Breezes interviews Kouse about her delightful designs

One day I was wandering and looking for something new to buy (I just can't help shopping) When i happened across this delight. The creator of these wondrous designs was there so I took the chance to talk to her and find out her inspiration:
Breezes Babii: Kouse I am pleased to have become acquainted with the fine gowns you design, Will you tell us how you got started in SecondLife?
Kouse Singh: I saw a piece about it on the news actually, on CBC, looked fun so figured I'd give it a try.
Breezes Babii: Do you find the Designing and your shop fulfilling?
Kouse Singh: Oh yes, it's a great outlet for me creatively.
BB: Well I thoroughly enjoy the compliments I receive from your gowns. Did you build your own shop?
KS: I built the shop on SeaBreeze Oasis. Two of my best friends, Serenity Sieyes and Malakh Giles, collaboratively built the location on Avilion Vale.
BB: That is such an accomplishment. Tell me how do you come upon the ideas for your designs?
KS: Well sometimes, I look at paintings and photos of historical gowns and base my designs off those. However most of the time I just create them freeform from my imagination.
BB: Imagination is truly a gift and we all benefit from your lovely work. The group you have created and giving us a buy 1 get one free is remarkable. Do you travel and seek the materials for your gowns?
KS: Oh no, as a Mage I conjure them up *giggle
BB: In RL do you design? I wonder when did you begin to know you wanted to be a Designer?
KS: Yes, I make a fair amount of my own clothing when it comes to dresses, items like shirts, pants et cetera i just buy though.
BB: How long have you been a designer Kouse?
KS: Oh ever since I could hold a pencil I've been sketching, most often ball gowns, Disney movies affected my sketches for a long time, In SL, since about July of last year, and in RL, been making dresses off and on for about 6 years.
BB: I imagine your dream of dancing and prancing around in these works of yours. Is there anything you can recommend for a new designer to begin an experience in designing.
KS: I'd say to anyone who wants to design, make sure you put your heart into it. It's more important that what you do is to the best of your ability, and that it have soul, then to just be another item of clothing to be cranked out and thrust into the marketplace.
BB: You certainly have done that very thing. Such lovely ladies I see flock to this store and we love you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you.
Kouse has a wide range of gowns for the aPetite figure that is delightful she has lovely shoes and hair also I invite you all to come and drape yourself in luxury.

By Breezes Babii

AT YOUR FEET

“Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint.”(1)
In ancient Greece, feet were associated with love and desire. Evidence of that abounds in literature and art. And the foot, left it’s erotic imprint to our days.
Look at a person’s shoes, and at a person’s feet. They will tell you a lot about how that person feels and acts about eroticism, desire, and love.
I’m not talking about feet fetishism. I’m talking about body language.
The feet of Aphrodite give rise to new grass when she first steps on land, accompanied by Eros.“And the prettiest foot! Oh, if a man could but fasten his eyes to her feet, as they steal in and out, and play at bo-beep under her petticoats!”(2)
So… what’s the deal with feet in SL?
I have seen things in this virtual world that go beyond my wildest imagination. Prim wizards make unbelievable shapes come to life. And they keep getting better. So I asked myself: how come our avatar’s feet look like they have been crushed by a Caterpillar? Why are the toes glued together and look like teeth? Why can our avatars have quite interesting hands…that hold things and wear rings… but our feet only look well with shoes on? And sometimes… not even that.
Is it such an impossible enterprise? Maybe it is… I don’t know. But I have the feeling that the subject has been neglected.
Forgive me for being suspicious… but is our collective mind repressing unwanted contents and pushing them into the unconscious? That happens in RL too. And feet are so far away from our heads that they seem perfect to be considered symbolical dumpsters.
As I started to ask and snoop around in search for answers, I came across the existence of JB Gazov, a Japanese shoe designer that should be considered the Manolo Blahnik of Second Life.
Not so much for the shoe designs, but for the fact that he managed to make our toes look so pretty when we wear them. And they have toe rings if you want to, and different nail polish colors. Cyber Gods bless him.
But there’s a flip side: you have to wear the shoes.If you go around with bare feet, they will still look like tortured appendixes of the rest of our carefully groomed avis.
And he is not making shoes for guys. It’s understandable. He would have to make sandals, greek style.You must agree: avi’s feet are such a turn off.
As a matter of fact… I hardly take my shoes off. Even when I’m swimming. Or even when… you know… (Thank God my bf finds pumps to be quite sexy).
I want my avatar to have pretty feet. I want luscious red nail polish for my toe nails, without shoes.
It’s a pity, in a world where everybody can dance like Fred Astaire, to have such silly crooked feet.
It’s a dare. Will someone join JB Gazov in his search for a solution? Will anyone meet the challenge?
I know he keeps trying. And at least, with shoes on, my toes look lovely.
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread them softly because you tread on my dreams.” (3)
We need nice feet for that. Nice, soft, bare feet for that.

