Hosiery in Second Life - Intro

by Reg

Reg Dean is known in Second Life as the founder member of the Nylon Genes Group, a group of hosiery lovers, whose motto is "Tights feel Right".

Introduction

Hi. I am Reg Dean and like everyone else who is anyone, I live in (so-called) Second Life (SL from now on. Geraden is my Avatar in what he calls "Real Life" (RL) - as if anything could be more real than where my partner Ash, my friends and I are! Anyway I have no time for such things as playing in imaginary worlds like RL.

Geraden thinks I am writing this just for his (imaginary) blog in RL, but what I am really going to do is to link to it from my Nylon Genes Group in SL. That way, all the people in SL can read it.

Clothing in Second Life

I suppose I had better start by talking in general about Clothing in SL. Here clothing comes in layers.

Geraden tells me that it is much the same in RL. Well I would not know anything about that. It seems very much a free for all in Real Life , where you can wear two pairs of socks if you want to, and you can wear a vest, a shirt, a sweater and a jacket all at the same time. Such lack of discipline these RL avatars allow themselves! But then, of course, they are not proper people like us in SL.

In Second Life (SL) things are much more organised. The upper body has three possible layers, called undershirt, shirt and jacket. Any item of clothing for the upper body has officially to be one of these layers, and no two pieces of clothing from the same layer can be worn at the same time.

The lower body and legs have 3 layers also: underpants, pants and skirt. For the feet there are two layers: socks and shoes.

So you can see that SL has a serious defect in that the only hosiery it officially recognises are socks. Strictly speaking there are no such things as tights or pantyhose in SL.

The sock layer is very important, and all tights / pantyhose, unless they are footless, must make use of this layer. Socks can be variable in length, and they can reach right up to mid thigh. This is fine for stockings and hold-ups, but not for tights. The missing top part of the tights has to be supplied instead by one of the lower body layers: either the underpants layer or the pants layer.

This brings two further problems: firstly, which one of these layers should be used? If you make the top of the tights out of the underpants layer, you cannot have any other separate underpants or panties. (You can of course design panties into the top of the tights quite effectively (see CGBG), but this is a bit of a fudge.)

Alternatively you can use the pants layer for the top of the tights. This enables you to have separate panties, and there is no problem with wearing your tights with a skirt, as skirts go over the pants layer. But what if you want to wear your tights with shorts or ripped jeans? Both of these will make use of the pants layer.

Several SL hosiery designers solve this by supplying the upper part of the tights in two formats - both as an underpants layer and as a pants layer. It is still a fudge, of course, and a nuisance if you want keep your tights on, while changing from a skirt to shorts.

Most hosiery designers have adopted this approach by now. In fact it was I who suggested it to one of the principal names mentioned below!

The second problem is one which very few designers have grasped. Since tights have to be made of two separate items, there is a real problem with alignment. This especially affects patterns, since it is hard to ensure continuity of pattern at the join. But it can affect any  tights, because there can be small gaps in the rendering where different parts join. Some of my favourite makes of tights in SL have small threadlike gaps at the ankles.

There are two things that can be done to alleviate this. One is to make the join as high as possible (mid thigh) where it may be less noticeable. This is also a less flexible area of the body than the ankle, so rendering problems may be reduced.

The other is to shade both the tops and the bottoms of the tights gradually from full density to transparent. If this is done skilfully, the transition from the pants or underpants layer to the sock layer is truly imperceptible. I know of only one designer that does this: others, please take note. (See Bettie's Retro Chic.)

Geraden complains that he does not always find it easy to get tights that fit his long legs. This is another defect of RL: here in SL clothing always fits, and what is more, tights never ladder (though actually one brand has a subtle ladder designed into them!)

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tags: sl  hosiery  

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