So many things, so little time!

Okay, things are happening quickly at Cattiva e Cattivo and since no one really pays any attention to this blog, I'm going to just spill the beans here.

First, as most everyone knows, Zhao shoes is the shoe brand of Cattiva e Cattivo now and Cattiva e Cattivo is the clothing brand of Zhao shoes. To further emphasize that partnership, Melanie Zhao and I have purchased a sim. When it comes online it will be called simply Zhao. This means that things will be changing for the stores as well. We've decided to make Zhao and Cattiva one big happy store to make it more convenient to our customers. Because honestly, it's you all that keep us in business. Along with the new store, Cattiva and Zhao will undergo a bit of re-branding and introduce a new look and feel for advertising, store fixtures, etc. We're trying to refine the SL shopping experience. Hopefully the new look will unify the Zhao and Cattiva e Cattivo brand to a higher degree as well as be more elegant and eye-catching.

All of this means a lot of work over the next several weeks. We hope to have the new store up and running within 30 days. This also means we'll be selling our current parcels (we wanted to buy the sim that they are on, but there are other parcel owners to consider on that sim... so... a new sim it is).

Oh, and I released some new T-Shirts (which are in store). And I have a new women's steampunk outfit that is nearly finished. Maybe I'll post some pics on Flickr. It's turning out quite nice. :)

Love,
Lissa

New at Cattiva e Cattivo - Unisex Cargo Shorts

SL is known for it's Wind Light draped beaches, so why not add to the ambiance with a summer standard, Cargo Shorts for both the ladies and gentlemen. So here's the skinny... 7 sun-faded colors: Battleship, Brown, Bubblegum, Sand, Light Gray, Heliotrope and Weissen. Three sculpt pockets (1 on the right leg and 2 on the left) and sculpted rolled cuffs. And they're $100L. Wicked cheap and wicked sexy. What more could you ask for?

The cool thing about the cargos is that if you want to shorten the length and raise the sculpt cuffs up a bit I've left everything "Mod". Anyway, everything on them is hand painted as you've come to expect at Cattiva e Cattivo. Please enjoy.

New Lingerie

With all of the shoe releases I've been doing, I've been a bit remiss in doing clothing releases. So, to get back on track, I wanted to do something simple, elegant and super sexy. Melanie fits all the qualifications. A bustier/garter combo top is highlighted with thong panties and black semi-shiny nylons.

Available in world at Cattiva e Cattivo:
SLURL to Cattiva e Cattivo

Without further ado, here's Melanie.

Weirdest SL to RL moment - Lissa Maertens of Cattiva e Cattivo on ebay. Umm Yeah.

So, I googled myself. Yeah, I do it. Part of it is ego and part of it is that I want to see if any of my stuff is in any of the SL fashion blogosphere. Generally, I don't find a lot, however, tonight I did. For whatever reason, someone has posted an item on ebay and is using my name and business to promote it. Huh? I had no idea I was a famous RL fashion designer.

eBay Item Listing from Famous Designer Lissa Maertens of Fashion House Cattiva e Cattivo

I don't know if this link will still work by the time anyone sees it or not, but I have placed a screen shot of the ebay listing on flickr. Medium size screenshot of ebay listing

Click on the large version to see it better. OR, email me at virtuallissa at gee mail dot com and I'll send you one at a bigger size so you can actually see the listing.

Anyway, I've contacted the seller and asked them to edit their listing so that it's more accurate. I don't design in RL (I'd like to) and I certainly wouldn't design something that ugly. Anyway, I have no idea how this happened, but I think it's kind of funny.

Commentary: State of friends and fashion among other things.

First of all, I want to thank Ana Lutetia for being my first blog follower. :) Ana is one of the sweetest fashion bloggers you'll ever meet. In fact, she was the first fashion blogger to ever blog any of my women's fashions. The item was the Peasant Girl outfit that I did ages ago. I look back on that and see all the flaws and how poorly it was done and I think, "My God, Ana had a lot of faith in my stuff!" So, thank you Ana, for another first!

SL Fashion is something that I like to think I know a little bit about. Maybe I don't. Maybe I'm just a goofball graphic designer who thinks she can push some pixels around and call them clothes. Be that as it may, I do watch "What Not to Wear" so I dub myself an expert! (Please note the tongue firmly planted in cheek on that last statement.)

