The Things We Like

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal taste as I’ve gotten older.

Quite often someone will see something and say to me, “That’s very you,” or “That’s so your taste.” And I know exactly what they mean. I know when something feels like me almost immediately. But if you asked me to actually put my taste down on paper, I think I’d feel a little uncomfortable.

Which is funny. How can you know something so instinctively but find it so hard to describe?

Maybe our taste is a simpler thing all along. It’s simply the things we’ve always liked. 

Before Pinterest, before Instagram, Tumblr, even online shopping. Before there were quite so many places telling us what we might like.

I suppose a good way to consider this is by asking yourself - What does your house look like? What flowers do you always buy? Which hotels do you save even though you have absolutely no plans to visit them? What films do you rewatch? What colours seem to follow you around? What objects do you refuse to throw away?

Iris Apfel once made a lovely connection between dressing a person and dressing a home, that really they are expressions of the same aesthetic. I like that idea a lot. 

Perhaps our taste is hiding in all these other places, rather than just in our wardrobes.

I think you can look backwards too. What did you love before you even really knew what fashion was? What did your bedroom look like when you were little? What did your grandmother wear that you still think about? What were you drawn to at 15, or 21, that somehow you still find yourself coming back to now?

There are things I’ve returned to over and over again without really meaning to. Old photographs, certain colours, slightly nostalgic silhouettes, things that feel familiar even when I can’t quite explain why. Eventually I suppose all those little repetitions become a visual language of their own.

Maybe knowing your own taste isn’t something you have to work out at all. Maybe it’s simply noticing the things you’ve always liked.

Maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves to find it, as though it’s waiting somewhere and we just haven’t worked it out yet.

Perhaps we already know. And always have….

So this week…notice the things you keep coming back to.