The Elegant Animus

The universe of fashion is a place where ideas are constantly being created, changed, thrown away, recycled, and picked up. In this infinite manufacturing of creativity, one person's trash is another's treasure and subsequently becomes someone else's trash or treasure. And as we come into contact with these ideas in fashion, whether old or new, we are inevitably changed by them. Suddenly a light of inspiration in a dark tunnel becomes clearer, or perhaps a new path suddenly springs up from the other new path we just took. To document this amazing and wonderful phenomenon, I created a new blog, Elegant Animus, to document all of the inspiration that hits me and how it has and continues to change me.

Guerre de Style

If fashion really is everywhere, as Coco Chanel once said, then Karl-Edwin Guerre, creator of the men's fashion blog Swagger 360, can find it. His site's slogan, "Where Lifestyle and Attitude Connect", sums it up perfectly; fashion isn't just made up of what we wear or where we wear it, it's made of how we live and how we think. His reputation for maintaining a Wildean-crisp style has earned him attention from many fashion watchers especially his impecable impresario skills. It's especially pleasing to me to see so many images of men of color, for these are oft scarce in other blogs. It's wonderful to see a culture of stylish, ambitious, and refined men using their creativity and showcasing their style. Check out Swagger 360 here.

The Eyes of a Dandy

I love scouring the web looking for people who love fashion as passionately as I do and who have found ingenious ways of expressing their creativity. When I came upon DapperLou, the blog of notoriously stylish urban dandy Ludget Delcy, I knew I had found my style soul brother. His effortless classical American style and his eye for catching it is what attracts me most to his blog. He could certainly have composed a blog just on his own personal style but Ludget chooses to use his erudite taste to feature gentlemen both young and old who are mastering the art of dressing the man. I first noticed Ludget's style on LookBook.nu, my favorite haunt for fashion inspiration but I had no idea the man had such an impressive portfolio of street personalities. I also noticed his blogroll is quite short, especially when many fashion bloggers including myself tend to prefer to give their readers a great deal of places to find other great content. But then again, Ludget understands that too many cooks spoil the broth. Most of all Ludget gives me what I want: pure, unadulterated sharp-dressed people. See all about Ludget Delcy and his site here.

Don't Call It A Comeback

Call it a come-up. The Dynamic Duo of Style Marquis Phifer and Sham Shirley are returning to the blogosphere with a new and improved look for their site LateBoots, a collection of photographs, personalities, and most importantly hard work. Calling themselves the New Workers, Phifer and Sham are showing young creative aspirants as well as the world at large just how much power a little bit of perseverance, ambition, creativity, and drive can get you what you want and where you want to be. Through their brand public relations team, Marquis and Sham are spreading their influence through independent fashion designers as well as catching the eye of notable style professionals not only in their stomping grounds of Atlanta and New York City but also abroad. The urbanly urbane Morehouse dandy Marquis Phifer creates a smart and innovative synthesis with the street-smart, edgy, and artistically erudite Sham Shirley giving a new perspective not just on getting ahead in life but on realizing and achieving your dreams. Check out the new site here.

The British Are Coming

Who said Americans have all the style? A group of fashionable creative individuals based in London whose ambitions are as impressive of the site they've come together to create, Yin & Yang. The characters the site is named after are just as interesting.Yin comes from Niran, a creative advertising student in London who is a self-proclaimed Japanophile and future music label entrepreneur and Yang is Ernest, also a creative advertising student who loves photography and is hoping to work in public relations. The site also is supported by group of equally cutting-edge artists or "The Family", as they call themselves comprising Leona, an aspiring singer and tv personality, Olive, a Brooklynite fashion designer, DJB, a London music and fashion enthusiast, Yemi, a basketball-playing poet and dancer going to school in Maryland, and Jazz a hip-hop loving web designer from London.

