NEW YORK (AP) — She’s perky, slim, stylish and has not a hair out of place. She wears the latest trends as if they were made for her and shops at places such as DKNY and Sephora. She looks a lot like you but she’s more daring and hangs out with cooler people — anyone from Hannah Montana to Warren Buffett.

Meet your online alter ego: the avatar.

She’s part of a bustling community of computer-doll dress-up Web sites, including Stardoll, Cartoon Doll Emporium and Design Her Gals. Millions of users have created their virtual selves, logging countless hours outfitting and grooming them to look just so. Then, with the click of a button, the whole look can be changed to match a new fashion season or even to reflect a new haircut.

They’re not so different than the paper dolls that clearly inspired them, but they seem far more acceptable for an adult to be playing with.

There are 4 million unique users per month at the Cartoon Doll emporium, with the majority being 6- to 14-year-old girls, says CEO and founder Evan Bailyn, but 20 percent of users are the moms of those girls. ‘‘They start it to see what their kids are doing but they like dressing their doll.’’

The ‘‘sweet-spot’’ user of 9 or 10 has a really fertile imagination and uses her doll to be creative and have some freedom of expression — within limits that parents seem to find acceptable, Bailyn explains.

Bailyn is hoping to keep these users into their teen years and beyond by adding features such as celebrities — including Jessica Alba, Halle Berry and Alicia Keyes — and more high-fashion dressing options. There are styles from Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton, and there’s also a fantasy section with fairy wings and mermaid tails.

Some teen stars, Emma Roberts of ‘‘Nancy Drew’’ and Emily Osment from ‘‘Hannah Montana’’ among them, have created their own dolls as a way to convey their own image to fans, Bailyn says. ‘‘Emma Roberts was very selective about the way she wanted to look,’’ he says. (Her current wardrobe includes a strapless black cocktail dress and a pretty pink dress with a Peter Pan collar but mostly T-shirts, jeans and long scarves.)

Users can design their own clothes, too, choosing from basic silhouettes and altering patterns, washes and other adornments.

People usually start by creating a doll that resembles themselves with a similar hairstyle, skin tone and body type, but it usually doesn’t take long before a brunette turns blond — even if it’s just a momentary experiment — or someone with long hair tries a shorter style.

Jeanne Fitzmaurice, the founder of Design Her Gals, says her personal avatar has plumped up a little over the years and has adopted as many hairstyles as Fitzmaurice herself has had in real life. She consults with a colorist at a Frederic Fekkai salon to make sure her site is offering up-to-date trends, and she’s expanded accessories options to include BlackBerry-type devices and Bugaboo-style strollers.

To create this fall’s ‘‘closet’’ of wide-leg trousers, bat-wing top and oxford-style heels, Fitzmaurice worked with her site’s designers to identify must-have items and put them in popular colors. ‘‘The process is similar to actually making the clothes,’’ she explains.

This particular season saw a lot of dark colors on the runway, which don’t work well online, so they also jazzed up the choices with the bright yellows and greens that are expected to be popular hues in the spring.

Top designer Giorgio Armani recently opened his first store on Second Life, providing that virtual world’s almost 1 million residents an opportunity to browse the racks of Emporio Armani and Armani Jeans and visit a fragrance and cosmetics counter. His avatar, wearing a fitted T-shirt, black pants and white sneakers, is expected to make periodic visits to the shop.

Candy Pratts Price, Style.com’s executive fashion editor whose virtual persona was introduced this summer in an animated monthly Candycast about the latest looks, sent her avatar to hang out with Armani on his first day in the alternate world.

Pratts Price says she likes the way illustrator Bruno Frisoni interpreted her look — long flowing black hair, a trim black suit and high-heel black booties. ‘‘Yes, it’s slimmer, but that’s his take on me,’’ she says with the crackly laugh that also comes out her avatar’s mouth.

Right now, Pratts Price is pictured in an imagined office with views of Manhattan’s skyline but she hopes technology will soon let online Candy out of the glass tower and onto the street in front of the tents at Bryant Park as if she’d just stepped out of a fashion show.

Stardoll, with weekly traffic from 110 countries, just launched a DKNY storefront on its site and has straight-from-the-runway styles as well as Sephora beauty products and looks from both Hilary Duff and the Olsen twins’ clothing lines. There also are fictional fashion labels Pretty in Pink for the princess type, Fallen Angel for the goth girl and a smattering of street and couture clothes.

‘‘We’re kind of an intersection between a game and a social community, but the basic reason for being on Stardoll is to play dress up,’’ says CEO Mattias Miksche. ‘‘It’s about role play, dreaming about being someone else, dreaming about being a pop star, an actress or the girl next door whose style you look up to.’’





‘‘The closet is indefinite and designer couture comes really, really cheap,’’ he adds.

Lauren Dimet Waters, editor in chief of the fashion blog SecondCityStyle.com, says she uses her avatar as a representation of herself in both her business and personal worlds.

When she was ready to announce to the world that she got engaged, she did it by e-mailing a greeting to friends and family with her avatar dressed up in a wedding gown. She’s also created avatars for her business partner and mother — that one took a long time getting it just right with her Jackie O dark glasses and a passport in her hand, she says with a laugh.

‘‘Sending out your avatar to other people is fun. You do a caricature of yourself. People wonder what we’re like because of the blog, but we don’t want to put actual photos,’’ she says.

She has six versions of herself: one who is professional looking, one who is casual, one for the evening, etc. They all have Dimet Waters’ curly hair — complete with highlights — and a mole on her face.

Her virtual self makes an appearance in the real world via stationery and business cards with her avatar likeness on them that she orders from Design Her Gals.

The company did indeed begin as a personalized stationary line only five years ago. ‘‘The word ‘avatar’ wasn’t really out there,’’ Fitzmaurice says. ‘‘It was just the start of the smiley-face emoticon.’’

Now the Web site is nearing 250,000 users, mostly between 25 and 45. ‘‘One of the key pieces of my business model is to make sure that no matter high tech we are, we have a close relationship with the community — and that is customer service,’’ she says. ‘‘If a makeup artist calls and says, ‘I want a makeup belt for my avatar,’ we’ll do it and usually within a week.’’

While Fitzmaurice tries to keep up-to-the-minute in site offers, she says she doesn’t think most people use avatars to make purchasing decisions. Avatars are supposed to be more fun that that, she says.

‘‘We’re the paper dolls of the 21st century. This has nothing to do with wondering if that bathing suit is going to look good on you. This is about the ultimate closet, with the cutest shoes and best clothes.’’



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