Taste

Another hypothesis is that artists are more sensitive. They’re more observant, feel things more deeply, more obsessive about details, more focused on how they measure up to greatness. It’s self-conscious. It’s intimate. It’s idiosyncratic. And when they get it right, it’s as tasteful as it gets. 

In today’s increasingly digital world, can anyone be a tastemaker?
Everyone can express their taste, but not everyone listens deeply enough to know what’s actually theirs. 
The internet rewards mimicry, but taste is born from intimacy with yourself, with the world, with the unseen. It’s not rare because it’s exclusive; it’s rare because actually tuning in and being present is.

Pierre Bourdieu – Distinction
	•	Introduction → Frames the problem of taste as social, not natural.
	•	Part I, Chapter 1: “The Aristocracy of Culture” → How the upper classes cultivate taste as distinction.
	•	Part II, Chapter 6: “The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles” → Where he defines habitus + explains how cultural capital works in everyday choices.

👉 Why: These are the clearest windows into how taste functions as a marker of class and identity.

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Susan Sontag
	•	From Against Interpretation
	•	“Against Interpretation” → Why we should experience art sensually, not just intellectually.
	•	“Notes on Camp” → A roadmap to alternative tastes (irony, excess, queerness, subcultural sensibilities).
	•	From On Photography
	•	“In Plato’s Cave” → How photographs shape reality and condition aesthetic judgment.
	•	“The Image-World” → On how images mass-produce taste and experience.

👉 Why: These essays give you the sensibility lens missing from Bourdieu — how taste also emerges from style, perception, and mediation.

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Theodor Adorno (Culture Industry writings)
	•	“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (in Dialectic of Enlightenment)
→ Explains how mass culture manufactures pseudo-taste through repetition and standardization.

👉 Why: This is the sharpest critique of how inauthentic taste is produced.

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Immanuel Kant – Critique of Judgment
	•	First Introduction (Sections 1–5) → What makes a judgment “aesthetic.”
	•	§6–§9: “The Judgment of Taste” → The idea of “disinterested pleasure” and universality.

👉 Why: These are the classical foundations — what all later thinkers are reacting to.

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Kyle Chayka – Filterworld (if you want a contemporary anchor)
	•	Chapter 1: “The Flattening of Taste” → How algorithms create homogenized aesthetics.
	•	Chapter 4: “The Personal Brand Aesthetic” → Direct link to fashion, lifestyle, and identity.

👉 Why: Brings Kant + Bourdieu + Sontag into your present, with Instagram as the “new museum.”

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📖 Suggested Reading Order (so it builds logically)
	1.	Kant (Critique of Judgment §§1–9) → What “taste” means philosophically.
	2.	Bourdieu (Intro + Ch.1 + Ch.6) → How taste functions socially and economically.
	3.	Sontag (Against Interpretation + Notes on Camp) → Sensibility and counter-taste.
	4.	Adorno (Culture Industry essay) → Taste as manufactured illusion.
	5.	Sontag (On Photography: Plato’s Cave + Image-World) → Images and visual taste.
	6.	Chayka (Filterworld Ch.1 + Ch.4) → Taste today in digital/algorithmic culture.


The beauty of vintage isn't just in its uniqueness—it's in the patience it requires, the story it carries, and the hunt itself. Vintage is about process over impulse, embracing imperfection, and finding joy in things that feel rare and personal. It is about discovery, being open, curious, and willing to wait. It is also just cooler and more interesting. So, cheers to slowing down, taking your time, and shopping with intention.

At Dreamday, we're even starting to pitch Substack editors like we do traditional media, because their voices carry weight. These aren’t just newsletters; they're tastemaking platforms with real influence.

There is some other type of beauty that is not visual,’ he explained to us in an interview. ‘I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps there is some kind of…’ His voice trailed off. Searching for the right words, Paulo continued: ‘It’s almost an appreciation for the complexity of things. But what you realise is that it’s all uncoverable. We can know it all.’

Mara Hoffman’s approach to taste reveals something essential about influence that transcends fashion: the power of alignment over performance. While the industry rewards those who anticipate (or follow) trends, Hoffman built her legacy by trusting what genuinely moved her - and in doing so, moved others. Her philosophy that “the art is formed through the edit” speaks to a creative courage that’s increasingly rare: the willingness to subtract, simplify, let things breathe and be true.

📚 6-Week Curriculum on the Principles of Taste

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Week 1 – Foundations of Taste

Readings
	•	Kant, Critique of Judgment, §§1–9 (“The Judgment of Taste”).
	•	Bourdieu, Distinction, Introduction.

Reflection Exercise
	•	Write in your Taste Diary: Pick one object you love (bag, artwork, song) and analyze it through both lenses:
	•	Kant → is your pleasure “disinterested” (free from utility)?
	•	Bourdieu → does this taste locate you socially?

