Review: OPOPOP Design, Mojiska Mesh Shirt (Take Two)

One of the fun things about working with technology is that sometimes, things can go very wrong.  Lightning can strike (twice we discovered, wiping out several mother boards and LAN cards), power can go out, and this week... the blog can start to eat itself.  We apologize for the late posting of this post; we had tried to post this when we first discovered it, then found out from the designer herself that it had never published, despite us spending a couple of days working on the post itself, and three witnesses to me hitting the "Publish" button at the top of the page and seeing it live.  I guess it's like when Facebook decides to make a multipost of your embarrassing response, but in reverse.

Sidenote:  If you're a designer who had requested for us to post something in the last couple of weeks and it is not up yet, please let us know.  It looks like we've had a few other posts eaten as well.

As such, we are bringing you a relatively newer designer, Oursinette Bruun of OPOPOP Designs.  She came to us through one of our blog groups and is trying to expand her shop.  We took a look at some of her designs on the Marketplace and looked at a few of her new Mojiska Shirts.  Ms. Bruun's style overall is veyr hip, young, and is a great overall style to wear out with friends, going to clubs, or shopping.  It is a fun punk and hip style that is popular with teens and young twenty-somethings right now.  The shirt itself is a single mesh shirt, available in nine separate colors (white, blue, yellow, purple, black, cyan, pink, green, and red), and each color comes with five sizes and an alpha layer.  It is a bikini-strap style mini tank top with a mesh-like fabric draping underneath.  Here, we paired it with our favorite Zaara jeans and a pair of heels from SimILar.  It is available inworld or on the Marketplace for L$250 (her full Marketplace store can be found here as well).

While I happen to like the overall design, and believe that Ms. Bruun as a designer holds a lot of promise and potential, we noted a lot of good things, and things that can be improved.  I mentioned in a previous post my own policy on a "bad" review - there is no "bad" review, just a review where I give the collective constructive criticism (eg - here's what we didn't like and here's how to change it) of the team; we aim to either teach or entertain with each of our posts.  What did we like?  I love the overall design of the shirt.  It's youthful, it's fresh, and it has a ton of personality to it.  Wear this and you can easily make a statement and look great at the same time.  It's also very versatile.  You can pair this with almost anything else and it will still look just as good, and it will work for any number of occasions you would like it to.

There are a few improvements, and much of them revolve around the mesh itself.  While I like the overall design, the mesh shape itself needs some work.  If you look at the pictures, there are areas where there are large gaps from the body where the shirt should be close, specifically, in the back and around the breasts.  This can be fixed, I believe, by adapting to the Standard Sizing that is starting to be used by more and more designers (including Bitch Tails - thank you Tiff Renfold for making the switch!).  Yes, the transparent portion under the bra is meant to be the shape it is - keep it that way.  Just, the shirt would benefit a lot if the mesh is designed around the standard sizing shapes (which, the shapes themselves are easily available on the Marketplace for free - a great way to create a perfect standard sizing shape using your own shape's numbers to start).  Another idea to "fix" the gaps in the bra portion of the mesh is to offer it as a partial mesh creation - have the shelf bra as a textured layer, and the actual transparent skirt portion of the shirt as the mesh.  That way, you get a tight fit to the skin and are able to have a draped portion from the body that moves with the body well.

It is also of note that I believe that she does design her own mesh, which is also very commendable of her to take this on.  Many designers that I can see who are using mesh are using premade mesh kits and only applying their textures to it.  It is a truly innovative designer who will use her own meshes from scratch.

If you are going to purchase this as is, I am including some tips for getting it to fit a bit better.  First, we had to go ahead and adapt my own shape to the standard sizing shapes linked above.  The shapes are free, and are available for everyone.  It's a good idea to get the standard sizing shapes anyway because ultimately, the everyday fashionista is going to have a need for them.  Or, you can follow their guide, also on the link above, as to how to shape your own avatar shape (there's only eight points really you need to change for fit).  Here, I sized my avatar to the Small standard sizing and then wore the small mesh size.  I also noticed that to get the bra to fit better in the front, I had to dramatically decrease my torso length (to 0), and dramatically increase my breast buoyancy (up to 100).  Once I changed these numbers on my own shape, it looked a lot closer to Ms. Bruun's shape in the official sales photo.

Overall, it's a great design from a great designer that really deserves some recognition for her hard work.  She can only keep improving from here, and I look forward to reviewing more of her even better work in the future.

Overall:  8/10 because of the mesh, 9.5/10 for the texture

Pros:  Great overall look, versatile, good construction

Cons:  Mesh gaps in the wrong places, alpha needs some work.