Requiem for a Suit

Location: 5th and Oxford Main Store

With this week's conference, Virtual Worlds: Best Practices in Education looming, I felt an overwhelming need to look professional.

I like supporting Second Life's merchants, who have had a tough time during a real-world economic recession.  My hunt this year for a good suit was a short one, given my reading of the hilariously tongue-in-cheek fashion blog, Look at These F*ucking SLipsters.  The blog highlighted the Madison Avenue suits from a firm called 5th and Oxford.

Menswear is hard to find in Second Life, and it is harder to love. I don't want my avatar to be a tattooed love-boy fresh off his motorcycle. That's ludicrous. But a good suit? A suit that Don Draper might wear in Mad Men? Now you are talking.

Arriving at the store, I found every item reduced to 50 Linden Dollars. They are closing. I snapped up all three shades of the suit and an all-black outfit with turtleneck that might have been worn by Andy Warhol.  Shops in virtual world close for many reasons, but this is final: the items will vanish from the grid soon. What happened? I've asked the shop owner in-world and at her blog. Copybotting? Anger at Linden Lab? A new venue outside SL?


Come what may at the conference, my virtual self will have a good suit on thanks to 5th & Oxford. Sorry to see you go; I hardly got to know you. So gents, if you want a good suit, get over to the store now.