#197: What is "personal style"?

Taste is about discovery, having interest in things, and making a lot of mistakes. It’s about trying to find the authentic set of choices that both reflect your own background, but also the choices and discoveries that you have made consciously and deliberately. It's always changing and it's also always in reflection of what everyone else is doing ... See more

I think of her often. She happens to hit on a particular fixation of mine, which is the problem of “taste” as an ever-present commodity, rather than something idiosyncratic, personal, and most importantly, connected to other aspects of your day-to-day life, like how you move around the world and what you do to pass the time. I think of people whose... See more

If your style is meant to help you express your priorities, and your priorities exclusively concern being stylish, what does your style express? Can clothes express...clothes?

While it’s probably one of the corniest things I’ll ever write in this column, I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you. It’s the product of devouring ideas, images and pieces of culture not ... See more