Do You Have Good Taste?

or, how I learned to let my obsessions lead the way

I started questioning the whole concept of “good taste” when I was around 12 or so and saw these two (shared below) tv hosts tell mostly women how THEY had bad taste. Sitting in front of the tv, already painfully uncomfortable in my body and identity, this further confused me.

Hosts of UK’s version of What Not To Wear.

Having “good” taste. It’s intoxicating and confusing. A cultural currency some may even say. A flirtation with desire. A soft weapon. A special box people either want to open or gatekeep forever. I lay somewhere in between all of it.

Many of us want to be seen as someone with “good taste,” but very few of us can agree on what that actually means. Especially now—when taste has become aestheticized, algorithmized, and monetized to death.

I say, let’s get weird and weirder with it. Maybe break It down a bit too.

I thought this was good taste in 2006. You couldn’t tell me differently.

Taste is Political, baby

Taste is shaped by power, access, memory, money, experience, knowledge, and myth.

It’s why a chair designed by Charlotte Perriand carries more cultural capital than the one your Italian nonna upholstered in 1987. It’s why minimalism gets called “chic” when it’s Scandinavian, but “bland” when it’s local. It’s why luxury branding can hide bad design under the banner of exclusivity or logo for that matter—and why people still buy it for more than a downpayment on a house in the midwest.

But here’s the radical thing: you get to disobey and do what you want.
But do you know what you want? Or do you want what you are being told to?

Taste doesn’t have to follow hierarchy. It can follow intuition. The tension between what attracts you and what challenges or makes you feel weird things, or even makes you feel super confused but turned on is where it gets pretty interesting in my opinion.

As John Waters once said:

“I would never go out with someone who had bad taste in books. But bad taste in clothes? Absolutely.”

Because good taste isn’t really ever about tastefulness, is it?
It’s a gut hit. It’s knowing before you can explain. It’s the taste in your mouth that It gives you. Taste it?

Taste is a Feeling, Not a Formula

Taste isn’t about color matching or logo recognition. It’s about how it hits, how it resonates.

It’s the feeling of watching a Chantal Akerman film alone and realizing silence is a choice. These days, a very big and often times difficult choice.
It’s the goosebumps you get from a painting on a small but special gallery’s wall.
It’s hearing a Cocteau Twins track in the middle of a chaotic city street through your earbuds and pretending like you’re in a memory that never happened to you.

Taste is the body saying yes before the brain catches up. That immediate injection of energy that you haven’t named yet.

What “Good Taste” Isn’t

• A palette. (You’re not an easily assembled Pinterest board.)

• A flex. (Real taste doesn’t need validation, that’s something else all together that might be worth doing shadow work on.)

• A copy of The Row’s last campaign. (Beautiful? Yes. You? Maybe not.)

• Cynicism dressed as restraint. (Let yourself want things.)

• A lifestyle you can simply buy. (Sorry.)

What Good Taste Might Look Like

• Knowing when to stop adding

• Letting silence do the heavy lifting in a conversation

• Choosing discomfort over cliché

• Saying “I don’t know” with confidence

• Reading the room and staying unpredictable

• Knowing your references—but not needing to explain them

• Being deeply specific about what you like without making others feel wrong

• Treating your obsessions like rituals, not phases

• Being okay with awkwardness because tension is chic

• Disliking something “objectively good” and not needing a reason why

Social Media Has Given Taste Amnesia

There’s a flattening that happens when you scroll for too long. Everything starts to look good. Everything starts to look the same. We forget what we’re actually drawn to. You know what i’m talking about. It’s at that point your brain starts to feel like cotton balls and like a rubber band is sitting around your head.

As Susan Sontag said in Notes on “Camp”:

“The ultimate Camp statement: it’s good because it’s awful.”

This is your invitation to like the “wrong” things again.

To prefer Diane Pernet over clean girl beauty. (I remember the great excitement I got when she let me interview her for the first issue of my old art magazine - from another lifetime ago)
To own ashtrays you don’t use.
To light candles during the day.
Etc.

Diane Pernet

Studio Noto Says: These Things Have Good Taste Energy

• Margiela Tabi flats in white → impractical, polarizing, and perfect. You ether hate them so much you barf or you can’t live without owning a pair, no matter what It takes.

• A brass object you found on vacation and never looked up the artist

• This fragrance that people can’t place but has been around for a hot min

• Books by Eileen Myles, Hilton Als, or Jenny Holzer’s text compilations

• A wine glass from a french hotel, stolen or gifted, who’s to say…

  

  somewhere in Paris last year

The point of having taste isn’t to impress people—it’s to live better with yourself.

To walk into your space and feel known.
To wear something that softens your edges or sharpens your energy.
To surround yourself with beauty, tension, intimacy, and memory.

Good taste doesn’t look one way.
But it always feels like it belongs.
Hope to inspire whomever to connect with whatever makes whomever feel closer to themselves.

xo,
Gloria
PS:

BONUS QUIZZ FOR PAID SUBS / THINK 90’S BACK OF THE MAG STYLE QUIZZ VIBE:

“Is This Actually Your Taste… Or Are You Just Online Too Much?”
A non-scientific yet brutally accurate Studio Noto self-check in