The second-most surprising thing about the Marc Jacobs show during February’s New York Fashion Week was the unexpected appearance of the band Sonic Youth on the catwalk. As Kim Gordon, the petite, blond lead singer danced and thrashed about in place, one by one the models rotated through the darkened space, most of them dangling bowling-bag-size handbags at their sides.

But the most surprising thing involved one of those bags. Days after the show, the blogosphere was busily buzzing about it: The large, ostrich leather tote with sunray designs spreading across one side was called “BB”—and it turned out that the name came from Jacobs’ favorite blog, BryanBoy, a deliciously funny read obsessed with all things fashion, especially the blogger’s favorite designer, Marc Jacobs. The bag will retail this September for $1,295 in leather and $4,800 for the ostrich version.
 
“Love your passion for fashion—after all, where would designers be without enthusiasm like yours?” Jacobs is quoted on the 19-year-old Manila-based blogger’s homepage.

As a powerhouse designer and one of the key figures on our Brilliant List, Jacobs, who is notorious for running late (his shows rarely start on time), would seem to have little time to read blogs. But as the internet has taken on a greater role in fashion, from live video of the runways to up-to-the-minute perspective and commentary on the latest trends, it has become an essential source for designers. Besides BryanBoy, Jacobs also makes a point of reading the more serious On the Runway, the fashion industry blog from New York Times writer Cathy Horyn.

Jacobs isn’t alone in visiting the blogosphere with some regularity. In all areas of business, everyone from newcomers to captains of industry are finding it essential to make a little time for the internet. Those on our Brilliant List tap blogs to keep up with trade news, spot new talent, and find inspiration.

Paul Buchheit, the former Google software engineer who coined the company’s motto “Don’t Be Evil” and who developed both Gmail and the first AdSense prototypes, is fairly consumed by his most recent online venture, FriendFeed, a website that aggregates online profiles from various sources. Buchheit devotes most of his blog consumption through FriendFeed to read his friends’ latest blog entries in one spot.

But he also reads the blogs of other tech pioneers, including essayist Paul Graham, the developer of Viaweb, one of the first Web-based applications, whose eponymous blog is a how-to for tech startups and observations on tech culture; Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, who also writes regularly about investment and technology on Blog.PMarca; and New York-based venture capitalist Fred Wilson, a financier of del.icio.us and Etsy, who expounds on VC life in New York on AVC. For fun, Buchheit checks out the Dilbert blog.

Jonelle Procope, the president and C.E.O. of the Apollo Theater Foundation, has not only given back to the community by raising $50 million to revamp the historic theater that helped launch legends like Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson. She continues to be on the lookout for emerging artists and talents by checking out KiptonART, a site run by patron of the arts Kipton Cronkite, nephew of former newscaster Walter. She also drops in daily to AOL Black Voices, Essence.com, and the online arts-and-crafts marketplace Etsy.

Washington’s most networked lawyer, Bob Barnett, a partner in Williams & Connolly, waits for the blogosphere to come to him. “I generally read the ones that are sent to me, like Michael Cader’s Publisher’s Lunch and Mediabistro,” he says, while ticking off a list of other political blogs he checks in on from time to time: Mike Allen and Ben Smith on Politico, Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s First Read, Rick Klein on ABC’s The Note, and The Page by Time’s Mark Halperin.

Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the nonprofit venture capital firm the Acumen Fund, is an active participant in the technology and business innovation community group called TED and she keeps up with its blog. She also visits NextBillion, which posts news and commentary on sustainable business models that address poverty, and reads the latest marketing insight from Acumen adviser and marketing guru Seth Godin on his eponymous blog.

As expected, tech mastermind Danny Hillis, who invented the search-engine technology that made Google possible and who is the co-founder of R&D problem-solving company Applied Minds, is keen on techie sites like BoingBoing and CoolTools. For information on meteor showers and the sun-earth environment, another of his interests, he goes to SpaceWeather.

But not everyone is so predictable. Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, the duo that founded 23andMe, differ in their reads: While Wojcicki is catching up with industry news on  TechCrunch and BioTechNews, Avey is having more fun on the news, gossip, and opinion site Huffington Post and on Wired.

If you’ve ever wondered where the brilliant get their ideas (or kill a little time), consider some of the sites above.