145: Hair Fair 2015, the Rusty way

A&A: Hercules (not from Hair Fair)

Hair Fair 2015 was a tough sim to get into -- it took me nearly a week before I could even cross the border, and then I crashed a bunch of times in the next hour of wandering around. But I was determined to keep going ... okay, I have to admit it, I'm kind of a hair addict. And sure, it was a good cause, yada yada, but frankly I just wanted an excuse to go out and get some new hair.
   Now, in the last few days,

Damselfly: Park (Tuxedo)

I've been seeing a lot of stuff from SL bloggers complaining that they jump through a lot of hoops to affiliate themselves with certain designers and then get dropped for any or no good reason. I have to admit, the lady who complained that she got dumped for not posting often enough when she was actually in the hospital was right on the money; I'd be pissed too.
   But you know, it's never occurred to me to "affiliate" myself with a designer. Sure, it means you get free stuff; I gave up looking for free stuff in Second Life a

Sage: Andre (Crow)

few years back, when I realized it was usually more trouble to sort and try on than it was to use. I'm the type of guy who thinks, "Oh, I need a winter sweater to go with those black pants" and goes and buys one on Marketplace or when I see one in a store ... but I think it's safe to say that I have a specific style of dressing. It's very simple, not particularly revealing, not really in bright colours. I don't think dressing myself from a single store's products would suit me, and if I affiliated myself with a store, I wouldn't

Phoenix: Jaden

feel that I looked like myself for the most part. I only blog about a piece of clothing when I'm particularly pleased with it, and I think I have more credibility that way. And I buy my own things, thanks. Bloggers who are required to be enthusiastic about everything that comes from a single designer (or else the designer will shut off the flow of free stuff) seem to me to be rather like self-employed sales flyers, and I throw sales flyers in the garbage.
   So that brings me to Hair Fair. I went

Exile: Future Outcasts

to Hair Fair, looked around, and bought quite a few pieces of hair. I came home and tried them all on; some I liked more, some I liked less. Some had problems that I hadn't expected. I paid for them myself and I get to talk about them honestly. And I thought I'd do a little photo shoot that showed them all off and gave the average guy, like myself, an idea of what they were likely to find at Hair Fair.
   I did this shoot by calling up the internal search engine and typing in "barber shop"; the first result was

Uw:St: Robin

maintained by a group called "Haircutting Fetishists Role Play", and you can find it here. I started with an old hair of mine from A&A to give you an idea of something that I think suits me; at the end I'll show you the hairbase underneath it all.
   From the top: Park, from Damselfly, is a nice short haircut. A little bit high in the front but that tends to suit me, since I have a large head (slider at 85) and usually bump up the hair size at least 15% when I can. I'd wear this one with a business suit.

Bade: Micha

   Andre, from Sage (the colour name is Crow) didn't really work well for me; I think that's because I wear jet black hair and you can't see the detail like you could in a lighter colour. But I also couldn't seem to get the hair size correct. This is one of those ones where you shrug and think "Oh well" and put it in a folder marked "Emergencies only". It's fair enough, would be good in a role-play type situation; just that it didn't look perfect and a few minutes' fussing didn't fix it.
   Jaden, from Phoenix, is a nice-

Tableau Vivant: Last Train Home

looking hair if you wear hats. I like to have a hair like this to match up reasonably with the A&A hair at the top of this post -- remove the hat and do a quick change to the longer hair that is purportedly underneath. This one comes with a HUD to change the hat colour, which is useful. If you prepare in advance it can be quite a good quick-change effect; I'll keep this one in an active folder of hair.
   Future Outcasts, from Exile, is an excellent long-hair look. I think Exile do a good job with long hair and I like

Analog Dog: Sassafras

wearing my hair long; I have a few of theirs and this is really the nicest of them all. It just looks like you could grab a handful and it would be thick and strong. There's the usual problem with pieces of hair that seem to go through the body, which is almost unavoidable, but the hair's motion is very nice and it's hard to see that little issue. This goes to the top of my folder of long hair.
   Next is the Robin hair from Uw:St, which I think is a company I used to know as UncleWeb. (If I'm wrong, comment please.) There's something

The hairbase underlying these cuts

about this one that I liked a lot; Alex Thaub liked it too, as he likes me in this length of hair, and keeping the BF happy is important!. Hard to say if this is 60s or 70s or even 80s -- it's definitely not a 2015 length, but I'm a little old-fashioned that way. Top marks for this one.
   The Micha hair from Bade -- I didn't seem to get a good picture of this one, but I'm not sure I'll be wearing it much anyway. The little topknot at the back is the way I brush my hair back at the gym in real life to keep it out of the way, but that's not something I do a hell of a lot in SL. I bought it because it reminded me of my real hair; I forgot in Second Life I'm not restricted to my real hair. (Remember that I'm grabbing this hair and crashing constantly, so my decisions are made quickly.)
   Last Train Home from Tableau Vivant: there's something odd about this hair on the short side of the part, and when I sized it up enough to fit my enormous head LOL, it just didn't seem correctly proportioned. Frankly this is just a hair for someone who's av is bringing off a much younger look than mine; it's good hair, just doesn't suit me like I thought it might.
   Finally, the Sassafras hair from Analog Dog was stepping out a little bit for me -- this is female hair. But I've wanted a nice long curly "Italian" mop for quite some time and not found anything quite to my taste; I sized it up and it fits fine. If you look closely you can see a flag sticking out of my head; that's because this is a demo hair. I couldn't get back into Hair Fair to go and get the actual hair, but I intend to: I may not wear this hair all that often but I'm sure I'll find a use for it. Again, like all long hair, this one tends to weave through the body a bit, but it has a nice bouncy, springy quality to it that tends to draw the eye away from the problems.
   Finally, I wanted to show you that there was a pretty standard hairbase underneath all these cuts. I suspect there might be a hair designer reading this and thinking, "Oh, SURE he didn't like the hair, he didn't use the custom base I included!" Okay, if you did, I apologize. But that's why I included this shot; designers, this is how people actually use your hair. They don't have time to carefully switch hairbases if they're doing a quick change ... Unless there's something totally wrong, I'll just try to make it work with the base I'm wearing. Sorry to burst your bubble.
   I do feel sorry for the fashion bloggers who are having all the problems with designers. But, you know, if you pay for the stuff you talk about, you can say what you like -- no need to be vicious, of course, just do a consumer report that's going to do a favour for the next person who might be about to, say, wander through Hair Fair. And if any designers object to what I've said here, they can comfort themselves with the fact that I paid retail. I actually left out a couple of pieces I picked up as gifts from Hair Fair; I didn't like them and won't be wearing them, but it seems a bit churlish to complain about a gift, so I've merely omitted them.
   Hair Fair is running for a week or two longer -- everyone in SL wears hair, it's fun to look around and see what the latest styles are like, and a lot of the proceeds go to a charitable good cause. Check it out.