Are we sick of talking about taste yet?

Specific articles I would recommend: ‘Have I been influenced, or is this actually me?’ How personal taste fell out of fashion, by Rachel Aroesti for The Guardian and TasteSlop on Substack

Surely you’ve seen the taste discourse everywhere. Is it over? Is the algorithm telling us what our taste is?

Taste is still there, but, it’s being sold back to us.

First, the algorithmic anxiety where we worry whether our opinions are actually ours, or if we’re just being funnelled further into what we already like without being shown a diversification of thought. (See: what’s happening with politics now, where polarisation is at its extreme). You see this in film and TV where the majority out there is a remake or a reboot of a known quantity, like Marvel films. It’s so rare that you see a truly original story or even original filmmaking techniques. Fashion similarly — decisions are made based on data. I last wrote about it here; it’s still relevant.

And then you’ve got the AI discussions happening. I am sick of every business interview/panel discussion I’ve seen where there’s the token question about how the business is using AI. With AI the big question is how it can have taste — the word taste is so loaded with pretension and snobbery, but it really means judgement. How do you know something is good? It takes knowing yourself really well and honestly, experience, and I do wonder if younger generations will ever get a chance to develop that.

Two articles about it that I’ve enjoyed recently are Rachel Aroesti for The Guardian:

It has become impossible to ignore: personal taste has been seriously debased – if not completely destroyed – by technological advancement. We know the internet has radically altered the way we form our opinions and beliefs. Now we’re waking up to another sobering truth: it has wrecked our capacity to form our own preferences.

Then, read it in tandem with Tasteslop by Emily Segal on the Substack Nemesis, about how there’s the performance of good taste: you know, using lowercase serif against a trendy block colour. They define tasteslop as “Slop made out of things considered to be tasteful”. There’s a lot of not-so-great things out there, but if it has hallmarks of ‘tasteful’, there’s bound to be someone out there who thinks it’s tasteful, when it’s not actual tasteful. Y’know? As they define it, taste is from Discernment, Pattern Recognition, and Idiosyncrasy. Honestly, the best definition of taste I’ve ever read.

Discernment. Can you tell one thing from another, and can you make a specific, articulated judgment about why one thing is better than another?

Pattern Recognition. This has two parts: knowledge of the past (this can be art history or meme culture or something else entirely, but you have to be able to recognize when something new is rhyming with the past, contradicting it, remixing it, etc.) and intuition (this is art not science, this might be somewhat mystical), it is a sensitivity that allows you to predict things, to be early, to know what experiment to try next as a scientist, to know what song would sound right next, etc.

Idiosyncrasy. Personal relevance is the type of thing that makes taste meaningful, contextual, and automatically somewhat esoteric… The personal and idiosyncratic connection makes things less obvious and prevents them from being meaningfully cloned by absolutely everyone (i.e. becoming tasteslop) even if the actual taste markers are not totally different in content.

Taste isn’t dead, but it’s being confident to build your own taste. Taste is subjective, that’s the point! It’s personal! This is something I do grapple with personally, particularly my newsletter starting off as about recommendations. I like my taste. Because it’s me and I’m in my head. I don’t particularly care if it’s good taste, because it’s personal. And when I recommend something, it’s because I like it.

So here’s what I actually am liking to read, explore and shop right now.

I love a Reddit browse because I really enjoy understanding what makes people tick (or, what really annoys them). Before you ask, I don’t post! I just like to read it, you know, get an understanding of what is happening out there on the internet. So this is a niche one. An anonymous poster using a burner account has recently started sharing some pieces that she’s inherited recently, asking for help on identification. She won’t reveal who the pieces are from, but internet sleuths are thinking a famous actress from the 50s/60s who may have passed away recently.

The poster said while she will keep some and wear them out grocery shopping if she has to, she is speaking to auction houses like Sothebys to get them valued. Meanwhile, she is posting them anonymously on the internet so they can be admired. Commenters are coming out helping her with identifying the stones, the era, the make, but also urging to get them properly valued and insured, because, wow, they are some serious pieces.

Here are some of my favourites.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for five years, and I realised recently that I’ve been making assumptions about who’s reading it.

So I’d like to ask you, instead.

As to what it’s for: more considered content, how to connect with the community more directly, deeper intelligence product. And I want to build it around who you actually are, not who I’m imagining you to be.

It’s 15 questions and takes about five minutes. If you are able to respond, I would be infinitely grateful.

Everyone who responds will get a dedicated edition sharing back what I find — I’m genuinely curious what this readership looks like in aggregate, and I think you might be as well.

If you’re interested, here’s a link for the survey in the button below.

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One of my most frequently asked questions is for podcast recommendations.

My two recent favourites — because honestly sometimes we just want to listen to something fun and light and I need a break from work-related podcasts — is Critics-At-Large from The New Yorker, where their critics discuss everything from Charli XCX’s film The Moment, to Jackass (in the episode The Golden Age of the American Idiot) to Romantasy and more. If you are in my ‘READ AND LISTEN recommendations’ channel on my Instagram you would have noticed I recommend their episodes frequently. It’s truly high and low.

The Rest is Entertainment is another favourite. I love Marina Hyde’s voice and I’m fascinated by Richard Osman’s prolific writing career. Their have unique and interesting points-of-view about the inner workings of the media and entertainment industries, answering questions like how hard and expensive is it to film the Olympics, to Royal gossip.

I realise I have perhaps an unhealthy obsession with cape tops. But here’s another one that I’ve just added to cart — it helps that it’s priced at AU$168.

I always liked this style of shorts that Prada popularised a few years ago. Here is the Tibi version.

It’s no secret that I’m really into Chan Luu at the moment. They’re calling this ‘techno taffeta’ shorts. I know the main Chan Luu website can be a bit annoying to shop from when in Australian, so this is from Shopbop.

Wearing your jackets as a top is a thing! Love this Rixo one which you could wear opened up over a lace silk camisole and jeans, or buttoned up entirely with pants.

Just wow. Devastatingly, this amazing Dries Van Noten skirt is severely reduced but there’s only EU34 left. Not my size. Hope someone else can snap this up.

I know last week’s newsletter was all about how I packed for a short summer holiday, but the truth is that I’m back in Sydney and it’s cold. I love a slipper at home — Chinese house — so I wear these after I have a shower. They’re warm, soft, and with a flexible sole they’re like more developed socks with the warmth and cosiness of shearling. They’re from New Zealand brand Wilson + Dorset.