Fitmesh Me

I've done a complete flip-flop on what kind of clothes I look for.  Previously I was using a system body with a flat chest, and system clothes worked very well for a flat chest, provided I could find sytem clothing that was high quality.  Mesh clothing was generally much better looking, but I had to be wary of how much of a chest was built into the design.  Only a very few designers provided a flat-chest version of their clothes, but for quite a few designs the XXS or XS could provide a reasonably small chest.  Fitmesh, on the other hand, would always provide a concave chest on my flat-chested character -- I hated fitmesh.

Now that I'm using a Maitreya Laura mesh body (even though I bought the Slink body also, as soon as I picked up the Maitreya I haven't worn anything else), everything's reversed.  I can't set my chest to 0, that still does the concave thing, but a reasonably small chest works well, and I've discovered that fitmesh designed for the Maitreya body will almost always fit perfectly.  I never have to worry about a "built-in" larger chest, and the look is better than anything you can achieve with regular mesh and the default SL body.  I'm absolutely sold, and now I avoid standard-sized clothing (and of course system clothing) like the plague.  If it doesn't show the Maitreya logo, I won't buy it.

It's kind sad that we've come to this in a way, since there are some nice alternative bodies out there, but finding clothing for them is the problem.  Maitreya has the same advantage that Windows had from the late 80's forward -- everyone designs for it.  You can find clothing for the Maitreya body everywhere.  Usually people design for Belleza and Slink as well, and maybe TMP -- but some designs are exclusively Maitreya.  If you want the most clothing options, Maitreya seems your best bet.

Some random pictures from the last month.  First two from the Crystal Heart fair/festival/thing.

Slink Physique and Maitreya Laura -- Small Chest Versions

I kind of do the Second Life thing in spurts -- so I got back into SL in July, after ignoring it for months.  Of course, I've been doing the flat chest thing for a while with the default avatar, but slowly I've tried out various mesh avatars -- first the Utilizator 2.0, which I really like especially now that it had a flat chest options, but which still is pretty limited in terms of clothing, skins, and that anime face that I don't really like much.  I tried out the Kenmono AV as well, but it's got the same limitations.  I tried the CMFF Mbody, and I liked that one quite a bit -- you can't really go flat-chested with any of the more realistic female mesh bodies, but the Mbody was fairly petite and seemed to suit me well.  But again, there just aren't many skin or clothing options.

So last week I decided to break down and pick one of the more popular mesh avatars.  I found that the Slink Physique AV was considered somewhat petite, and I could reduce the breasts to somewhere in the range of 22-35% and they were small without deforming (on most mesh bodies and fitmesh clothing, breasts turn into craters in your chest if you drop them much below 20%, so unlike the default SL avatar, it's impossible to have a flat chest -- unless the mesh body is built that way to start with, as the Utilizator 2.0 flat chest option is.)

I've been having a lot of fun buying clothing for this new Slink Physique body.  It's been a little weird looking for exactly the things I used to avoid -- clothing designed for specific popular mesh bodies, clothing  that is fitmesh.  Fitmesh on my old flat-chested SL avatar would do the crater-chest thing, so it was never an option, but with a reasonably small chest fitmesh is now one of my best options, because it will always display a very modest chest instead of a massive one (with standard sizing, I always needed to be careful of the clothing design -- some designs had a large chest built-in, even for the smallest sizes).  Of course, with clothing designed specifically for the Slink Physique body,  the fit is almost perfect, and you can do some really cool wraps and clothing cuts that simply were never an option on a default avie.  So overall I'm loving the new Slink Physique body.

However... I went to Collabor 88 last night, and I ran across the display for The Secret Store.  I really like their stuff, and some of it worked really well for my flat-chested avatar in the past.  They're now designing exclusively for mesh avatars, no more standard sizing, and I'm down with that since I have this new mesh AV.  But they're also including a flat chest option -- pretty awesome from my perspective, yes?  Except that it's a flat chest option for the Maitreya Laura body.

Is this a thing?  I was really excited for a few minutes but eventually I realized that no, there is no Maitreya flat-chested avatar being sold.  It's just that Maitreya Laura is the most popular female mesh body by a wide margin.  I believe the Slink bodies (there are two) come in second, especially if you count them as one, but in any case Slink has an advantage in that designers are already used to designing for their hands and feet, so there are a lot of designers who design for Maitreya and Slink, and maybe 1 or 2 of the other options.  Anyway, the point is that Maitreya Laura is something like half the market, so it's not really that they're designing anything for the flat-chest or small-chest crowd per se, it's just that most of those trying to adapt a mesh avatar to a flat chest/small chest look are working with the Maitreya.

Thus you get The Secret Store designing clothing for a flat-chested Maitreya, since that's where that particular market is.  This presents me with a possible problem -- as happy as I've been with the Slink body and how well it seems to suit me, maybe I should have bought the Maitreya instead?  I picked up a demo last night and checked it out -- I decided I could get a similar look to my current one with that body, and that might give me more flat-chest clothing options, but this would also be another outlay of some 3,000 lindens to buy the body itself and skin appliers, etc.  So I dunno.

I picked up a Maitreya Laura avatar tonight.  At least I didn't have to buy hands and feet separately.  :P  The controls seem a bit more intuitive than Slink as well.

I have to admit this was on a whim based just on The Secret Store designing clothing for a flat-chested Maitreya -- and they haven't really been doing it that long so there's not a lot of clothing to pick from.  I found that, to make the clothing work, I had to reduce the breasts to 17%, which certainly deforms them slightly.  They look weird when naked, and I don't think system clothing like bras on the tattoo or clothing layers will look right.  But the goal here is to look good in flat-chested clothing built for the Maitreya body, and I managed that, I think.

This is at an art gallery sim called Fractal Insanity in Timamoon Arts, displaying digital art by Milly Sharpie.  I was just looking for a place to pose my character, but the art is pretty cool to look at.  ^_^  This is the Maitreya Laura body, with clothing from The Secret Store (Emma Set, Black Stripes, and shoes from Mesh Head, Gina Studded Heels.  Skin is my normal Pink Fuel Kumi Hazel, Spellbound Solome II hair).

Another store that does a lot of flat chest options is G Fields.  They do not design specifically for any mesh bodies, but do standard sizing with usually an XS flat chest, although some of their newer things have a whole range of standard size flat chest versions of items from L to XXS.  Pictured above is my Slink Physique body with the G Fields Sweet Blouse "Vanilla" in blue gray, with G Fields Frill Shorts in Lilac, Sweet Tea tights that are on sale this week, and #EMPIRE Cosmos boots (totally Sailor Moon boots with a color hud) that I bought at the Crystal Hearts festival a week ago.  The picture was taken in A Watercolor Wander, Lea12.

I like the GF clothing, so I spent quite a bit there tonight.  I want to support designers who go to the trouble of making clothing with a flat chest look.  Bare Rose has been doing this for a while now and has hundreds of outfits -- I've bought quite a few.  But with Bare Rose you get a certain kind of outfit -- usually fantasy or anime themed, often designed as an oversized "one size fits all" approach.  That's why I'm glad to see other designers following suit and designing flat-chested stuff now.  ^_^

This is the Slink body again, Floral Off Shoulder Pullover from Mesh Head, Addams Sonia Pleated Skirt in white, Sweat Tea tights, and those same #EMPIRE Sailor Moon boots.

Same outfit, different top -- Stars Fashion Lynn top.  This is a great example of the type of top that you really can't pull off well with the default SL body.  I think for this one I may have my breasts set as high as 35% -- still small, but definitely not flat.