This Blogstar Just Dropped the Mic on Every Other Fashion Blog

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Have you seen our latest Blogstar's redesign? Vanilla Extract blogger Nichole Ciotti relaunched her two-year old blog today with the help of her web-guru boyfriend Brian Delaney, and the results are gorgeous. Forget the static banners you see on most blogs: Nichole is rocking a mini-fashion video at the top of her site, and Brian tells us they plan to update the video banner with each new post. Plus, Nichole's photos now come with shoppable tags. Just click on the photo to buy her look. Way to raise the bar, guys!

Nichole credits Brian as the brains behind the redesign, so we quizzed him on the details. He tells us, "I'm a user-experience (UX) professional by trade, so I approached this redesign like I approach work with my startup clients: I thought about what was important to the user first." That meant stripping out elements that readers don't like —ads, sidebars, and archives— and adding larger photos, Instagram widgets, and the custom, shop-the-look feature that's embedded into each photo.

The move to fashion video isn't a surprise. After all, Joyus CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy predicted the shift during our interview last year, saying, "We've moved from text to images, and I think we're going to move from images to rich media...If I had a message for bloggers, it's the next frontier for you is to find ways to express yourself and bring your voice to life visually and even more intimately and personally, and I think a video is a great medium for that." The Vanilla Extract team was obviously paying attention. The question is which of our style stars will be next on the rich media bandwagon.
· Vanilla Extract [Official Site]
· Your Summer Shopping List Could Use a Dash of Vanilla Extract [Racked]