Street Etiquette x Stacy Adams

Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs have teamed up with the illustrious and timeless footwear brand Stacy Adams to produce a video talking about what makes an accessory or garment a classic. Kissi and Gumbs are the founders of the men's fashion blog, Street Etiquette and are curators of classic men's fashion. Their blog has been featured extensively in GQ magazine, Vogue Paris' Blog of the Moment, Refinery 29's Best Men's Fashion Blogs, and in the London Times' 40 Bloggers Who Really Count. We covered them earlier in the fall when they premiered their exceptionally designed and produced film The Black Ivy, an homage to the historically Black colleges and universities of America and more importantly on the distinct sartorial style that emerged from their students. The oxymoronic title "Street Etiquette" is a clever and accurate summary of what Kissi and Gumbs blog is all about; it's an artistic melange of the thesis of classical style with antithetical elements of street fashion and creating a synthesis of innovative style that possesses the same refinement and staying power as the classics. Check out the video after the jump.

How Do You Say Love In Portguese?

The people over at oficM certainly do and they say it oh-so-well. If you never stopped by the Brazilian fashion oasis in a vast desert blogosphere, then you'll find the excellently designed and managed site refreshing, interesting, and most importantly of all, stylish. Still rusty on your Portuguese? Don't worry, the page had a Google Translate button so you can read all of the posts in your native language. But after all, fashion speaks the language of beauty, which is known universally. It's sleek white minimalist design and its pithy posts make the glamorous images on its page come all the more alive.

I Like My Honey On Top

If you’ve never taken a look at the uber-stylish and avant-garde artistic world of Japanese street fashion, then take primer in Japanese Style 101 at Honeyee. Created by the legendary godfather of Harajuku style and Japanese street style Hiroshi Fujiwara, with the subtitle ‘Intelligence Service for a High Style’, Honeyee boasts an impeccable and highly sleek design and layout. Its magazine style splash page is a design diamond among the bevy of Japanese fashion blogs swimming around the internet. It has an excellent manipulation of photos which fade on the page highlighting the newest in fashion events, creative productions, and Japanese popular culture.

Rocking & Rholling

If you’re looking for someone to hook you up with a massive overdose of fashion and art, then you’ll want to hit up Rhuigi and Rhoxanne’s site Rhu & Rho. Once you hit the front page you’ll get up-close-and-personal with the newest in avant-garde fashion photography and cultural injections. The personal style of both creators is sublimely chic and contains the right amount of insubordination and adherence to classical style. The design of the blog is far from fussy and the courier font of the posts gives the impression of a desktop pile of photos and torn out notes from a pocket carnet adding to the realness and authenticity of the blog. Big on showing rather than telling, the blog is rife with interesting videos and it resembles Marquis Phifer’s Lateboots pre-Wordpress. It’s a real-life account of real people doing real-life work and reaping the fruits of the labor. Currently the pair has worked on revamping their blog with their 10.10.10 campaign.

The Snobiety Pages

The Titel Media group, the minds responsible for fashion sites such as Selecticism, Curated, and Rad Collector boast another blog dedicated to men's fashion, High Snobiety. High Snobiety focuses on the newest in exclusive accessories and fashions for men, shunning the overused and overpromoted mainstream brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Independent brands such as 10.Deep, House of Billiam, and Alife are the spotlighted brands known only by the most savvy of underground style conoisseurs and only afforded by them as well, hence the name High Snobiety. Overall, Snobiety's design isn't especially eye-catching, taking the road less traveled with the static outer wrapper image and extremely few ads.

Team Epiphany x Influencers

Team Epiphany a cutting-edge lifestyle branding and marketing firm has put its heads together to create the short film Influencers, which speaks about the role of influencers in the creative world and how those people are made, continue to influence, and how the new generation of influencers has to navigate the new digital world. The film also identifies pop culture icons such as Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. as creative influencers along with professionals like Dao Yi-Chow of Public School, Hiroshi Fujiwara, father of harajuku style, and Deidre Maloney of the fashion branding group BPMW. Read more to listen to the podcast and to check out the short film.

