The Art of Personal Taste

Discovering what truly feels ‘you’ in an algorithm era.

Taste is such an intimate thing.
And yet, I don’t think we express the power of it enough—at least, not with the reverence it deserves.

To me, having a strong sense of personal taste is one of the most magnetic qualities someone can have. Not the curated kind we see online—polished, predictable—but something that feels lived in. Raw. Real. Something that says: I know who I am, I know what I like, and I’m not afraid to show it—even if it doesn’t fit into a clean, trend-approved aesthetic.

I’m drawn to people like that. People who wear their taste like a quiet confidence. There’s something grounding about them. Rooted. Awake. You can sense that they’ve taken the time to pay attention to what makes them feel alive. That they’re not just following—they’re feeling.

And that? That feels rare right now.

What Taste Actually Is

Taste isn’t about what's good or popular or trending—it’s about what you love.

It’s not about what fits into a design category, or what looks right on a grid. It’s about what lights you up, what makes your body lean in, what creates that little subtle nudge you can’t always explain.

That’s the tricky thing about taste: it doesn’t have to make sense. It probably shouldn’t.

I studied design in school. And for years I was taught to classify things—Mid-Century Modern, Rococo, Bauhaus, Arts & Crafts… I learned to see beauty through a historical and categorical lens. But as I moved through the world, I realized something: my taste doesn’t fit in a box. And honestly? I never want it to.

The world tries to teach us that taste should be digestible. Summed up in a few Pinterest-board-worthy buzzwords. But I think that kind of simplicity dishonors the complexity of being human. I don’t want a taste that makes perfect sense—I want one that feels alive.

Oftentimes I like things that absolutely shouldn’t go together. And yet… I do. That’s the magic. To me, that’s where taste lives—in the friction, the tension, the bold pairing of something weird with something wonderful.

If you needed permission to lean into that? Here it is. Let your taste be a little funky. A little offbeat. A little “wait, really?” Your taste lives in those corners.

You Already Know What You Love

We all have taste.
The same way we all have a unique fingerprint.

The challenge is creating enough stillness to actually hear it.
In a world of endless notifications and infinite scrolls, it’s hard to find that kind of pause. Hard to slow down long enough to notice what’s quietly calling to us.

Taste is intuitive. It’s not something you find scrolling—it’s something you uncover by getting quiet. I believe it lives within us, and the external world is simply a mirror. A place for us to notice what resonates, what repels, what sticks.

I think of taste like a radar. As you move through the world, your radar scans and picks up on what aligns. But the signal gets scrambled easily—by trends, comparison, algorithms, groupthink, and the very human longing to belong.

It’s so easy to get swept up in what’s “in,” and forget what’s you.

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Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in an interview with HURS

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Admiration ≠ Taste

Here’s something no one talks about that I realized has helped me a lot:
Just because you admire something, doesn’t mean it’s your taste.

There are so many interiors, outfits, and objects I find beautiful. But that doesn’t mean they’re mine. That doesn’t mean they light me up in the way my taste does.

Learning to separate admiration from alignment is a skill. It takes honesty.
It takes checking in.

Taste Takes Practice

I’ve spent years learning my taste.
Peeling back layers of influence.
Learning to tune into the gentle nudges underneath all the noise.

And I still ask myself often:
Is this really me? Do I love this? Or do I just think I’m supposed to?

Taste is a practice. A calibration. A coming home.
And even now, I couldn’t fully describe mine in words. It’s not a palette or a mood—it’s a feeling.

It’s that soft “yes” in my body. That quiet, confident knowing.
It’s not really about the object or thing—it’s about what the object incites in me.

Sharing Your Taste Is a Generous Act

The more connected I feel to my taste, the less it becomes about the thing itself—and more about the feeling it unlocks in me. That gentle high. That quiet click of alignment. That spark of aliveness that says, this is mine.

And when I witness that in others—when someone is so clearly living in tune with their taste—I feel something.
Inspired. Invigorated.

There’s a kind of beauty in that level of self-trust.
It makes the world feel more textured, more honest.

And maybe that’s the real invitation here.
To know yourself well enough to share your taste without apology.
To let your preferences speak. To let them evolve. To let them be weird or quiet or loud or hard to define.

Maybe sharing our taste isn’t selfish. Maybe it’s a quiet kind of generosity.
A way of saying, this is what lights me up. What about you?

And maybe that’s where the magic lives.

Xx