Award Tour

   I recently checked and yes, it appears that this column is actually vaguely over 2 years old. It's still of jailbait age, so I'd like to remind the predators out there - and I have your e-mails - to please stop touching my column. And yes, that phrasing is intentional

   And so to today's mandate: a celebration of some of my peers, rather than myself. Not that I don't celebrate myself often - today, for example, I took a shower and cut my nails. No, today involves the other denizens, swells and ne'er do wells of the blogosphere, for a month ago, I was tagged with the Stylish Blogger Award by one of my very favourites, P. Gaye Tapp of the sublime and delightful Little Augury

   This is how it works:
   

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you

2. Share 7 things about yourself

3. Award 10 other bloggers

4. Contact those bloggers and tell them about the award

1.    I can't stop at those felicitous adjectives about Gaye and her column, really. This Southern Belle produces Little A with a distinct and intrinsic dreamlike quality - more Little Nemo than Inception, thankfully - and displays an enviably wide knowledge of interior design (her chosen profession), couture, high culture, and arts and crafts. She is also disgustingly prolific, particularly compared to your slothful author, and if she didn't like my work, I would probably hate her. Like An Aesthete's Lament and some of her other contemporaries, she is the genuine article

2.   I have a tendency to obfuscate personal details - which is why some people honestly think "Vox" is my last name - but I'll endeavour to reveal as much as I feel like. If you re-read the previous sentence, you may realise that, however obliquely, I've already shared two things. Here are a few more:

•    I'd like a job where I can utilise my writing, my marketing communications/PR experience and perhaps my burgeoning knowledge of social media, too. Failing that, I would like to live as a full-time journalist and writer. I also think sometimes of relocating to the United States. We all need ideals

•    There's been a recent dearth of ensemble photographs because I've not been near a camera lately and some of my best pieces mysteriously went missing during a recent move. If anyone comes across wide legged or bootcut trousers from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and Prada or knows of a talented tailor in London, do let me know

•    My third favourite Prince album is Batman. It may well be the Purple sound of a Purple man summing up his work at the end of the 1980s, but much of it is so engagingly cracked due to his adoption of dance music's cut and paste ethic and several sampled slices of Jack Nicholson ham. Also, 'Vicki Waiting' is one of his most winning pop numbers

•    The rumours you've heard are true: I do sound just like renowned British television news anchor, Sir Trevor McDonald. Pay me enough and I'll even dress like him. Then you'll have less trouble deciding which side of the sexuality divide I fall on for dinner party seating purposes

•    I sang a few bars of 'Chain Reaction' to Diana Ross in a lift. I was seven

Now, this is Barimavox

3 & 4.   Now, the blogs. I considered this list very carefully by selecting the five or so others that leave comments on my posts and then searching Google at random. It took three minutes

   I thought of nominating my comrade in carousing and close friend Winston Chesterfield, but I thought it might skew the use of his Le Vrai Winston as an outfit showcase and occasional column. So this is an unofficial nomination unless W feels like producing one of these posts himself:

• Maxminimus. For ADG's steadfast support and encouragement, not to mention his repository of Richard Merkin memorabilia and exemplary displays of fatherhood to the adorable LFG

• Made To Measure NY. Ditto Dennis for his kindness and affability. He is also a fellow fan of David Bowie

• Elizabeth Avedon. A curator enchanted with prodigious photography, a topic for which she has an eminently suitable (and not coincidental) surname and an insightfully incisive eye. Her website also displays her flair for design

• Diary at the Centre of the Earth by Dickon Edwards. I don't know if, nor do I believe that Dickon should respond to this award, being an erudite diarist rather than an audience-focused blogger, but he is recommended for being London's most interesting flâneur. Like Winston and I, he was photographed for Stephanie Rushton's English Eccentrics project. Some of his personal aspects are also disturbingly similar to mine, but I've already answered question 2

• The Merest Flâneur, whilst I'm on the topic, I suppose. Will C is a fellow forumite whom I think should capitalise on the very promising start his column made last year (Postscriptum: yes, the site has been shuttered, but Will assures me that he will return under a new guise in due course)

•  The Grumpy Owl. Similar to Mr. Edwards, I suspect that this may not be Ryan Oakley's thing, but he is nevertheless a longstanding favourite, Canada's most cleverly idiosyncratic dandy and almost too intelligent to live. I'm looking forward to his soon-to-be-published novel

• The House of Beauty and Culture. Similar in purview to Little A, HOBAC keenly refracts a love of aesthetics through a knowledge of myriad cultures, forms, designs, quotes and history

• Pigtown Design. Another home for those in love with the pleasures of design. And occasionally, food

• An Affordable Wardrobe. Shamelessly reciprocal: Giuseppe Timore sent almost 600 viewers my way when he quoted my Tommy Nutter post on Wednesday of last week. Like Winston and I, he also believes in the essential power of budgeted dressing

• Perfect Gentleman SA. For anyone curious about 21st century South African sartorialism, Mxolisi Ngonelo has a perspective. He also has a fondness for Simply Red, but no one is truly perfect; once, I found Janet Reno attractive
  

   Enjoy,

   BON