Lady Gaga à Gogo Goes To Paris

The minds behind the blog Paris Most Wanted, Andrea Bomo and Sandy Miller along with their amie Jocelyne, decided to take a trip to the Galerie Chappe to view one of the greatest art tributes to one of the greatest pop culture icons of all time, Lady Gaga. The exhbit, dubbed “Lady Gaga à Gogo”, features paintings and digital art of Lady Gaga created by her fans, or “little monsters” as she affectionately calls them. Media of the works created included canvas paintings of a Dunkin’ Donuts ad-turned-Gaga, a stylized airbrushing of the words ‘Lady Gaga’ with kittens drawn around the letters à la Hello Kitty, and a black marker-drawn poster of a picture of Lady Gaga in soda can hair rollers, a scene from her Telephone video. Famous fashion designers also contributed reproductions of the simultaneously glamorous and creatively avant-garde outfits Lady Gaga has been spotted in on stylish sleek black mannequins. Overall, the exhibit was an impressive one and any Lady Gaga aficionado would certainly be both impressed and proud with the artistic rendering of the inspiration that is Lady Gaga. Photos after the jump. below from Paris Most Wanted.

Repost: An Abercrombie Model Gets Fired For Eating A Croissant - Refinery 29

Reposted from Refinery 29
Written by Kristen Laliberte

Apparently, bedbugs aren't the only thing that suck about working at Abercrombie & Fitch. At a photo shoot for the financially troubled brand at Montauk's Panoramic Hotel last week with famed shutterbug Bruce Weber, the 30 male and female models were not having as much fun as the half-nude catalog snaps suggest. The pretty faces were working 13-hour days, and the ad agency nannied their eating, drinking, and even workouts. For the weeklong shoot, the girls scored $2,500 and the dudes $1,500 (a really, really bad wage in the modeling industry), plus $13-a-day meal stipends, which doesn't buy you alot of grub in the Hamptons. So strict was the job, Belgian model Florian Van Bael got booted for...eating a croissant. Guess those slicked abs don't look that good for nothing. (New York Post)

http://www.refinery29.com/an-abercrombie-model-gets-fired-for-eating-a-croissant.php

Street Etiquette for the Rude Boys

In a period where Black men as well as men in general are becoming increasingly image-conscious, the exceptionally articulate, intelligent, and stylish duo creators of the men's fashion blog Street Etiquette are definitely the heralds of a new generation. Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs have produced a brainchild that is a clever melange of the sartorial as well the intellectual. With an apparent appreciation for the uplifting of the Black intelligentsia, the pair finds expression of sentiments, themes, and dreams of Black individuals, history, culture, and how the powerful medium of fashion has been uniquely impacted by Black creativity. The blog itself possesses and understated design, an effect that allows followers and viewers to take the content more seriously. A recent post titled "The Black Ivy" pays tribute to the Black intellectual culture that owes its existence to historically Black colleges and universities such as Morehouse College, Howard University, Meharry Medical School, and Fisk University.

Wonder If You Know How They Live In Tokyo…

If you seen it then you mean it and you know you have to go…tick tick tick…wonder if you know…Not a China Man ‘cause I ain’t from China, man…I am Japan, man…and if you want to know how they do it on the streets of Tokyo and all over Japan then you’re sure to find what you’re looking for in this hidden gem Japan Streets. A fashion blog similar to LookBook.nu yet devoted to all things Japanese street fashion And best of all the blog is in complete English and profiles many Japanese tastemakers like Yohji Yamamoto that many Americans are familiar with. So if you’re tired of the American fashion victim routine take a detour to the east and get reinvent yourself Yoyogi Park-style. Nihongo o hanashimasu ka?