Despite the fact that my formal training is in design and not in fashion, I do have some observations that I want to make about the state of SL Fashion. I think there are good things about it and I think there are some downright crappy things about it. I'm going to jabber on about both and not in any particular order. The first thing that I take issue with is the pretentiousness of SL Fashion when it comes to fashion bloggers (Ana, you're not included in this, so no worries!). At first blush, it appears that there is a clique that has formed among the bloggers and the designers who are consistently blogged. The general timbre of the clique is as follows:

Fashion Blogger: Oh, Fashion Designer A's styles are to die for! She/he is doing so many unique things with prims or sculpts or the fabric. It's so haute couture it makes me want to pee myself!

This is generally followed by more genuflecting and reverence directed toward Fashion Designer A who blushes, fawns and in general pretends to be humble and thankful, all while pissing and moaning about how awful the bloggers photos were and belittling them and griping about how they should blog their styles even more.

It's pedantic, childish and quite frankly, I think it's a bunch of crap. In all honesty, I can count on one hand the decent SL fashion bloggers (the ones who actually have a clue and who don't cow-tow to the designers for either money or some coattail ride to SLeberity). What I'd like to see is some of these immature, clueless idiots do some research and figure out what good design really is.

You may be thinking that I'm a bitter old crone who is just pissed off about not being blogged enough. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm blogged about as much as I would like to be. It's not too much and it's not too little. I'm happy when it happens, but I don't look for it. And ultimately, I like to be the one who chooses who blogs my designs. I'm not old, either. Bitchy, yes. Old, not really.

The second thing I want to address about the state of SL fashion is that I'm beginning to see crap passed off as quality design. I'm not going to point fingers, but I will say that the shoe market is being glutted by "designers" who purchase sculpt shoes (in many cases quite nice sculpts) and resell them. (I will freely admit that I purchase sculpt shoes from XStreet and inworld as well, but I texture the hell out of them. I like to think I torture them into being something different or that they are at the very least a canvas upon which I paint.) Anyway, these "designers" place the textures which are included in the full perm package, then throw them up on XStreet or rent a spot at a poorly built mall and sell the shoes for $10L to $100L a pop. The same thing happens with clothing. Full perm PSD templates are produced, sold on XStreet, etc. The same thing happened with the skin market. The problem with that is that the skin market is suffering a great deal from this. Ultimately, I don't think this will hurt the shoe market or the clothing market a great deal simply because clothing and shoes can be so different. But skin? Honestly, you have different skin tones and some different make-ups and some specialties and that's about it. One could certainly see why free psd templates of a decent skin could cause problems for this market.

Perhaps in the end it will all even out. Quality will prevail over quantity. There will always be those shoppers who suffer from "Wal-Mart-itis". There will also always be those who will pay whatever price necessary for the latest and greatest regardless of whether it's of high quality or not. A lot of times as designers, I think we screw ourselves over. We get comfortable with our success and decide that a seam showing here or poor shading there is okay because we are who we are. I also think the bloggers who have their noses stuffed up the asses of "high-end" designers perpetuate this myth. Be that as it may, I think for those of us in the SL fashion industry who are true to what we do need to just keep our nose to the grindstone and keep pushing out quality pixelated illusions. I know that's what I'll do. It's me and that's that.

As a final note, I'm beginning to wonder where SL Fashion will go. We can go into SL now and find pretty much anything we want to find that mimics what exists in our RL. Casual, formal, whatever, it's there. The negative part of this is that we get so caught up in trying to find stuff that imitates RL and we forget that SL is a place where we can create some amazing things. I know every now and then, I need a kick in the ass to remind me that it's not always about imitating RL. There's also the problem of some designers whose designs continue to just stay the same. They don't grow and they continue to exist based solely on past reputation and brand. I used to see cool stuff in SL Fashion. Clothing or wearables that made me want to pee myself and say "Holy shit! That's amazing!" Not so much anymore. I'm going to try and change that in what I do. It may not be different or weird or even couture, but I'm hopeful that at the very least I can create amazement with my quality and the things I do with texturing.

Well, I'm done. I thought I'd have something good to say, but I don't. I'll just keep doing what I do and throw some things against the wall. Maybe it'll stick. Maybe it won't.

