All in Good Taste
What constitutes taste, good or bad, in design and architecture?
“You know when you are in an environment that has been created by someone with good taste when you are transported out of your mundane daily life and suddenly feel like a kid in a candy shop, overcome with excitement and a feeling you can’t quite put your finger on. Good taste is intangible. Good taste is rare.” — Will Cooper, Chief Creative Officer of ASH NYC
The question of “good taste” is something of a thorny subject in terms of interiors and architecture, especially within the design world, as with multiple aesthetics, everyone likes to think their own taste is superior. The Oxford English dictionary defines it as “good or discerning judgement, especially with regard to what is aesthetically pleasing, fashionable, polite, or socially appropriate”. Some suggest “it’s something you’re born with”, whereas others subscribe to the idea that it can be learnt, at least to some extent, through practice and through exposure to the arts, architecture and design (or, as former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1915-1985) once said of pornography, “most of us know poor taste when we see it”). Ancient Greek philosophy defined good taste, as it pertained to beauty, in relatively finite terms, dictated according to the “Golden Ratio”, which was believed to create visual harmony in any branch of the arts. Works of architecture for e.g. would only meet with such artistic and aesthetic ideals if they complied with certain rules and proportions. French sociologist and intellectual Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), known for his 1979 book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, noted that as a concept, good taste was merely a way of the elite separating themselves from those less powerful, to the extent that, once fashions were adopted by the lower classes, often, they fell out of favour and were no longer considered to be in “good taste”. Indeed for much of the twentieth-century taste was not at all a democratic concept, and magazines, which were, generally staffed by people from the same socio-economic background, dictated what was fashionable, and what style looked like. Today this might seem a somewhat peculiar concept as we live in an age where taste isn’t something society considers to be dictated by class.
The advent and rise of social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram allow us to explore our own taste, independent of the diktats of editors, publishers and advertisers, and to find whatever niche appeals to us most. As a result of this seismic shift in power, from the board room to the street, online “influencers” are able to pack a considerable punch in terms of contributing to overall public opinion. Italian blogger Chiara Ferragni (b. 1987) for e.g. who in 2017 was ranked first on Forbes “Top Fashion Influencers” list is now courted by such haute Parisian fashion houses as Balmain, Dior and Schiaparelli, all of whom, if one looks at their origins, only catered to, and targeted, for the most part, wealthy white women of privilege. It’s perhaps interesting to note that in terms of the latter, its founder Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was loathed by her contemporary Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971), who found the success of a designer with no formal training, who couldn’t even sew, offensive, referring to her dismissively as “that Italian artist who makes clothes”. This could very well have had something to do with the struggles Chanel faced in overcoming not only the immediate disadvantages of being born into extreme poverty but in succeeding in a male-dominated workplace, where the rigid, conservative societal view was that a woman should stay at home and raise a family. Perhaps a telling insight, in a moment of rare candour Chanel explained to her biographer Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969): “I was a child in revolt. Proud people desire only one thing: freedom. But to be free, one must have money.”
