ThingsAmongMany

Continuing the kick, and to answer my own question below, I’d like to direct you to the Styleforum. I stumbled onto this seeminly hidden away spot a while ago, and swing by to peruse the, rather ironically, unstylish but functional message board every once in a while. What the site lacks in aesthetics, however, it makes up for in content. Featuring over a million posts dedicated to making you a better-dressed man, the Styleforum is populated with some of most detail-oriented clothes hounds I’ve every come across.

The guys here can answer just about any style or clothing question you can toss at them. What look will fit your body type, where to find an obscure fabric or custom suit-maker near you, etc. You name it, these guys can answer it. Of course, if you’re a complete fashionista, some of the responses may prove slightly over-the-top. But that just makes them all the more fun to read, right?

Can’t find what you’re looking for on the forum? They’ve also put together a pretty serious collection of books in their amazon store for your perusal.

[and who’s more stylish than Bond?]

As most mid-century fanatics well-know, finding the right piece at the right price is really difficult these days. Factor in the issues of shipping and receiving, possibly having to refinish a piece, etc., and the plight of the mid-century furniture shopper can be downright daunting. Sure, we can scour ebay (and deal with all the trouble that comes with the ‘bay), hunt on craigslist, or spend hours wandering through flea markets and “antique” stores…

Or we could just sign up for Lushpad. Launched in early August (yeah, like 3 weeks ago), Lushpad is an exchange platform aimed directly at the mid-century modern market. Users can browse or place ads for furniture items (and a few other decorative pieces) that meet their fancy from a range of well-known designers. Based on their Canadian price listings, I’m going to assume these guys are based up north somewhere. But that doesn’t limit your ability to shop by location, designer, object type, etc.

Despite being stocked mostly with newly produced reproduction items at the moment, the Lushpad platform is extremely promising for connecting interested buyers and sellers. Hopefully once the word spreads, they’ll limit the number of retailers and promote the system more toward individuals.

Trend-spotting and cool hunting sites abound these days (yes, some might classify this site amongst their ranks). Without getting into a discussion of what qualifies as a such a site, I will say that most of these are blogs - sites that consider their small writing staff a group of experts who others should look up to. Sure, they’re open to commenting and discussion. And not many would argue that a blog is anything but a community-oriented type of site. But now that notion has been taken a step further.

Whether you want to call it more “2.0″ than these blogs or a step toward something even further, social aspects of the connected world are here to stay. And a new site has now stepped forward to bring trendcasting out of the blogosphere. Check out edopter. Created by the pair at One Blue Brick, Matthew Rosenberg and Andy Thompson, edopter allows any user to establish what they see as an upcoming trend. As other edopters join to support that trend, it grows more established within the system. Users who create more popular trends, of course, gain rank within the system.

It probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but its something along the lines of trend-spotting blog meets social network (despite their claim that they don’t want it to be a social network). There’s still a few kinks that are in the process of being worked out, but after chatting with Andy, it sounds like they’re well on their way to sorting things out. And if you’re in need of a new trend to support, how about jumping on the *AmongMany bandwagon?