The Thoughtful Dresser

The Thoughtful Dresser is a truly unique blog.  Linda Grant, the woman behind the pen, is an accomplished novelist and journalist.  She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000, and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006.  She writes for the Guardian, Telegraph and Vogue.  Her last novel, The Clothes on Their Backs, was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize.  Her latest work, out this April, is entitled The Thoughtful Dresser.

Check out her blog:

http://thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com

Atlantis Home is a simple blog site, but there are two things that are consistently better than the other blogs I come across.  First, the creator Judy Aldridge immerses herself fully into her blog.  The writing is extremely personal, full of stories, memories, opinions, and outfits.   Second, the images are fantastic.  This is not an iPhone blog.  I am not against the iPhone, but a quality photograph tells a richer story.

Creator Judy Aldridge

Besides the great posts, Aldridge also has a knack for creating unique and compelling belt buckles.  Check out her newest line of Beetle Belts coming soon.  You can pre-order one on her site!

Judy Aldridge in the Beetle Belt

Beetle Belt Collection

If a picture tells a thousand words, you might say that The Sartoralist has some of the longest blog posts out there.  The Sartorialist was created by industry veteran Scott Schuman after 15 years of sales and marketing work for high-end designers.  His shift to photography inspired this blog and has taken off with enormous success.  Time Magazine added it to its list of the Top 100 Design Influencers.  The theme of this site is to portray urban fashion as it exists in real life, to share the inspiration of seeing someone with a unique or striking look.

From his site:

I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers looked at people, and get and give inspiration to lots of people in the process. My only strategy when I began The Sartorialist was to try and shoot style in a way that I knew most designers hunted for inspiration. Rarely do they look at the whole outfit as a yes or no but they try and look for the abstract concepts of color, proportion, pattern mixing or mixed genres. I’m always really happy when I meet a designer and hear that they use some of my photos for their inspiration boards. At the same time I’m also really touched when I get emails from everyday people who say they have been inspired to see themselves and others in a new and usually more accepting way.

I have selected a few shots to illustrate the site’s photos:

Find similar denim shirts & pocket squares

Find similar puffy jackets

Find similar wool overcoats

Find similar sunhats

This blog is for the person who is concerned with luxury and pleasure above all else, the Luxist, if you will.  Luxist.com is a wealth of information on the best the world has to offer, even if you aren’t able to afford it just yet.

The posts on this site cover an extraordinary range of topics including art, auctions, every type of clothing and fashion, dining, spas, pets, etc.  In fact, there is hardly a topic that this site will not entertain, as long as it is regarding an item that helps bring its readers closer to fine living and pleasure in knowing about the best.

Here are some of my favorite topics:

Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills

The Hamilton Penthouse in San Francisco

The New Doxa Grafic Open Heart Watch

BRYANBOY

Greatness, the idea of someone being “the best,” is usually easier to conclude in hindsight.  What we love today can easily fall short tomorrow as the pace of the world quickens.  So, who are the great bloggers?  What makes a blogger stand apart from the ocean of opinions we surf through every day?  Only time will tell…lasting power alone proves a bloggers ability to connect with an audience; to affect the masses.

The reason I bring this up is because I recently found a blog that sparked my attention.  More specifically, a personality that comes through so strong in this new medium that I can’t help but want to know more.  Introducing Bryanboy.  It has a sort of superhero ring to it, no?  And he might just be the masked man for the job.

Bryanboy

The blog posts vary.  Some are very short and to the point, product focused.  Some take us behind the scenes on exotic fashion adventures.  Nothing appears to be mundane for this young enthusiastic fashion nut.  Take a look at his post of a hidden camera at the 2010 Chanel Spring Summer Show:

This kid goes the extra mile.  He’s not posting countless wish-lists and regurgitating the same old information…he is paving his own way.  He is chasing something, and he’s bringing us along for the ride.  And that…is the making of greatness.

I was truly sold by Bryanboy when I read his post entitled “Great Expectations.”  I realized he has the humility and wisdom to actually pull it off.  He goes on to explain that “in order to be a credible and authoritative critic, one has to possess a great knowledge of a particular subject they are talking about. And it doesn’t happen overnight.”  He refers to himself as a work in progress, another sign of greatness.  And above all, every post is bleeding with gratitude and awareness of the readers who have given him the life he has always dreamed of.  There is no doubt that his enthusiasm is infectious.  We will be hearing more from Bryanboy in the years to come, and we will be rooting him on the entire way.