The Fashion designer Coco Chanel in her apartment, rue Cambon, Paris (1959) wearing one of her signature tweed suits
Luigi bar and restaurant, Cannes, France, designed by Paris-based Italian Interior Architect Fabrizio Casiraghi
Quite possibly the most Parisienne, and certainly the most expensive couturier of her generation, still considered by many to be the very epitome of chic good taste (at least in terms of aesthetics, if not political affiliations), Chanel was, perhaps surprisingly, the illegitimate daughter of a street vendor who grew up poor in the countryside at a dismal convent orphanage. She worked first as a seamstress and then a cabaret singer, before taking a string of affluent lovers — not at all unusual for struggling women at the time — which gave her the capital to set up as a milliner at 21 rue Cambon, Paris, an occupation that required little in terms of space and investment, before her business grew to include clothing, jewellery and fragrance. Schiaparelli on the other hand was born at the eighteenth-century Palazzo Corsini, a baroque palace in Rome, the daughter of a Neapolitan aristocrat and a Piedmontese sholar. She fled to London when her parents encouraged her to marry a wealthy Russian suitor, and there she met the charismatic con-man Count Wilhelm de Kerlor (1883-1928), a self-professed paranormal expert whom she married a year later. Soon after the birth of their daughter, de Kerlor abandoned mother and child (allegedly for the American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927)), and Schiaparelli moved to Paris where, thanks to her aristocratic lineage, she was embraced by high society and met the couturier Paul Poiret (1879-1944), who actively encouraged her designs. Schiaparelli’s signature shocking pink and witty, often strikingly surrealist creations were in stark contrast to Chanel’s elegantly tailored tweed suits, and her now-iconic little black dress. It’s hardly surprising perhaps that Chanel, who clawed her way to the top at a time when sexism and class discrimination were rife, was threatened by this newcomer, who seemed to have had everything handed to her on a plate, especially when one considers she patronisingly referred to Chanel as “that dreary little bourgeoisie” and “that milliner.”
So hostile was their relationship that there’s even a rumour Chanel once succeeded in setting her Italian counterpart alight. At one of the last great costume balls before the outbreak of the Second World War, there “was a near-disaster when Chanel … dared Schiaparelli … to dance with her and, with purposeful innocence, steered her into the candles,” fashion writer Bettina Ballard recalls in her memoir. “The fire was put out and so was Schiaparelli — by delighted guests squirting her with soda water.” Feuding aside, Chanel’s “good taste” was very much a product of her formative experiences, the practicality and austerity of her clothing inspired in part by the nuns that raised her as a child. In complete defiance of societal and gender norms, Chanel liberated women from the tyranny of the corset, so that the Parisian beau monde could breathe freely, unencumbered by gussets, garters, whalebones and brassières for the first time in French history. A veritable bundle of contradictions, even late in life Chanel would refer to herself dryly as “just a simple little dressmaker”, abhorred all things chi-chi, and yet at the same time, lived in some considerable grandeur at her coromandel-clad apartment, decked out in works by modernist masters such as Diego Giacometti (1902-1985) Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) and Picasso (1881-1973)*. Like chalk and cheese, Schiaparelli had for all intents and purposes been born into an affluent fantasy land, which was reflected as much in her iconoclastic bravado as her whimsical, outré creations. Without necessarily realising it, inherently, taste, be it good or bad, is intrinsically bound up in life experience, and the reasons for our likes and dislikes are often deep-rooted, informed by everything from childhood experiences, to friendships, relationships and trauma. We all have our own ideas of what constitutes “good taste”, and it informs so many of our decisions in life, from what we wear, to what and where we choose to eat, to the furniture we put in our homes and even whom we choose as a life partner; for e.g. some of us might be put off if the home of a potential suitor were decorated with “Live Love Laugh” decals or a collection of porcelain character dolls. It would of course be impossible to come to one singular definition of “good taste”, and for that matter, it would be somewhat reductive, as we’re not all the same, and each of us, from different cultures, backgrounds and generations subscribe to different schools of thought. In that vein, we spoke to a number of leading figures in the design world and asked them the question, what exactly does “good taste” mean to you?
An office in Paris designed by French Interior Architect and designer Louis Denavaut, photograph by DePasquale+Maffini
Rafael de Cárdenas, Architect and designer, New York
“To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about,” John Waters tells David Letterman. It’s August 1982 and he’s appearing on Letterman’s show, talking about bad taste, for the second time in six months. Rewind to March of the same year and Waters is sitting in one of two staid brown-leather cantilever chairs next to Letterman’s desk. The other chair, at the center, is occupied by [the drag queen] Divine, slightly out of breath from having just performed his latest single with the house band, his platinum blond wig in trademark disarray. Letterman addresses Divine first. “Let’s just start with a couple of obvious things,” he falters, to audience laughter. “You’re, uh … you’re not, uh … tell me what exactly you are.” The irony, in 2022, is obvious. In 1982 Waters and Divine were appearing on the show as alien ambassadors from a bad-taste underground; today, drag has gone mainstream, Waters is a well-heeled institution, and attitudes like Letterman’s are cringe-inducing: the epitome of poor taste. Good taste, whatever else it may be, is the fuel of our cultural combustion engine. Its cyclical breakdown and redefinition are essential to our progress.
