A BRILLIANT NEW WORLD

As the founder and president of a PR firm that specializes in consumer lifestyle products, and a sometime style blogger and contributing style editor, I live in the world of magazines—reading them, tabbing them, ripping pages from them, referencing them and pitching story ideas to them. To me, thumbing page by glorious page through a glossy magazine is one of life’s great and inexpensive pleasures, offering a smorgasbord of visual and intellectual candy.

Sadly, the magazine world is in a state of complete distress, yet another casualty of our grim economy. Domino? Gone. The New York Times’ T magazine? Scaled back. Allure? Rumored to be shuttering. What’s next? I shudder to think.

That’s why I found it so utterly encouraging to see the latest issue of Brilliant, a Texas lifestyle magazine—with its completely new look—on the newsstand. So strong and confident. So fresh and optimistic. So brave and courageous. So, well, Texan.

With its bold new cover look (finally, the masthead gets the capital B it has long deserved), Brilliant beckoned to me like it hasn’t before and I just had to get my hands on it. And I did. I was struck immediately by the reader-friendly new layouts and the enhanced graphics and print quality and, before long, I was reading and tabbing and ripping with abandon and delight.

As I closed the magazine and put it down, I remembered what I’d read about Spring’s accessories on the vastly improved Editor’s Pick page. I ran to my closet and plucked out of hiding a Jennifer Ouellette ostrich feather headband that I bought several months ago but haven’t had the nerve to wear and put it on. To the Brilliant editorial team: congratulations, April's issue is a true feather in your cap.