Shop Free*Style: It's Real

Shop Free*Style is coming soon!  Our first store will be open to the public on February 27!  We have kicked into high gear and the store will be full of great bargains brought to you by many of our favorite designers.  I am a huge architecture buff and Frank Lloyd Wright is one of my favorites.  I share this passion with architect and mesh creator, Tobias Convair.  Tobias, along with his partner, Daphne Klossovsky, are the owners and creators for HANDverk, which specializes in spectacular hand-crafted mesh items for both home and avatar.  Tobias' design for Shop Free*Style was inspired by the Goetsch-Winckler House near Lansing, MI, which embodies Wright's Usonian style.  I'm trying to not get all bookish on you so I've provided links for you factoids.  The build contains room for 108 vendors; there is also a skybox version because we are going to need at least 2 floors to house all the items we will offer.  This amazing build has a minuscule land impact of 60 and soon HANDverk will be offering a similar version for sale at their main store.  It's so cool! You go, Toby!

Here is a bit of a peek at the store interior.  The empty rectangles will be filled with vendors, leaving lots of room for shoppers to move about.  I love how the horizontal windows let in lots of light.

Key points about Shop Free*Style:

• Designers will be offering items at 3 price points:
• L$ 0/1
• L$ 25
• L$ 50
• Why isn't everything free since we are called Free*Style: Straight up, we've never been all about freebies. Back when we started the blog there were not that many places to get good freebies.  You either went to those large scale freebie warehouses that offered mostly hideous items that many of us are still trying to evacuate from our inventories... or you trolled the grid for an occasional store gift.  We now have numerous grid hunts at any given time, lucky chairs, midnight manias, event giveaways, more group slots, etc. so it's easy to look great for little or no Lindens, as evidenced by the plethora of freebie blogs these days.  At Free*Style we are pro-designer.  We have cultivated lovely relationships with many designers and we know how much effort goes into their creations.  We want to honor that, as well as offer amazing value for frugalistas, by allowing designers to recoup some of their cost for the items.  We endorse the designers who are participating in the shop and want them to stick around SL for a long time. Off my soapbox.
• Some of the items are available as gatchas.  They are fun; you can trade; and it allows us to offer more items in a one prim vendor.  
• We are not requiring items for the store to be brand new or exclusive but expect them to be current.  I'm expecting fabulous.  Sileny will be doing a post soon about our participating designers. 
• Nobody at Free*Style is profiting from the store.  The land and builds have been generously donated and the vendor spaces are free. 
• We have opportunities to expand: Our second location should be open March/April! 

More details soon!