Louis Denavaut, Interior architect and designer, Paris
I was listening to a podcast where Studio KO were interviewed, and they were talking about Andrée Putmann who used to say about another decorator: “He has a lot of taste, a lot of bad taste.” This anecdote was very funny, in a way it could be right because we all know someone with bad taste. In fact, we are all the guy with bad taste for someone. Taste is a word we commonly use for food. I really like making parallels between interior design and food; unanimity is coming to a table at a restaurant, and it’s either awarded or a victim, of deserved commercial success. Does good taste depend on unanimity? This is exactly what is happening on social networks like Instagram. Not so simple. Many factors, including social position, geography, the time in which you live, and most importantly, your education, shape the good and the bad taste around you. Fortunately good and the bad taste still exist in a society becoming more and more sleek; the fact that people still say ‘I don’t want to join this aesthetic way of life’ reassures me. To conclude, good taste is an attitude you can use to explain why you like or you dislike something, and for this, it would be beneficial for all, to be educated.
Isabelle Dubern, Co-Founder, The Invisible Collection, London
Bad taste in fashion and decoration is a recurrent theme in recent years. Designers take over attributes deemed vulgar and blur the notions of good taste and chic. It’s a way of challenging class boundaries, generations and cultures. The question of taste has always been part of, and sometimes even defines, art, fashion or decoration. In every era, the boundaries between the acceptable and the shocking are constantly evolving. “Vulgarity exposes the scandal of good taste and reflects a clash of classes, generations and cultures”. We are witnessing a shift where bad taste can become avant-garde and the ultimate is now labelled camp. Defined at the time by Susan Sontag, it “embodies the victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality and irony”.
Vulgar comes from the Latin vulgus, the crowd, the common man: a notion which would thus oppose the taste of the people to the good taste of the elite. “The main function of art and design is social,” wrote French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. I remember my late father-in-law, who grew up in Paris in a lovely pre-war Left Bank house, telling me that he was ashamed of his parents' eighteenth-century furniture after he had discovered the sleek, minimalist interiors of the 30s and 40s of his friends’ apartments … I like the idea of endless cycles in decoration, maximalism flirting with a dubious accumulation of passé objects or 70s neo-rusticism becoming the boho chic of today’s young ceramic collectors. I think that for me, the only examples of bad taste — except between 13 and 19 years of age, where it seems compulsory — are a lack of cleanliness and a stingy host.
The Paris-based Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, whose surrealist creations wowed the paris beau monde
Duncan Campbell, Interior Designer, London
Good taste is obviously subjective, but to me, it relates to comfort, ease and the way a space makes you feel. My favourite interiors are those that have a connection to the people who inhabit them, where the decoration and objects evolve with time and are imbued with a sense of wit and insouciance rather than slavishly adhering to a particular style or period. Good taste is surrounding yourself with the things you love and for me, the dialogue between old and new is very important. Objects talk to each other, so the conversation might as well be interesting, and I think basically if you love it, it should work.
Our job as designers is to show clients things they perhaps hadn’t considered, to guide them on materiality, colour and proportion, to find unusual pieces that make sense in a certain context and hopefully to lead them on an aesthetic journey to new frontiers. Then it’s about working with our network of specialist craftspeople and dealers to create something more beautiful than the client had imagined for themselves. I love an obsessive collector, and perhaps some people want to live in an exact recreation of an art-historical moment or a home that feels like a gallery, but what we’re trying to do is create spaces that transport you, and most importantly feel like somewhere you could have a good time. While Le Corbusier famously said that a house was a machine for living in, Emilio Terry thought a home should be a dream come true. I’m with Emilio on that one.
