Neferia Abel

Neferia Abel is the proud owner and designer of the fashion house Ivalde. Providing “vintage clothing for today's fashionable woman”, Ivalde prides itself on quality offerings that span from the 18th century to present day. Ivalde is a virtual repository of style through the ages!

Ivalde draws on good designs from all eras. The one, and only, designer for Ivalde, Neferia, known affectionately as “Nef”, finds it a rewarding challenge to translate accurate era representations into Second Life. She has a special, personal interest in the Edwardian, the 1920s, and the 1950s time periods. To create her designs she relies heavily on Photoshop and an indispensable Wacom tablet.

Nef came to Second Life a little over 2 years ago through the encouragement of her RL husband and SL partner Brumm Bricklin. He saw SL as a way to chat with her when he was working the night shift. Nef though found it boring at first. Brumm told her she could make clothes in this new world! Loving the challenge and flexibility, Second Life is a major creative outlet for Nef. Her love of fashion now had a new home, translated into digital form!

Nef’s love of clothes began when she was very young. She grew up in northern Norway. There, on her grandparents’ farm, her grandmother had a cottage that was essentially a real life dress-up box. Young Nef would go there, the cottage filled with dresses and clothes from all kinds of different eras, different periods, and play to her heart’s content.

Her love of fashion never wavered from those early years. As she grew, and entered the computer era, she felt a creative need to express all that she had learned about good design through the years. She started with a little website that specialized in making paper dolls and historically accurate outfits. The 2-D approach was fun, but bigger things were to come! She also went to 3 years of art school .

Rezzing on 8/20/2006, Nef entered the world of Second Life! After the first few months of getting oriented, she opened her first shop, Neferia’s Design in October 2006 on her own first land. She was rapidly learning the idiosyncrasies of this new world, what worked, what didn’t, continually honing her craft. Nef is a fierce perfectionist, always striving to better her designs, always trying to accurately recreate what she sees her in her mind’s eye.

In January 2007, Nef changed her store name to Ivalde. Ivalde is a mythical figure from Norwegian mythology. Ivalde was the leader of the black elves who lived underground, making treasures for the gods. (Nef is an avid history, mythology and CSI fan). She moved the store to Brumm’s sim called Amna, modeled on the well-known Norwegian fishing village of Bryggen where he had grown-up in real life!

Ivalde though was growing! So they moved to Alebi where they had more room to grow and expand, but even that was short-lived with the rapid growth.

In June 2007, she realized a dream when she expanded to her own sim of Ivalde!  Proud Norwegians, she and Brumm created a wondrous place reminiscent of their real life home. Waterfalls, greenery, and yes even snow in the winter, made for a breathtaking venue for the wooden storefront Ivalde, a stunning showcase for the Ivalde collection.

Ivalde expanded again in June 2008, with the addition of the sim Nivlheim. Brumm now had his own sim to create Bryggen in, adjacent to Ivalde. Nef saw this as an opportunity to give Ivalde a different and fresh look. She drew on inspiration from the Art Deco period to fashion a new look for the Ivalde sim. Personally selecting other SL designers, whose work complemented her Ivalde creations, to showcase there as well, Nef made Ivalde a one-stop shopping destination of unparalleled excellence.

With a busy RL family, Nef concentrates her all work efforts in SL so she can maintain a consistent level of quality and customer service. She also has so many different ideas of things she wants to create; there isn’t enough time in the day for much else!