Fashion blog ettiquette

How about: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
It's the soul of honesty-Honest Abe Lincoln once said it .

Karl, Congratulations on a great start to your blog.

If I were making a blog like yours the main thing I would aim for would be journalistic integrity. In the long run I think whatever your goals are for the site you'll be able to meet them better if your readers feel that you are giving them useful information. And positive reviews will mean much more if you also include honest assessments of lesser items.

Aside from a couple of tee shirts, I don't offer free clothes at my shops. I'm just not convinced that it would be all that helpful to my particular business. When I do donate items to be used as prizes at special events, or whatever, I give items that I believe are worth what I charge for them at my shop and will be a good advertisement for my work - and a desirable prize.

One might be tempted to assume that Danielle alerted you to her freebie outfit in an attempt to promote her business. In which case it doesn't really make sense that she would use an item that is beneath the usual quality of her work. But it is possible that she was just thinking to provide something that newbies might like for a price they can all afford. And I do think it is a nice outfit, as seen from not too close up, and that for the price there are many newbies, and others, who would like to have it. Even after reading your article.

At this point if I were Danielle I might give you a modifiable version of the pants so that you can see for yourself if the problem is one beyond the control of the designer to overcome, given the SL mesh we have to work with. I would also give you for free some of my better made clothes in hopes that out of fairness you would add your opinion of them to your blog.


Edited to add: "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything." is for social situations. When you are in business, even when you are giving things away, you have to expect your customers to be curious about the truth regarding your product.


And now I want to stand up for myself and all other designers who will not sell non-prim clothes as modifiable.

All I have to sell here is what ever skills I have at making textures and moving sliders. If I allow you to modify clothes you buy from me I am making it easier for you to copy my textures if you want to rip me off.

But more importantly I am selling what I am selling - not a design-your-own kit. I try honestly to make the pictures in my shop look like the items for sale. If you aren't too different from my models they will look similar on you. If they are not what you want I don't want you to buy them. (Sometimes my packages do include, for instance, a "tight" and "looser" version of the same pants.)

If you do buy something from me and are unpleasantly surprised please IM me and I will gladly refund your money.

Good luck with your blog. I think it will be very helpful to many people especially newbies.

A quality freebie need not be the best of any designer's work, yet a representation only.
I wouldn't recommend any designer send in their best as a freebie because face it, that's why we call it our best, and it is your source of income afterall.

The quality freebie can be used as a means of introducing people to your line, getting people to your store and yes, browse the regular priced stuff.

Kaimi....Bravo. Very well written, and well said. Everything you said was spot on. Thank you for saying it.

Thank you Danielle. And I'd like to add my best wishes to you as a fellow designer. Everything you make will not please everyone. Some of my things I've loved the most hardly anyone has bought and other things that I thought would be for kind of a small niche have been best sellers. *shrug* I wish you big success.

I just visited the fashion blog, and one thing I notice is that I cannot find a link that tells me the blog's editorial policies. How does it decide what to review, how does it decide the content of the review, who does the reviewing, and so forth.

There may not necessarily be one best way of deciding what to review and how to review it. But if you want to depend on designers suggesting what you review, then it's fair to let them know what they are getting into.

Additionally, making your editorial policies available helps potential consumers decide how much credibility to place in your blog. It's important to know whether designers are suggesting what items to review, or the reviewer is picking them. It's important to know whether all reviews are published, or only positive reviews. It's important to know whether one person is evaluating and writing the reviews, or if several people are. It's important to know what the reviewer does to determine the product quality.

I don't necessarily agree that the way to go is to give positive reviews only.

However, whatever method you decide to use to create your fashion blog, you should make that method transparent to everyone. You'd get the most value out of it.

Personally, I think Second Life would be much better served by more consumer information. However, of the product-review blogs I've read, all seem to suffer from lack of journalistic standards. Why should I value the blogger's opinion any more than I would value any other random stranger's opinion?

What? I respectfully disagree. There is no way to do that unless you're already using texture ripping software. Mod clothes don't give you a savable template to work with. I can't get a tattoo or a skin in usable form unless I use something else. This is a fallacy. And if you're worried about the textures on prim attachments, I don't need it to be mod to get the UUID. There is no reason to make clothes no-mod.

Actually I didn't. This is what I said:
I have a couple of reservations about the items though. The shirt looks somewhat plain, just a flat texture without much shading or detail visible like collar, buttons, wrinkles etc. The pants are much better (again with the pants being better than the shirts, what is going on?) but there’s a mismatch of seams between the front and back which looks a little odd when viewed from the side, and I REALLY wish they were moddable because they’re about 3 inches too short.

Nowhere here have I said the items were bad or awful or horrible or anything of that sort.

I was about to write to you privately for the gracious way you accepted the constructive criticism and explained the situation with the pants length, and I was going to offer to delete my review. However now I see that you've accused me of saying things about your design that I never actually said, I feel much less inclined to do that.

Please read further....I have a post in this thread that retracts my saying you said horrible, and explains that you described something as awful, and perhaps I had taken that personally and made assumptions.

I would IM the vendor back and suggest they review their product.
If they insist on publication. write it up for what it is.

It honestly hadn't occurred to me that I would need to set any policies at all, I wasn't really expecting anyone to read the blog at all, never mind have designers ask me to review their products. I certainly do not want to end up being "sponsored" by any particular designer, or be in a position where I feel obliged to give a positive review regardless of the quality of the clothing. The moment that happens the blog ceases to be honest, and is of no use to anyone (exept maybe the designers getting free publicity).

I will certainly be writing up and publishing some policies very soon.

IMHO you will be fine if you just do it the way you feel it and allow your style to develop as you go along. The blog is brand new now and is not trying to be the last word or anything. Your readers will take what they will from what you write. As time goes on what and how you are doing what you are doing will be more evident. Then you may or may not want to publish an explanation of whatever guides you.

Yes I understand what you are saying. They aren't going to get my .psd file with all the layers from a modifiable piece of clothing. In fact even if they are very good at texture editing they won't get a very good texture. But from what they can get they could make something with an approximation of the masks and so on which could look a lot like my item from the distance. I don't want poor quality copies of my stuff out there.

But really my main reason is that I am only selling what I am selling - not a starting place for the customer to make it into something else. I do make all my prim clothes and shoes modifiable btw.

Thanks, Kaimi. But they cannot even get a copy of the texture they do not own into inventory. You are not threatened by anyone except the motivated thief running the ripping software. And they don't need it to be mod to get it.

I don't even want them taking a screen shot of the tiny picture that does show... or does it? Well ok I am starting to feel a bit silly now.
But if the only mod they can do is with sliders I don't want them doing it. It will give ragged hems and look awful.
I understand people wanting to get several variations of spmething for the price of one but that is not what I am selling. I want them to buy what I am selling or not buy it at all.

god I so know that feeling heh
I think we all have that experience, just because we think it will be a big seller or it is a great item, doesn't mean others will

I have thought about submitting items to blogs, but never got around to it
then one day a girl was in my store taking pics, so I asked her what she was doing, she said it was for her blog, which of course she gave me a link to, and it was in japanese I think...

anywho after translating it I was pleased to see that she had good stuff to say, she then told me that she loves my stuff and is a big fan of my work (must have been fun for her to meet and talk to me LOL)

I know when I meet and chat with my fav designers it is a nice warm feeling (it is nice to know that I make another feel that way)

so... on that note, I say, keep doing what you do, even if the negative comments are out there, so what, sometimes even negative publicity is good, cuz it just might get folks to the store and they just might buy and like the other stuff they see

can not please everyone..