Will Cooper, Chief Creative Officer of ASH NYC
Good taste is having a point of view that is specific to an individual and not influenced by popular opinion. Those that have good taste do not look left and right, they look forward and chart their own aesthetic journey. Good taste is inherent to an individual and is born from genuine curiosity, rather than laziness and boredom. Good taste celebrates the tension between ugly and pretty, low and high. Good taste is not having carte blanche, for when one has an unlimited budget they know no boundaries. Good taste is derived from a lack of resources, forcing creativity and invention. Good taste is the minority; it eschews currency and trends and sets the pace for the majority. It is not a look or a colour, but rather a feeling and a vibration. You know when you are in an environment that has been created by someone with good taste when you are transported out of your mundane daily life and suddenly feel like a kid in a candy shop, overcome with excitement and a feeling you can’t quite put your finger on. Good taste is intangible. Good taste is rare.
Fabrizio Casiraghi, Interior Architect, Paris
To me, good taste must be sober yet generous, restrained yet unexpected, in-temporal yet contemporary. I often find good taste is a game of contrasts. It’s not just about the object itself; it is relatively easy to find objects in “good taste”. What is more challenging is being able to combine these objects successfully. To play with counterpoints and contrasts. As in fashion, a woman dressed head-to-toe Hermès is one thing, but being able to make the right combinations of a few carefully chosen items with an Afghan kaftan or vintage jewellery is, for me, the epitome of good taste.
Often people are attracted to certain objects because they are aspirational of a desired cultural status. But culture cannot be constructed. Rather we should see culture as our guide, that assists us in making the right choices and in creating layered interiors. If I choose a Noguchi lamp, it’s not for the attraction of a brand item, but because it might add something that is missing from the space. Good taste is all in the nuance and balance of this mix. No single reference should be overly evident, no provenance too obvious, no epoch overly revered. Above all, I am against the idea of interiors that are “de tendance”. For me, a space that is “de tendance” is a space that is already out of date. Time should add layers and value to a space, not detract from it.
A residential interior by architect and designer Rafael de Cárdenas, featuring an elegant and eclectic amalgam of furnishings
Beata Heuman, Interior Designer, London
Not that this answers your question but I think of this Vreeland quote: “A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.” I’m personally drawn to anything that seems authentic when it’s clear that the person who has put it together isn’t just trying to do “the right thing”. An interior becomes vivid when the driving force behind it is doing something that rings true for who the person who inhabits the space is, regardless of how popular it will be with others. But although I can appreciate the passionate spirit behind a certain interior, that doesn’t mean I can’t also find it tacky. Good taste to me is about how things are put together and knowing when to stop. Good taste is a lot about restraint and simplicity. Anything flashy, anything that is an obvious status symbol that’s been ticked off a “must-have” list, anything that is solely put there to impress, or (horror of horrors) in an attempt to be “on trend” is never good taste. This is because it’s lacking in a certain type of individual strength of vision, a strength that lies in operating on a level that is not influenced by anything “zeitgeisty”. It helps if you, first, educate yourself on what has come before, which will make you more in tune with what’s “good” and what’s “bad”; second, free yourself from the shackles of consumerism; and finally, to find your own expression, and follow through with clarity and confidence. Easier said than done. I often throw a couple of things into a room that are borderline “bad taste”. Because to me that is, if not “good taste”, the kind of interior I like spending time in. The “perfect” seems a bit one-dimensional, not true to human nature and therefore not that interesting.
