorials, taught herself how to make clothing, and a premier SL clothing designer was born.
Although Steelhead’s theme has shifted somewhat from strictly “Western” to “Pacific Northwest + Steampunk”, it has not really affected her inventory. “The theme of the sim always was kind of an aside to me anyways”, she says. “I never wore or made western things when it was western, and I had little intension of really adopting ‘steampunk’ as a theme... If you look at my store it is not steampunk at all, or gaslamp or any other theme actually. I’ve had marketing experts look at my store and go ‘yeah... What THEME are you doing here??’ Well, the way I look at it, this is MY second life and I don’t do well in boxes, and so I tend to remain rather un-label-able. What I do is what no one else does, or they didn’t do it well enough for my tastes. The kimono are a perfect example of that. There are tons of kimono in SL, but none like mine, made to be worn, sat in, danced in and enjoyed. And you can get Naughty with them! You don’t need a
special AO to wear them. They come with an underkimono. They are ... Different. Complete…and made with actually using them in mind.”
As to what she’s doing now, she continues “I’ve now been making SL clothing for about 3 years. I find it absolutely liberating to be able to design ANY thing I may desire with no worries about fabric costs, or buttons, or zippers or even FIT! Sometimes it takes a bit of thinking to figure out the best way to make a thing, but I love to think so this is simply more fun to me…and part of why I refuse to adopt a particular theme. I want to be able to make whatever I want and not worry about the labels.”
“I perhaps put a bit more into any particular design then some designers. For example I may upload a top 20 times (THANK YOU TEMPORARY TEXTURES!!!) before accepting it as good, making sure side seams match... wrinkles make sense....that the design on the fabric doesn’t totally warp over breasts or big chests. Most of my designs (especially the more recent ones) are full of what I’ve come to call Unseen Details. These are the things you don’t really see unless they aren’t there. Things like matching seams (don’t they bug you when they aren’t right??) and fixing the alfa glitch in the skirt while keeping it to appear sheer and light. I don’t always succeed and my earlier stuff is less together that way then things I’ve made recently of course, but I’ve always tried for something more than what was normally available...and then I offer it at an affordable price. My things aren’t the cheapest clothing out there for sure... but they aren’t the spendiest either and often are far, far better than the ‘spendy spendy’ things. I know, ‘cuz I get them spendy things often as market research, only to be rather disappointed at the incompleteness of the thing, making me wonder how the price justifies itself. The fact is…sometimes you DON’T get what you pay for. Sometimes It’s simply overpriced.”
Having shopped around myself and marveled at some of the very expensive offerings by other designers, I can attest to everything she’s said above. Another “value added” element to Lumi’s work is that she offers many of the garment pieces on more than one layer, which gives the buyer a great deal of flexibility in how they want to wear the outfit. I’ve learned a lot from Lumi’s work, and you’ll enjoy wearing it!
Visit her main store at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Steelhead%20Shanghai/66/78/31
Happy Shopping!
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