LookBook.nu Spotlight - Zander Daley

Talking Back - ImmaculateBacktalk.com

One of my friends in the blogging world, Brandyn Braden, a student at the International Academy of Design and Technology, is making waves in the world wide web after his fashion and lifestyle blog ImmaculateBacktalk. The blog is being nominated for Best Blog Design, Best New Blog, and Best Group Blog by the Black Weblog Awards. And rightly so with its streamlined and stylish style complemented by the emphatic orange logo proudly bearing the blog's name. The articles aren't word-laden which widens the blog's audience in a world where people have developed phobias of large blocks of text. His attention to rising stars in music also gives him an avenue to help others get publicity and have a chance to realize their own dreams. Braden's strong sense of humor and disdain for seriousness is evident in his blog as well in his real-life personality. The disclaimer on the home page is surprisingly candid yet its presence is understood by the content of the blog. It states, "This is a blog. That fact means nothing. It is essentially as it came from the keyboard: spontaneous, un-proofed, unrevised, and corrected afterward only when necessary to address mistakes that grossly effect the intent." Yet what sets Brandyn apart and what credits him as a serious blogger is his impressive articulation and presentation of his content. To him, his blog is his child; he receives the greatest sense of accomplishment when the lessons he places into his blog are returned back to others. If you haven't subscribed yet, then you most definitely will want to add his site to your blogroll.

Hitting All The Right Notes

You met my partner-in-crime Brittney last month when I did my spotlight on her and now she’s back in the limelight with her new blog, The Notes of Toni’s Life. A Broadcast Journalism major at Western Kentucky University, Brittney’s blog exhibits her love for politics, music, relationships, and Black culture. Brittney’s attention to detail and loyalty to the facts make her blog exceptionally strong and informative. She’s only a sophomore, but from the style and voice with which she uses to create a well-balance mélange of well-articulated opinions with well-researched current events, she makes a mature standing for herself. One of my favorite posts of on the blog was her assessment on the state of historically Black colleges and universities in America and about how the failure of the Black community to continue to convey their essential nature to Black history and the creation of Black leaders continues to cause Black students to look elsewhere for higher education. The Notes of Toni’s Life also provides for an excellent experience to get others especially Blacks to awaken their political consciousness. In a world where apathy continues to be the number one killer of the Black spirit, Brittney has lit a torch for herself and is keeping herself focused to be a guiding light for other Black Americans. Check out Brittney’s blog The Notes of Toni’s Life here.

Blogs - Stuff Fly People Like

While I was scouring the digital ether, sorting through an infinite mass of information of fashion, lifestyle, celebrities, and pop culture, I happened to run into a pair of guys who told me who they were and simultaneously showed me who I wanted to be. Rae Holliday and Gabriel Williams are the creators of the exceptionally successful and award-winning--yes people, there are actually awards for doing this sort of thing--blog Stuff Fly People Like. The blog's aesthetic is not extremely complicated, yet is replete in links and archives and chock-full of colorful photos which are sure to grab the attention of a contemporary audiences keen on more showing and less telling. Gabe, a Florida native takes music as his greatest pleasure and his attentiveness to the craft is clearly seen in his coverage on the goings-on in the world of hip-hop and R&B music. A former background singer for artists such as Kirk Franklin and Nona Gaye, Williams never distances himself too far from his roots. Rae finds himself inclined to the realm of fashion and entertainment. With origins in dancing and even a BA in criminal justice under his belt, Holliday still has managed to establish himself a knowledgeable source of sartorial advising. His close watch on the fashion industry is one the most effective parts of the blog's success. Overall, the blog's pulled major weight, winning the award for "Best Fashion Blog" by the Black Weblog Awards, being featured in Essence magazine, and being a part of RocaWear's 10th Anniversary campaign. I don't know about you people, but this one is definitely getting put into the Flashy Files. Don't forget to subscribe to Stuff Fly People Like. You never know if you'll be thanking them for the interview later...

Repost: The Urban Gentleman - Sammy Davis

The blog The Urban Gentleman is spolighting jack-of-all-trades entertainer Sammy Davis of the famed Rat Pack of the 1950s for his impeccable and refined personal style. The first Black man to appear on the cover of GQ magazine, the post pays homage to the life and style of an extremely talented entertainer whose spark and charisma won him fame as a three-instrument player, comedian, and impressionist. Check out the article to see more photos of the fashion icon and also to find items in The Urban Gentleman's Lookbook to get a piece of this timeless entertainer's timeless style. Check out the full post here.