What are Attachments?

In Second Life, you can wear more than just layers of clothes on your avatar. You can also wear almost any object, from the tiny to the massive! These objects can attach to various places on your avatar's body, hence their name: Attachments.

Because of this ability in Second Life, residents have created a wide variety of attachment objects that you will be able to wear on your avatar. Everything from intricately detailed jewelry to weapons for roleplay or competitive games to attachments that are designed to make your avatar look like something else entirely! It's not out of the realm of possibility to see avatars that look like tiny, cute anthropomorphic animals, hulking steam-powered robots or even dragons the size of buildings!

Wearing and un-wearing attachments works virtually the same as wearing and un-wearing clothing:

You can right click on an individual item and choose to wear it or take it off.
You can right click on an entire folder of items and (un)wear them. (My favorite. See the last picture below for a lesson on the greatness and the lone pitfall of this method)
With attachments, you can also click and hold, then “drag” them onto your avatar, which will then wear them. (I personally dislike this method, because when I miss myself, I end up rezzing the item I wanted to wear on the ground instead!)

The most common attachments in Second Life are hair, shoes, jewelry and Animation Overrides (called AOs by most everyone). Here's a short gallery of screenshots showing me about to wear a common Second Life attachment.... shoes!

My inventory (clothing section opened)

Here's my inventory, with the clothing folder open. I'm going to head in there and find some shoes to wear in my shoes folder.

My inventory - Clothing->Shoes opened

There are the various folders that my shoes came in. I do try to keep things in folders because that makes wearing only what I want so much faster.

My inventory, opened a folder with just one pair of shoes in it

Here I've opened up the folder with the shoes I'd like to wear in it.

Inventory - right clicking on an attachment

If I want to wear only one attachment: Here I've right-clicked one of my boots, and I have the option to Wear it. If I was already wearing it, I'd be offered the choice to take it off.

Right clicking an inventory folder to wear everything in it

If I want to wear a whole folder of items: Here I've right-clicked the folder itself, and I have the option to Wear everything in the folder, take everything in the folder off, or “replace outfit”.

Be careful of the “Replace Outfit” option. It's a great feature, because you can quickly change into an entire alternate avatar. If you choose it without meaning to, your avatar will then be wearing NOTHING but what is in that folder. For instance, if I chose to replace outfit in this picture, I'd have ended up wearing shoes and nothing else in the clubhouse! Eeek!!