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M A Y Phenomenal Women 2010 Edition
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The Difference Between Men and Women
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Find the newest fashion trend before you’re left in the back of the closet.
The age old question: What the hell is she/he thinking?
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Getting REAL with Chloie
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He’s afraid to commit. She’s confused. HIS SIDE|HER SIDE
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Fashion Consolidated: Honey Fairweather How an idea became one of the largest marketing tools on the grid
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I.Q. Fashion Genius Our Fashion Editor uncovers Kenzie & Co.
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The Perfect Combination: Solange Benoir The newest frontier for communication and project management is here: Pulse Point Marketing, LLC.
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PREVIEW TRES BEAU’S NEW
Maniera Collection
Q-Tips
Secret Diary of a Hopeless Romantic The Personal Experience of Hindsight
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Tres Beau’s Maven Kimmera Madison Kimmera Madison’s obsession and the evolution of fashion
Maniera Magazine’s Phenomenal Women 2010 Honey Fairweather Kimmera Madison Solange Benoir in Tres Beau’s
“MANIERA” Gown Cover by AtomicSparkle Skytower
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Tres Beau’s Fashion Maven Written by Carey DeCuir Photography by Barney Roundel
Kimmera Madison came to the beta version of Second Life™ with a
friend on May 15, 2003 and became one of Second Life™’s earliest residents. Madison was a content creator at the time, doing various freelance work in both graphic art and content creation for Blizzard and EA Games. She also created content for Activeworlds.com and There.com. So it is hardly surprising that she found an immediate fascination for design work in Second Life™. Given her background, it is easy to see why her beautiful fashion designs are often pushing both the technical and artistic boundaries of Second Life™. Originally, Madison found the Linden supplied clothing “rather boring” and noted that “there weren’t many clothes designers back then, but those that were there, were awesome.” But, she also quickly points out that she “had her own ideas, so I just made them.” “Back then we did a lot of dance clubs, there wasn’t a whole lot else,” Madison said, laughing. “I’d wear something I made and get asked where they could buy it. So, I started with a single vendor, with 5 outfits outside a friend’s club on a 512 parcel. I then ‘expanded’, got my own free 512 and set up a gazebo that became the first Tres Beau ‘shop.’ That was in 2004, and I now own two sims.”
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Madison also owns two other clothing stores well worth the visit. M’Ladys offers very elegant and often formal Victorian clothing created under the name of Teaa Demina. A Copper Fer Yer Fancy is a medieval shop which has lots of fun and sometimes naughty items created under the name of Gimme Tapioca. Madison uses Photoshop, Maya and Zbrush to create her designs. Her creations run through a variety of fashions from beautiful gowns to elegant casual to just fun to wear clothes. Madison’s talent is in creating clothes that “just feel so right” they flow around the body, complimented by colors and patterns that blend seamlessly into a flawless fashion statement.
things that made huge impacts in the clothing we wear today. “Back in the day, we rarely wore attachments, everything was on system layers. So, figuring out we could attach multiple prims to bodies to using flexis to exploring sculpties to the ingenuity of some amazing visual souls in here, just blows my mind.” Madison also notes the irony in that “when flex attributes came out, the days of static skirts were GONE. Now we have sculpts, and they don’t move so we have sort of gone full circle.”
“Designing for me is sort of like..... an obsession.” - Kimmera Madison, Tres Beau
“Designing for me is sort of like...an obsession,” Madison said. “I am always getting ideas, my external hard drive is overflowing with textures and inspirational pictures, I’m bad. I never know when the idea will strike. I have a dress named White Linen ...that came to me in a dream. I do the Victorian designs because it sates my need for overly abundant fluff.” Madison is reputedly the first to design a wedding gown in Second Life™ and the gowns she currently has available are to die for. Fortunately, you can just buy one without having to go through the pain of a virtual death to get it.
And looking into the future? Madison believes the up-coming 3-D mesh technology will provide the next big advancements in fashion design, especially if they institute collision control and allow for flexi attributes. Right now there is a lot of chatter in the blogs about mesh development, and it is in the stages of deciding how it will be used in-world.
