I have been gone for a while but hopefully, this will make up for that. As everyone knows I love to shop and I am also obsessive compulsive about my inventory. I try very hard to keep it organized and tidy so that I can find things with ease. While also deleting things that are unnecessary. A long time about before Marz was even a thought and I was on my first account (yes I did have another one) I found a handy tool, the CTS Wardrobe. Now at that time, I had no drive to learn it but played with it enough to know that I wanted to learn it. Fast forward to Marz and suddenly the urge to learn it hit.
For those that do not know what the CTS Wardrobe is, to put it simply it is a visual inventory. You use the tools that it provides to catalog things in your inventory. From clothes to buildings to everything in between it will work to show you things faster simpler and more efficient than scrolling through your inventory for textures or worse yet having to rez or wear an item. The fun part is if you want to use RLV you can wear your items straight from your wardrobe. I personally tend to dress straight from the wardrobe rather than my inventory now.
With a website version and an actual wardrobe that you can rez in world it makes it really easy to access and use. I love mine and I use it daily. It is one of the top things I recommend to ANYONE on sl, it really is a must-have. Here are some links to read a bit more from the creator herself.
CTS Wardrobe Overview
Working Demo
Tutorial
RLV Tutorial
The last two links are all on how to set the wardrobe up. I will admit it does have a learning curve and I am forever learning more about mine.
Before I get into how I have mine set up I have to say, I am NOT an expert on this thing. What I have works for me and I don't have issues for what I use mine for (which is basically clothes). There is probably a lot I need to learn still and that is OK. Without further ado here is how I have mine set up and how I function with my Wardrobe.
My first bit of advice is to organize your inventory, having a system of organization helps. It is the foundation of your wardrobe. For me because I do not change my base avatar that often the first thing I did was create a "/base" folder in my RLV. Since I want to dress straight from my wardrobe I wanted to make sure all of the things I want to use are in my RLV folder. If the things you want to wear are not in RLV then you will not be able to wear them from your wardrobe. So in the RLV I made the "/base" and I put in my shape, skin, eyelashes, Eyes, physics, tattoo, alpha for my lolas (I will get to the struggles of mesh parts later), my got to slink hands and the subsequent slink hand and feet alpha. I leave out hair, lola, and feet because those things change depending on what I want to wear so the base is simply that the base and bare minimum of my avatar.
Next thing I create is a nude folder. Which is pretty much the same as the /base folder 'cept it has feet, hair, and boobs. It's a quick hit when you just wanna get naked. I added this for my Master but it is handy in general.
The third was a part for my collar. Doing the usual things for RLV I made a folder called Collar, then put the attach point of the collar which for me is my (Spine) then dropped my collar in that folder. I also made a folder for all of the HUDs that I find necessary to function on Sl but that isn't really a wardrobe thing.
Finally, I start with clothes lets start simple and work our way to slink and lolas. Being the organization freak that I am I copied the same system I use in my normal inventory and put it in my RLV. I have a clothing folder which holds basically the same named folders as my clothing folder in my main inventory.
To show the basics of what I do to put things into my wardrobe lets put in some wings I just got from the Arcade. This is the basics of putting anything that I would like to wear into my wardrobe, it works with anything and is the same process minus a few when I do slink and my lolas.
Step one I find the said item RO ~ Holiday Spirit ~ Celestial Wings and I put it "away" in my normal inventory where I want my original stored. I just so happen to have a 'wings' folder so I drag and drop them in there and then add them to my body. Next I wear the Wardrobe HUD which could be one before it just need to be on. Then hit the pink lady standing on line to rez a pose stand and jump on said pose stand. I use the male and female poses 'cuz a girl can never have enough options.