Shoe Rant

Normally, I'm a pretty nice person. I get along with people and I enjoy witty banter, etc. But something happened recently that has kind of just stuck in my craw and I can't seem to let it go. So, I'll write a bit about it and see if that helps.

It's no secret that I use pre-made sculpts in some of my shoe work. I spend a lot of time searching for sculpts then researching to make sure that the person selling them is indeed the creator. Many times this involves contacting them and establishing some type of client relationship withthem. However, some people suffer from what I like to call Microsoft Tech Support Syndrome.

I purchased a set of sculpt shoes from a particular creator who I had done business with before. The shoes look great in the original ad and I was very pleased that this particular person had begun offering women's shoes. After I purchased them, I tossed them out onto the floor, began the process of texturing them thinking "Wow, these are going to turn out nice." I finished my process, and any of you who have seen my texturing know that I don't just throw a color onto something and call it good. I'm interested in creating an illusion and it's no different with sculpts. I figure a lot of work has gone into making the shoe sculpt so I spend the time trying to perfect it and make it look just right.

I also have some expectations of the sculpt. My first expectation is that it will fit the avatar, possibly with some adjustments. And no, I don't mind adjusting sculpts. Keep in mind that there is only so much that can be done with a sculpt, though. There are no options to twist, shear or bend it the way you can a normal prim. I also expect that I will be responsible for the invisiprim that is invariably needed for a woman's pump. It's the nature of the beast and I don't mind making them. But ultimately, my concern is the texturing and how the final product looks. I also believe that the original creator of the sculpt has something in mind when they are building the sculpt and I respect that. I do try to keep the original intent of the creator in mind. In this case my thought was that the original intent was to have an elegant strappy high-heeled pump that would sit demurely (or as demurely as possible) on the female avatar foot.
Expectations aside, I pulled the shoe back into inventory then attached it to my avatar foot. I adjusted the angle and used my standard high heel system shoe (which works for every other sculpt pump I have purchased and textured, btw). The shoe didn't fit at all. No, not just didn't fit, minor adjustments were not going to fix this shoe. I began tweaking it and in all honesty was a bit peeved because of the time I had put in on texturing the shoe. I thought, "If I can't make this fit, it's not just a waste of my original Lindens, it's a waste of my time. However, I persevered and was able to finally make the shoe fit. The adjustments I made were on the angles of each individual sculpted prim (keeping in mind that they still needed to line up as much as possible so that they still looked like a shoe), I had to get rid of one of the sculpt straps and copy the other so that there were still two, I had to re-adjust the ankle strap size and placement (the avatar ankle is awful, fat, bumpy and fugly) as well as ad a small tag-like strap so that it looked like the ankle strap was being held onto the shoe, and some angle and size adjustments on the midline strap that goes down the middle of the top of the arch.

With that done, I contacted the creator/seller via IM through XStreet SL. I told him that I thought the shoe was beautiful, but not particularly functional and that I had to do a lot of adjustments. I had the audacity, too, to ask if the shoe was actually built around the avatar foot (Which is, my understanding, what most shoe sculpt creators do). The response was less than pleasant.

From the shoe sculpt creator, "Hello.
You're not alone and other people have had problems creating the final product. Frankly I'm quite surprised, as I made the linden shoe shape for one of those heels in five minutes while talking to the customer. I didn't want to go into finishing the product, I thought that's what creators do, I just provided the sculpt prefabs. However, it seems that too many people that like to call themselves the creators lack the necessary skills.

Thus we're working on a second version that will include the invisiprim and linden shoes. The release will be announced on the website (www.xxxxxxxx.com) and in the update group. Please contact me for a free update then. I hope it will be ready before or during this weekend."

I think the thing that irritates me the most is that this person decided that it was everyone else's fault and that they didn't have the necessary skills to actually do what was necessary to fix it. I never asked for a system shoe, I never asked for a new shoe. I simply wanted to contact them and let them know that their product didn't appear to be as advertised. And in my opinion, the picture is what you want to achieve, not some modified version of the picture that ends up looking like something Dr. Frankenstein would have created. So, I decided to drop him a notecard in-world and sent pictures of the differences in the shoe that came out of the box and the modified shoe that I ended up with. His response was to send me a modified version of the shoe along with an SL system shoe. In my IM, again, I didn't ask him for any of that. What I asked for was a demonstration of how to make the shoe fit by using only the SL system shoe. I said that basically if he could show me in five minutes how to make a system shoe that would make his shoe fit out of the box, I would be an evangelist for his product throughout SL and in my stores. For whatever reason, he chose not to take up the challenge. (Maybe because he was full of crap. The shoe won't fit with the system shoe. You have to modify the shoe itself... which he proved in the demo model he sent to me.)