Taste Training
	•	Curate a Pinterest/Moodboard of “purely beautiful” things (try to bracket out trendiness or function).

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Week 2 – Taste as Distinction

Readings
	•	Bourdieu, Distinction, Ch. 1 “The Aristocracy of Culture.”
	•	Bourdieu, Distinction, Ch. 6 “The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles.”

Reflection Exercise
	•	Observe 3 people (in a café, shop, or Instagram). Write down their “taste signals” (clothes, gestures, references).
	•	Ask: What capital are they displaying?

Taste Training
	•	Pick one “taste marker” of your own (a bag, book, or restaurant habit). Analyze how much of it is “you” vs. “social positioning.”

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Week 3 – Sensibility and Counter-Taste

Readings
	•	Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (essay).
	•	Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp.”

Reflection Exercise
	•	Compare two objects you like: one serious (e.g. fine art, minimalist architecture), one camp (excessive, kitschy, ironic).
	•	How do you justify each taste?

Taste Training
	•	Build a mini-gallery: select 5 images you consider “camp” and present them as if you were a museum curator.

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Week 4 – Taste in the Age of Mass Culture

Readings
	•	Adorno & Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”
	•	Sontag, On Photography, “In Plato’s Cave.”

Reflection Exercise
	•	Take one mainstream trend (Netflix show, TikTok aesthetic). Write: is your taste genuine or pre-fabricated?

Taste Training
	•	Spend a day without algorithmic feeds (no TikTok/Instagram explore). Notice: what do you choose to look at, absent push?

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Week 5 – Visual Taste & The Image-World

Readings
	•	Sontag, On Photography, “The Image-World.”
	•	Kyle Chayka, Filterworld, Ch. 1 “The Flattening of Taste.”

Reflection Exercise
	•	Screenshot 12 images from your Instagram feed. Divide them: original taste vs. algorithmic repetition.

Taste Training
	•	Make a “visual detox”: collect 10 images offline (books, old magazines, museums). Compare how different they feel from online taste.

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Week 6 – Contemporary Taste & Self-Curation

Readings
	•	Kyle Chayka, Filterworld, Ch. 4 “The Personal Brand Aesthetic.”
	•	Pauline Brown, Aesthetic Intelligence (Intro + Ch. 1).

Reflection Exercise
	•	Write your Taste Manifesto (1 page):
	•	What are your “yes” aesthetics, your “no” aesthetics, and your “hmm” (still undecided)?

Taste Training
	•	Host a micro-salon (even if just with 1 friend): present 3 cultural objects and defend why they represent your taste.


What makes Hoffman’s perspective particularly resonant is her understanding that taste isn’t curation for its own sake: it’s truth-telling. Her decision to close a beloved brand at its height wasn’t retreat but radical honesty, choosing transformation over stagnation. In a culture that equates success with endless expansion, she reminds us that real tastemaking requires something quieter: the intimacy to know what’s actually yours, and the discipline to honor it.

It was never about being fashionable; it was about trusting that what moved me would move others too. Everything I’ve done has come from a deep devotion to beauty and the impulse to express what I love.

Why do you think taste has become such a powerful form of influence today?
Because people are tired of noise. There’s so much sameness online that when someone expresses what’s real to them, it feels magnetic. 
True taste cuts through because it’s not manufactured, it’s a kind of truth-telling

My eye has always been a gift, and I have a clear knowingness of what I like and don’t, but it’s been sharpened through time. Twenty-four years of designing, editing collections, and directing images taught me discernment. 
Instinct is the spark, but craft and discipline give it form. Knowing when to stop, when to simplify, when to let something breathe, that’s all learned through practice.

How do you develop your own taste in a world that only shows you more of what you already like?

Not taste in the superficial sense—not trend-chasing, not aesthetic mimicry, not expensive minimalism for the sake of status. Real taste. The kind that signals coherence. Clarity. The ability to choose what matters in a world drowning in what doesn’t.
Because when abundance is infinite, attention is everything. And what you give your attention to—what you consume, what you engage with, what you amplify—becomes a reflection of how you think.
We used to associate intelligence with accumulation. The smartest people were the ones who knew the most. But that model doesn’t hold anymore. AI knows more than anyone. Wikipedia is free. The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you filter it. How you recognize signal in the noise.
Curation is the new IQ test.

Notes on Taste with Mara Hoffman

Hoffman’s influence extends far beyond the clothes she created. Her aesthetic sensibility - shaped by Pina Bausch and mythology, tarots and vintage Cher, the ocean and the desert - represents a particular kind of taste that feels increasingly valuable: one born from genuine curiosity rather than trend forecasting, from inner alignment rather than market demands. Through her recently launched newsletter, The Crystalline Vessel by Mara Hoffman, she’s exploring what comes after building something beloved and choosing to let it go - and the extraordinary beauty that emerges when you give yourself permission to start again.

