why is this happening

[snoogans213]

clothes that i made for myself that i've been able to wear for a while have suddenly stopped working and just appear grey

[Knowl Paine]

Have you tried Rebaking your avatar?

Did you recently update your Viewer, or, did Auto-update update the Viewer? Some of your Graphic setting, or hardware settings may have been deselected.

On your computer, have you updated the Drivers for your Graphic card?

 

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Troubleshooting-avatar-appearance/ta-p/1256955

[valerie Inshan]

 How to Rebake Avatars Clothes When a Glitch Occurs in "Second Life

How to Rebake Avatar Textures in Second Life

• 1

  Gain access to your Second Life’s client menu, called the “Advance Menu.” If you have a Mac computer, press the Option, Ctrl and the D key. If you have a PC, press Ctrl, Alt and the D Key. This will open the Advance menu on the top gray tool bar.

• 2

  Left click on “Advance” to open a dropdown menu and scroll down to "Character." This will open the “Character” menu.

• 3

  Scroll down the "Character" dropdown menu and click on “Rebake Textures." This will begin the Rebake process, which will only take a few seconds.

• 4

  Right click on your avatar and from the pie menu select "Appearances." When you can see your avatar clearly in the Appearance Editing menus, click on the "close" button inside the Appearance menu. Your avatar and textures will be fully rebaked.

You can also simply press Ctr+alt+R 

See also: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Troubleshooting-avatar-appearance/ta-p/1256955

 

[Ry0ta Exonar]

Additionally that happens when you use temp textures, but if you used a normal texture for that tops, the texture may be missing for some reason. Check if the texture is in your inventory. If it is, you can apply it to the tops again.

[iCade]

When you upload textures as 'temporary' you may not pay a fee, but the texture vanishes from your inventory once you log out. So always make sure that once you're happy with the texture as is, to pay the 10L to upload it for real.

 

[Chic Aeon]

My money is on the temp texture which actually can be viewed for much longer than when you log out (for me anyway, I tested ) I sometimes get garments from designers who have forgotten to replace the temp texture with the good one.  If it isn't the temp texture and rebaking doesn't work (you used to get the look you have much more often in the olden days), then you may need to clear you cache.

 

While I follow the "don't clear you cache unless you REALLY need to" rule (Firestorm), I recently had a texture I had uploaded a year ago turn gray for me. A friend had the same problem at the same time. She could still see her texture file and just put it back up on the vendor. I couldn't see my profile picture -- even the texture which I still had -- but others could. I cleared my cache and all was back to normal. So at least three possibilities to look at.