Okay, so, the demo model he sent? Well, I'll let you judge for yourself, but I was like, "Is this a joke?" I put the shoe on with his system shoe and yes it fit, but it made my feet look like a clown's feet. Anyway, I like my final product better than his and I guess that's the point, but what the hell is it with people who want to blame everyone else for their shortcomings? Why not just admit that the shoe wasn't originally built around the avatar foot and move on? It was more important for him to blame others than it was to provide good customer service. He also posted a snide comment on his web site which I'll happily quote. I'm not going to post the site (out of fear that all 1 of my readers will go there!). Anyway... I'm done. Take a look at the pics and let me know what you think. :)

From the original creators web site, "It's funny how some 'creators' think they can earn the cash without much effort or skills. I've been contacted numerous times about the high heels line and about how it doesn't fit the average crippled avatar foot. People expecting to find linden shoes and invisiprim inside the package - although neither was advertised. I suspect most of them being the type "i paint it red, blue, green and make a tartan ones and they'll sell like hell" - well let me tell you some news: They won't. Not until you dedicate the effort to make them perfect, to make them better than the dozens of pieces produced by others that bought the same prefab. If you're too lazy to move and stretch a couple of prims to make the prefab fit your foot, don't expect to be successful designer in Second Life."

My finished advertisement


The Frankenshoe is the huge clown-shoe in the photo.

In the photos, the shoe on the left is the one that was sent after the fact. The one on the right is the original shoe straight out of the box and the middle is my finished shoe. The point is that I wanted to keep the shoe looking like it looked in the advertisement that is up on XStreetSL. I guess the bottom line is that I probably won't buy any more sculpts from this person. Yes, he replaced the original with a modified version (clodhopper size if you will), but his entire demeanor was to blame others and basically make some broad generalizations about creators. Derogatory and snide. I'm not into that. Treat your customers nicely.

Oh, and btw, I released these babies... and I'm happy with how my version of the shoe turned out.

Some new Shizzle!

Crap it's been a long time since I posted. Alright, I'm gonna' blow the lid off this with some new stuff. Sorry it's been so long. But hey, no one reads this baby anyway, right? I just like seeing myself type!

Okay, Cattiva e Cattivo is officially part of the gridwide Bunny Hop Easter Egg Hunt! Join the group and get freebies from over 300 high end shops!

For the ladies - Bikinis! Summer is here damnit. I say so! Get on down and check out 22 colors. That should last you all summer long for those sexy beach liaisons. Sex - eeeeeeeee.
Flickr Stream

Okay, all you shoe whores (I count myself among you, just so you know! :) - Stephanié is the sassy little French vixen and she wears platform style Mary Janes. Nothing says naughty like patent leather and platforms. Stop by the store and get them all... 33 colors! Woot!
Stephanié Flickr Stream

And now for all you shoe pimps... Rockstar! The Chelsea style engineer boot in 7 rock-a-licious colors. Get them. Now! You need them! You want them! They'll make you a rockstar! Seriously! See the pics. OMG, I need to shut up. However, I did have someone tell me that the textures on these will make you shit yourself. Woot!
Rockstar Flickr Stream

More shoe pimpage - Wingtip Oxfords. Okay, for everyone else who isn't a rockstar and needs some conservative business stuff. The classic wingtip has come to Cattiva e Cattivo. 7 colors. Yeah, 7. Had to do something to make them wicked, right? Just get them. Geez!
Wingtip Oxford in Cordovan

French Cuff Shirts baby! These are so wickedly schmexy you'll need to shoo off the ladies (and the gents. *giggle*) Sculpt cuffs and sculpt collar. High end textures. What more could you ask for? Perfect for business or pleasure and they come on every layer!
Eirik (men's French Cuff Dress Shirt) in Egyptian Blue

Yeah! So that's all for now. Have fun and go shop!

Love,
Lissa