Blacklace is Back

Mariska Dufour (nee Simons), owner and designer of ~Blacklace~ has a brand new region.

Mariska started in SL shortly after i entered the scene in 2006 and immediately made a name for herself as one of the premiere lingerie designers. of course, at that point in the game designers were restricted to painting on severely limiting UV maps (512x512 pixels) for both the upper and lower segments of the blocky triangulated system avatar. high resolution meshes of today were only a dream back then. but, oh what evocative clothing the best of the SL fashion imagineers could adorn our cartoon characters with.

Mariska's texturing, then and now has always been superlative. she quickly rose to the top and her label was admired and saught after grid wide with many bloggers promoting their adoration. unfortunately, when mesh came about she seemed to disappear from the must have list.

the transition from painting system avatar textures to full on 3D mesh designer saw many of our most famed fashion designers fall off the map. it was no longer enough to just texture, no matter how life like and sensational, the SL market is unforgiving and lustful for the newest thing. the advent of high resolution poly models required skillsets that continue to boggle my mind. staying on top of the game, if you didn't have the many years of experience with 3D software, would require a massive reeducation.

add to that all the confusion over where the brand new development was going, enduring alpha masking, non-standard sizing, proprietary meshes competing for market share, let alone the terrifying economic crash of the day; it was a trying time. coming through all the birthing pains and overwhelming technological leaps was no small feat. everyone challenged then, including Mariska, had to adapt or die.

she carried on texturing using the applier tech but i was never a big fan of that. years went by without any indication she was even dabbling in creating her own mesh. there was that collaboration in Blacklace Lounge but that just wasn't her. so, it was a great pleasure when i tumbled into a fashion blogger promoting some of Mariska's new mesh designs. i immediately searched for her store, looked over her Flickr, scoured all available resources to find out everything i may have missed of her return.

i found there's still her satelite rental location. that mostly has her applier designs, so too with her Marketplace store. her Flickr page wasn't outrageously hyping her foray into designing and texturing fitted mesh. she advertised a new location, but no link.

and then one day, it happened. her profile Links changed to include her new sim landmark. i was there in an instant oggling all her vendors looking for all the meshy goodness i could find, trying on the demos and luxuriating over the fine crisp details only mesh can give.

i bought a bunch of what i think are her most appealing mesh sets to play with. come by and see. i'm sure if you loved her then, you'll love her now.

The Heavy - How You Like Me Now

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wearing: Group Gift (99L$ to join) floral pack.