I don't go back very far, one of my favorites is Windows Pure Glass by Tom Richter

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/6569/

Zuy...

Like ALL THINGS GRAPHIC ....good ones will always 'travel well'.... including Microsoft Logos....;p

What really distinguishes good 'art' from the bad is how well it DOESN'T date.

Once upon a time it was TRENDY to have a red porcelain toilet bowl.... then someone thought about feminine 'cycles' ..... but then later still came out with a BROWN bowl....

What WERE they thinking....

or...

WERE THEY THINKING at all?....;p

There's a guy you lot [Americans] should all be proud of...name of Frank Lloyd Wright.... his stuff is [mostly] a century old.....and is still CURRENT ...;)

'Zuy' ...OK, it's friday night.... so shoot me...  JAFOCHECK

I'd have to say NeOS by dani...

Keep going back to "Naked Noir" - vStyler, "Charger" - Essorant and "Essence" - Lightstar ("PointZ" as well).

Thats about all I use is the old skins on my W7 and they do stand the test of time.  Am using LKarkruff  by APB at the moment.

As a WB designer, I don't go back at all, I can't as I am always working on a new skin. 

Good old times of fancy skinning. Too bad the OSs evolved into a direction where you can't add many things we did in the past.

Updated a skin like Synthek for Windows 7 is near impossible. Recently I made one called IronWorks that where fairly simpler

compared to Synthek and was quite difficult to build it without glitches.

Oh, excuses excuses....come on, man...you're a past master of the craft...it's your job to make things work the way YOU want them...;)

On this XP rig: 

Airlock

By MikeB314

Antares

By treetog 

Two true gems, Wiz. 

Hey dani.... where're those new skins?

In  my archives are

1red dragon by light star

2 china town box x

3gold and silver & silverado suites star one

4 alien mind 11  duopixart  all of halben  ancient Egypt  ext

5 dragon stance   swtnssss

6 rising dragon  blue sky  HAO

7 leather box  treetog

I think  these are grate skins.

but can not use theme any more.

They're in progress, those two I sow in the last month desktop screenshot thread.

I have to struggle to keep my skins directory manageable.  Some that I've got loaded up now that I know are pretty old:

Alien Mind II      Knot Vista/Aero  Omega   Oxidized   Pantheon    Quagmire  Tinted   Rapture     Vienna2    Outer Limits

Sometimes I'll do a search in the WB gallery that returns a lot of results and I'll see one of the old skins pop up that I recognize, and I'll be a little surprised at just how old it is.

@Wiz this one had some changes but only need to finish some of the Explorer controls to release, hope you like.

There are good new skins....but there are also good old skins.

Once upon a time the skins pushed boundaries of creativity...and were lauded.

These days the good skins push the boundaries of finesse... and are lauded.

The care and attention afforded modern skins probably outweighs those of the past...if for nothing more than WB can skin more now than it once did.... but the 'pioneers' had to wrestle with what amounted to trial and error as much of skinning was being learnt/discovered by the skinner concurrently with what the coder was achieving with the proggy...;)

@ danilloOc: I could see that on my desktop long-term. That's the "stuff" right there.

I always kept a few super-creative skins around for showing off what WB could do (that classic aquarium was always a winner with the fish swimming in the titlebar) and the ones I used every day that were simpler (although I often added extra buttons to get to what I wanted and had the clock plug-in).

DAMN, Skippy!

GIMMMMMEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! 

*if doc has to sell a kidney, that skin is gonna be MINE!

Psssst.... RnD..... c'mere a minute....

Oddly enough the title lead me to believe this was another Birthday post for Po..

DMN Tweak R2 by Jay is probably the oldest in my collection... plays pretty well on Win 7 tho there is an eentsy weentsy bit of magic pink on the task bar beside the start button and sys tray.  Other than that it's okay.

Sektor, by Dani. It works really well on Win7 as it is, but I did tweak a couple things to update it a bit. It's still one of my favorites.

Always find myself returning to "intoxik8ed" and "Bruiserwb" by Night Train (Craig Oman).     Also a soft spot in my heart for "geo-logic" and "Not of this Earth" by I.R. Brainiac and "3D metal" from The A/V Man.

Inspired by this thread I fired up Sountox 2004 and Universe Metal 2004. Although they have some color issues in explorer they do pretty well. Nevertheless I really would like to see UM in new glory.