Guillaume Garnier, co-founder of Garnier et Linker, Paris
Defining good taste without giving a frozen image of it seems difficult. Taste, whether it is understood as personal or shared, has an unfortunate tendency to change over different times and places. Even worse, our own taste changes over time. It occurred to all of us to be embarrassed or to laugh thinking of an object or an item of clothing that we used to love before. Yet, we continue to love some objects or places for a very long time if not all through our life. Specific objects or places that would be free from fast passing fashions and trends. If we understand why that is, could we give an enduring definition of good taste? In this period of never-ending diffusion of images, good taste can sometimes become a list of commands on what to wear, what to eat, how your interior should look, where to spend holidays and so on. As this list changes very often, in order to keep having good taste, one would then have to change its environment all the time. Good taste would also lead to a very standardized vision of life. Florent and I both love a wide variety of things and think they could all be called good taste. Why? Because we think that these objects or interiors – to mention what we know best – have shared qualities. First, the relevance of the answer to the questions asked by the project, program or context, and the relevance of resources used in order to achieve that. Then we would mention the originality of this answer, what it tells about the creator and his sponsor. And at last, the quality of materials, objects, colours and lines developed in the answer seems essential to us. Since we launched our collection, we have been looking for creating objects that would stand the test of time. We try to achieve this both with the manufacturing quality and timeless lines. Only time will tell us whether we have achieved that or not!
Roman Alonso, co-founder of Commune Design, Los Angeles
To me, there is no such thing as good taste but if there was such a thing I would say that “good taste” is truly personal, it comes from knowing who you are and from confidence in yourself.
A pair of 1930s pendant lights hang in the monumental kitchen of a Georgian-style mansion in Old Westbury, New York by interioir designer Steven Gambrel
Anna Zaoui, Co-Founder, The Invisible Collection, London
It goes without saying that there is no good answer to the question. Today, we cannot claim that there is a universal taste but rather a diversity of tastes, depending on cultural background, our age group and many more specificities. Nobody can claim to have better taste than others, but in the world of art and design, an educated eye can spot the true talents, the works rooted in art history that will be relevant, regardless of one’s taste.
In my view, bad taste happens when going for the “total look” in a project, without making the effort to mix styles, textures or materials (like in the old days of fashion when one would be entirely dressed in Prada or Gucci from head to toe). The other extreme, too broad a mix of styles and arty pieces without comfort, is bad taste too. Creating a “home” is not the same as appointing an art gallery. Personally, my idea of chic stems from my love for minimalism: a selection of a few rare pieces, all wrapped in beautiful hand manufactured soft furnishings.
Steven Gambrel, interior designer, NewYork
Good taste has a lot to do with what seems right for a particular environment, setting, event or the time we live in. In other words, it might not be in good taste to wear hiking boots to a wedding or set a table with burlap in a palace, but a burlap tablecloth in a stone barn dinner would be amazing. And to wear hiking boots and tattered old khakis to the stone barn dinner sounds delightful, whereas black-tie to a stone barn dinner might be pushing it … Good taste in architecture and decorating has a lot to do with proportion; scale the proportions of rooms and furniture to classic precedents, and one should be relatively confident that it will have timeless appeal. Good taste also comes from a balance of textures, materials, and colours used in pleasing combinations. Often, it is the combination of rugged and refined that makes a scheme feel chic and balanced, whereas a scheme with only ultra-refined, elaborate materials might feel too “rich” and therefore be in bad taste. I am often looking back at historic periods that don’t appeal to me, in order to study which examples are good versions of their not so good style — Victorian for example. Within this period of questionable taste, one can certainly find many examples of well designed, well-scaled buildings of good taste, even if it differs from our own definition. And of course, once one establishes the rules of good taste, it sure is fun to break them and stir it all up a bit. That is where the alchemy of good taste comes into play, and one knows that they are a designer living in the present.
William Smalley, Architect, London
I find being asked to write about taste difficult. The scary truth is that one’s taste changes. And this realisation has the capacity to undermine our self-belief, what we hold dear. So perhaps one should look for the constants that are unaffected by taste. Is preferring white walls a matter of taste or a moral imperative for truth (to self), of not hiding and not being moulded by one’s surroundings? But then I find increasingly I don’t like paint. My New Year’s resolution, of all the things I could self-improve, was never to specify a flat painted plaster wall again. All will be about matter, and texture, henceforth. So, even on white paint I’am conflicted. And I better leave it at that.