Public intellectuals wrote so influencers could aestheticize
Meanwhile, the people who do shape culture—the ones who influence what we wear, how we speak, and even how we think—are no longer intellectuals, but influencers. And while this may feel like the natural evolution of celebrities, it says something significant about what we value today. We no longer look to those who challenge us intellectually, we look to those who offer us a perfectly packaged lifestyle.

Taste, in this sense, is less about gut feeling, and more about possessing the intellectual tools to decode complexity

The algorithms aren’t just narrowing and homogenising our preferences.
They’re making surfacing new/interesting/remarkable things so damn HARD that everyone’s just recycling old ones.

In the end, the real threat to taste isn’t AI - it’s the way content keeps trying to package it. The more we polish it for virality, the more we strip it of what made it powerful in the first place.
Developing taste means actively resisting the gravitational pull of popular consensus and algorithmic predictability. It means allowing yourself to be guided by intuition and curiosity rather than the expectation of external validation. It means being conscious and careful about the clothes you buy, the books you read, the music you listen to. Above all, it means learning. 
Taste doesn’t just come from liking things.
It comes from disliking things - and knowing why.

The more we see repetitive formats of derivative, iterative versions of ideas, thoughts, products and things, the more we think that’s normal…that this is what we like most and what we want more of. The more homogenised we get.

In our conversation, Hoffman reveals why she sees taste as truth-telling, how the art of subtraction shapes everything she creates, and why real tastemaking requires a kind of intimacy with yourself that the internet rarely rewards.

It feels like a celebration of everything I was raised to appreciate. I think my childhood on the Riviera shaped this in me: I was taught that maximalism and collecting aren't excess, they're heritage and expression

The New Aesthetics of Slop

Curation is everything. It’s deciding what deserves your attention. 
That might be the way I arrange an altar, choose flowers, buy a pair of vintage jeans, take a photograph, or even what I share publicly. It’s all an act of alignment. 

Taste is often dismissed as something shallow or subjective. But at its core, it’s a form of literacy—a way of reading the world. Good taste isn’t about being right. It’s about being attuned. To rhythm, to proportion, to vibe. It’s knowing when something is off, even if you can’t fully articulate why.
The people with taste aren’t always the loudest. They’re the ones whose work has resonance. Whose rooms feel calm. Whose recommendations always land. They have an internal tuning fork that rejects the cheap dopamine of novelty for something more enduring.
This isn’t just about design. It’s about thought. Taste is what allows you to skim past the performative noise, the fake depth, the viral bait, and know—instinctively—what’s worth your time.

Just in: Meta's Q3 2024 earnings report admitted that Instagram's content recommendation system now (officially, admittedly) prioritises what they call "high-engagement format alignment." Translation: posts that closely mimic already existing high-performing content.

Billboard's 2024 year-end analysis: 82% hit songs now use one of just four melodic structures that have previously proven most successful by the algorithm. Spotify's year-end data: the average similarity score between Top 100 tracks reached an all-time high.

BoF x McKinsey's State of Fashion 2024 report: 71% (sure…cash-strapped, low-growth) fashion industry executive leaders now rely ‘heavily’ on AI to predict and inform design decisions - not to innovate, but to replicate what worked before. The logic being that this lowers risk. But does it??

When Deloitte surveyed Gen Z consumers in November, 72% said they prefer products that ‘feel familiar’ to those that ‘stand out’.

And of course even the colour of 2025 is meh. How could it not be, when the word of 2024 was brainrot?

WTF is taste and why is it the new intelligence?

And spiritual systems like tarot, astrology, and the Gene Keys, which have helped me understand storytelling and the human experience on an energetic level. 

How Did The World Get So Ugly?

Taste Is the New Intelligence

For me, deep study is about making space for reading in multiple domains, allowing ideas to cross-pollinate. While I may do small bits of reading or note-taking for certain tasks, the bulk of my learning comes from immersing myself in a topic so thoroughly that it sparks offshoots of curiosity.

Think of it as going underground into the “root system” of an idea—once you’re down there, you notice all these hidden connections that lead to new territory.

I have the gift of bringing form to an idea or an emotion. I used the brand as a vehicle to translate the inner world onto the outer one, to create shape and physicality that could be inhabited and felt by the wearer. 

Be patient, the process of metabolizing the world is a slow one. Wield your P/N meter well, take your time learning what you find compelling, and why. There are no shortcuts to taste. Taste cannot sublimate. It can only bloom. To quote Susan Sontag one last time, “taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste.”

Our algorithmic culture is compressing the way we think. And making everything less interesting.