Strangers Things

Ever since I discovered Second Life about a year and a half ago, my TV has been playing second fiddle. During a two-week visit to my home country, I found myself without a stable internet connection, but with access to an extensive library of TV-series and movies. I finally started on Game Of Thrones (better late than never) and as soon as I was back in my own habitat, I bought myself an iPad to watch the rest of the series and by doing so I greatly improved my daily commute.

With GoT out of the way, I set my sights on the Netflix’s original series Stranger Things.  This series is being described as a love letter to the ’80s classics that captivated a generation. Stranger Things is set in 1983 Indiana, where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As everybody frantically starts searching for the little boy, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very peculiar little girl.

I thought it would be fun to answer that old question “what the hell am I going to wear today,” by drawing some inspiration from this series. It’s the eighties, what could go wrong? Well, for one thing, doors could be too narrow for my shoulder pads and I might turn into Joan Collins… Then again, it’s the early eighties, those still had a whiff of the late seventies to them and that’s a good thing, right?

The first outfit is based on what Will Byers was wearing when he disappeared. Bodywarmers aren’t quintessentially  an eighties thing, as they keep coming and going through the decades. The good thing about the one from Lenox, is that you can wear it on your bare chest for a sexy yet rather illogical look, or you can combine it with one of their shirts, like the plaid one in the image, to stay close to Will’s outfit. I’ve even combined this with sweaters from other creators and it worked fine, though it’s a case of trial an error. For jeans I went with a pair from Riot and the sneakers are a gacha item from Semller. They actually have two Stranger Things gacha sets, would you believe it! These sneakers are only available for the TMP en Slink mesh bodies, but as they are high top sneakers and partly covered by the jeans, you can pop off your feet so in this case it works with any mesh body. Here I’m using the Belleza mesh body with the Catwa Stanley mesh head.

My next outfit is inspired by the somewhat preppy cool kid character Steve Harrington. It’s a nice example of how, even if people don’t have to wear a uniform, they sometimes create one for themselves. For Steve this quite often consists of a bomber jacket, a high quality sweatshirt, a pair of chinos and sneakers. The Stranger Things gacha sets at Semller that got me the sneakers, eventually also coughed up this rare bomber jacket with a sweatshirt, complete with a hud containing 11 colours for the jacket, 8 for the sweater and 4 zipper options. The Sweater is an add on, so perhaps it will work with some other jackets as well. Oddly it’s only available for the TMP body, but it seems to be working nicely with Signature. The trousers are the Dean chinos from Cold Ash which were a bit of a pain to combine with any pair of sneakers without clipping issues. Eventually I found a pair of white canvas sneakers from Invictus in the back of my virtual shoe closet. Style wise these were not exactly what I was looking for, but technically they were my best option.

The sherpa trucker jacket features heavily in Stranger Things as several of the series’ characters wear different versions of it. The denim jacket from Lenox is a nice SL example of this iconic piece of clothing. It combines perfectly with their t-shirt pack, so you won’t be looking long and hard for something to wear with it. Be warned though, while the jacket comes also in a Belleza size, the t-shirt does not, so you may not be able to create this combination with the Jake body. Always (always!) demo before you buy, and also: friends don’t lie! Dark blue Riot jeans and light brown sneakers from Versov complete this look. I do wish I had this kind of jacket in a dark red with a bold striped T-shirt, but the fastest way to unhappiness in SL is to go look for something very specific.

With this little project out of the way, I know impatiently wait for season 3 of Stranger Things to start.

Some credits: outfit one uses the Belleza body with Catwa Stanley head, outfits two and three both use the Signature body and head. Both hair styles are from Stealthic.