Covadonga Writer

(1) William Shakespeare. (Romeo and Juliet)
(2) William Congreve. (Love for Love)
(3) William Butler Yeats (A Quote)

My Friend Lucinda Obviate

ONE OF MY DEAREST FRIENDS, Lucinda Obviate told me the other week that her RL and SL partner Haplo had been diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness and was struggling to keep on top of this serious health issues. But you know what really did it for me? She told me Haplo had been fired by his RL employers for having to go to the doctors too often!

And do you know who his employers are? A publicly funded graduate school for ... DOCTORS!!!!!

Can you believe that?! Makes you wonder if they teach 'humanity' there. Firing a man because he needed time off to save his life.

Now I watch as my lovely hard-working friend struggles to support them both in SL, now that she is the sole bread-winner.

"Right now, we are just trying to take it one day at a time," she told me, "waiting for news as it comes in, but without health insurance, the medical bills alone will bury us."

So, on top of serious health problems, the couple also have to deal with financial worries AND the vagaries of SL. Because Lucie shares a sim with a club that chokes the system with campers, making it impossible sometimes for Lucinda's customers to get in to her store, "Taming The Shrew".

"I am having troubles with the nightclub here, which has over 40 camp pads," she told me, when I asked her how her business was going. "Last night it was almost four hours before I could get to my store and workshop, because the sim was full of afk campers."

Now this is a problem I've heard about from many different areas in SL. People who have paid out lots of money to buy houses and businesses and then can't operate at all, because a neighbouring club chokes the sim with campers.

"The biggest motivation (for people to get campers in) is to get higher traffic numbers which gets you higher in the search results," explained Lucie. "Then the owner can boast 'high traffic' to vendors who then rent space in his mall. But then they eventually discover that the numbers have been inflated and aren't shoppers, but campers who don't spend any money."

Being a true artist, Lucinda's talents cover a broad spectrum of arenas - clothes, furniture, buildings, scripting, transformers, terraforming, design. She can work up to 14-20 hours a day to get things done making the range of Gorean, medieval, sci fi, goth clothing, as well as trying to fit in custom work.

"I am a perfectionist when it comes to certain things," she told me. "I go to great pains on things like seams. Heck, I see some big-name designers with sloppy seams and it drives me mad."

The opportunity to work and earn a living in SL is irresistible to Lucinda, who lives in America's mid-west, where as she says, "creativity is not overly valued".

Still, she has been working for over ten years in RL designing costumes for regional theatre companies, historical re-creation groups and performance theatre. These include Renaissance fairs, combat demos with steel swords and mounted combat demonstrations, jousting etc.

"I've won many awards with my costume works at larger conventions," she modestly admitted. (Lucinda is pathologically shy about her talents).

"I like lost arts. It's why I make clothes and spin my own yarn and weave my own cloth ... you learn the value of things if you do them for yourself."

At her latest "Taming The Shrew" store she has designed a "Lost City of Atlantis" entrance, with a stargate and all, and once carved a village out of a mountainside.

"When people tp in, they will actually be assigned a little guardian orb, that will light their way, until they leave the underwater part," she explained. "And that little car there, will take people on tours ..."

So, if you want to check out a designer who has unique talents - go and see my lovely friend Lucinda Obviate at "Taming The Shrew". And for those of you who like transformers - have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_beHhHm9x-Y for her entry in the recent Warner Brothers transformer competition.