This is the time in which I edit and fit said items. Making sure they fit and are perfect because I never want to edit it again so I take my time. Then I pop up my camera and go to email. In the email field I put cts.wardrobe@gmail.com then it puts my name in the form and then I add the title. The title is a part where some people may differ but for me what works best is taking out ALL spaces and ALL special characters. I found that when i tried to add items with spaces and what not it would get confused on what to wear when I have so many folders so I kept it simple.
One of the BEST parts about the wardrobe is that you can create "Tags' for your items. Makes it soo easy to look for only your skirts or only red items. You need to sit and think about what things you want as tags and stick with it, although you can change and delete tags so it is not set in stone. For my wings, since they will be in the clothing folder I put that and then a comma and a space and the next tag which is obviously wings. Before I send it I copy the title that I had edited out the spaces and what not from. This is important, the wardrobe uses the title of the photo to find the item in your RLV so they HAVE to match or it will not find it. I copy to be safe. Then send.
A note about the photos since you are sending it via email you don't have to worry about paying L to upload photos. Also you want to make sure what you want the photo of is in the center of your screen and that you are zoomed in as much as you want. The photos on the website are not very big so its good to get a nice zoomed in to where you know what you are looking at shot. Since I am OCD with this I take all of my photos naked so what I am taking a photo of stands out. Also if you have a HUD for the item wear it and have it "show" on your photo so you can see your options. Just make sure to play around with the HUD placement and that items you have on so you can see both well in the photo.
Once the photo is sent copy the items that you are wearing the HUD everything that you need to wear the item that includes alphas. This step is longer when you have mesh parts like lolas and slink but we will get to that. Go to your RLV folder and then to your clothing folder and create a folder title for the said object in this case for me it would be wings then create a folder inside of that one and rename it and paste your photo title. This is the folder that the wardrobe will look for in your RLV to add things from, then what I do is paste as a link. I paste as a link because if I edit the base object it carries over to the one in my wardrobe. I don't have to go hunt and edit it or replace it. It is already fixed and edited. Now if what you want in that particular folder needs to be different then your root object then by all means make a copy of your object before you edit it and put the edited on in your rlv wardrobe folder. I have done so with some of my belts.
Once you paste what you want you are done. You can click the center of your wardrobe to pull up the link and tada its there!
The deal with slink is that you HAVE to put in a copy (paste as link is best IMHO) of the appropriate height for the shoes. Make sure you have the shoe the feet and said HUDs, if you change skin a lot it would be wise to put in the slink hud to change skin. I also make sure to put in the utilities hud when I am doing leggings so I can turn them on and off along with the leggings HUD itself. Again I always do paste a link of things like that.
Lolas were the hardest part for me to figure out what and how I wanted to do them. It was either I use ONE copy of my lolas and make sure to add the applier to each folder. In which when I added that I would have to apply the applier and detach the HUD and then adjust the applier on my boobs so that it was fitted correctly. This was to much work so instead I chose to make a copy of my lolas each time I needed them. So when adding say a top to my wardrobe I add the applier and fit it to my boobs so it looks perfect then just drag and drop that copy of my lolas in my wardrobe rlv folder. That way I never have to see the applier again nor do I have to fit and adjust it. The only thing is that if you change skin all the time you will need to have your skin applier handy. You need to think about what will work the best for you.
I have since got into wearing Belleza Venus and TMP bodies so I have to make sure to add a copy of my body and make sure it is tagged in my wardrobe that that outfit or that clothing item is for those bodies and not the SL body. YAY for tags.
You can also add complete outfits so that with one click and you are dressed. Say you have a complete avatar as a werewolf, it makes it easy to jump back and forth with one click! On top of that you can also use it to take photos of your buildings and furniture so you don't have to guess anymore. That wouldn't require RLV for just the photo part!
Once you figure it out and find a rhythm for you and your wardrobe you will never want to live without it, it is simply amazing. At the price point, it is also super affordable. If there is something I may have missed please let me know I will try my best though I am no expert and may have NO idea. Please take a serious look at getting a wardrobe, it is one of the major tools in sl that I use daily.
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