In all, visiting Madison’s fashion sim is a wonderful experience. There are so many things to choose from; things that are both elegant and different from many of the other designers in Second Life™ toMadison has been a major player in the day. Tres Beau is a highly recommended fashion industry, almost since its incep- experience and well worth the visit. tion. She watched Second Life™ fashions evolve and was party to many of those 22
T he M a n iera C o llecti o n
“Phe” by Tres Beau Maniera Model: tonya coppola PHOTO BY BARNEY ROUNDEL
“Solange” by Tres Beau Maniera Model: Jannah Kohnke PHOTO BY ATOMICSPARKLE SKYTOWER
“Tick Tock” By Tres Beau Maniera Model Elissiana Caproni PHOTO BY ATOMICSPARKLE SKYTOWER
“Honey” By Tres Beau Maniera Model MELINDA JENSEN PHOTO BY ATOMICSPARKLE SKYTOWER
“Topaz (GOLDEN)” By Tres Beau Maniera Model Gloria Gabe PHOTO BY Barney Roundel
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The Perfect Combination: Solange Benoir of Pulse Point Marketing, LLC.
Written By Nox Deigan Photography by Maddy Michalski
Marketing can make or break a company. In Second Life™, that is no exception, and something Solange Benoir of Pulse Point Marketing, LLC picked up early in her Second Life™ after the organization she worked for in real life rolled in with another organization due to the economy. “I can look around for something, but boy, I really liked Second Life,” said Benoir. “So I started working in here and taking on freelance healthcare projects, and some projects took me to other locations. I’d go away, work on a project, come back. When my husband found himself unemployed in August, I knew I’d need to take something during the day.” With almost twenty years of experience in healthcare starting in the early ‘90s and years working in corporation advertising and promotions, Benoir created Pulse Point Marketing, LLC (PPM) which works primarily with educational institutions and non-profits though they also work with corporations and businesses on a lesser scale. PPM became an official company in February 2008 with its first client, the web
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developer for Lexus of Las Vegas, the following March, to promote a show room for Lexus vehicles in Second Life™. However, Benoir places emphasis on universities because they are one of the early adopters of new technology. Benoir operates as the president and project manager of PPM, with her husband, Dante Honi, balancing out PPM’s executive team as CEO and project manager. However, Benoir exhibits a natural leader’s charisma. Her words are carefully chosen which she attributes to dinners as a child when her father would bring home business partners. “In working with people on our teams in other countries or clients, there’s a switch that went off in my head,” Benoir explained. “I was just using language a whole lot differently and that’s exactly why, and I think one of the things I bring to the table is communication liaison if you will; not from stand point of spoken word but also concepts.” Building on this new way to communicate via a virtual medium, PPM takes a different approach to marketing that traditional marketing companies are just beginning to
utilize which sets Benoir a few years ahead of her competition. While Benoir loves to write the material, she notes that writing is a dying art. The real marketing in Second Life™ is the construction of sims and the promotion of clients via a more creative alternative compared to the days of press releases and writing. “We don’t do a lot of marketing these days because it’s fleeting,” said Benoir. “It’s not like real life marketing.”
tored in weekly meetings. One of PPM’s largest clients is Layola Marymount University which currently houses four sims in Second Life™, all developed under the watchful eye of Benoir and PPM. Another client, George Mason University, utilized PPM to develop a closed sim designed to study people’s reactions and motivations to real life disaster situations. The simulation even includes a tornado scenario. With over 10,000 lines of code,
“In working with people on our teams in other countries or clients, there’s a switch that went off in my head. I was just using language a whole lot differently and that’s exactly why, and I think one of the things I bring to the table is communication liaison if you will; not from stand point of spoken word but also concepts.” - Solange Benoir While the techniques of real world marketing may be fleeting in Second Life™, PPM promotes new ways to reach audiences and clients in order to help them utilize their resources to the fullest potential through project management. PPM’s services include search engine optimization, sim development, social media interfacing and corporate communications. Their team boasts a wide variety of talents, including a partnership with MaMachinima to produce video feeds for clients. The proof of PPM’s success lies in the sims they build, however. Every prim, every script contributes to the environment of the client’s desires which is moni-
it becomes the closest to artificial intelligence seen in Second Life™, Benoir commented. “You go where you can sell and for us we go with universities because that’s where we can sell. When somebody says ‘Let me see your work,’ that helps facilitate it. It just keeps self-perpetuating. One client that asked me to work on the grant said we are so lucky that we found you because you understand how universities work. You can work with us on the systems we’re working on which comes from my corporate background. I understand the politics. It’s all the perfect storm; the perfect combination.”
Solange BenoiR, President of Pulse Point Marketing
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