Hello and welcome back to home and hosting with me.
The today's episode is a fun one.
A little design 101 of some of your favourite topics, trends
and style, but also taste and class.
Recently I shared a short TikTok talking about the difference
between taste, class, style and trends because the idea of taste
itself has been sparking some really interesting conversations
online lately. But to be honest, it always
does. People talk about style a lot
but almost avoid the word taste as though it's a very bad word.
But very rarely do we clarify what taste actually means.
Often it gets wrapped up in class and ends up feeling
exclusive or divisive, when really it shouldn't be.
And given this is such a big part of my life and job, I
thought I would take some time today to properly outline what
all of these words actually mean.
As some of you know, I grew up in my family's restaurants,
accommodation and vineyards in regional NSW.
And of course food and wine come with their own rituals of
hosting and presentation. After learning all of that and
then went on to learn how to define these rituals more
formally. Aesthetic design worked in the
field across interiors and fashion, and now spend a lot of
the time teaching and talking about it online and in the
design classroom. When studying art or design, one
of the first things you're asked is why?
Why do you like something? Why does that work and that
doesn't? Where and who does that come
from? Where else can we see this?
Why, why, Why? It's really interesting because
I think this conversation around taste has happened at the
perfect time because I talk about it a lot in different ways
on my profiles. My content can sometimes be
misconstrued as a flex, or as showing off fancy labels or a
particular lifestyle, but that's not what I'm doing, nor am I
interested in gatekeeping style or avoiding particular brands.
My regular followers know what I'm actually trying to do, which
is share the tools and practises I've learned over time to help
people make their spaces feel more like home.
And that happens in lots of different ways because the
Internet asks for quick form content that educates, inspires,
and entertains people. You take the parts of my taste
and style that I share, like making a bed, setting a table,
or a morning routine, and apply that to your life.
And you leave the parts that don't fit.
Because taste is not about copying someone else, it's about
understanding and adopting what works for you.
So with that in mind, let's start by clarifying what taste
class, style and trends actually are.
Because these words again have different meanings.
So a trend is what the market is pushing at a particular moment
to sell a product. Like trends come and go.
They are cyclical and commercially driven.
Yes, trends influence style, but trends themselves are not style.
The reason trends and style work hand in hand is because brands
want to show you how one item can work for as many people as
possible, so they style it lots of different ways to speak to
lots of different people and sell as many units as possible.
Style on the other hand, is personal expression.
It's how you literally put things together.
Two people can own one item that's exactly the same and
style it completely differently, which is why you often hear
people say I'm discovering my personal style.
So style is really the act of composing and presenting things
in a way that reflects you. And how you learn to style is
based on your taste because taste is an understanding.
It's an understanding of proportion, balance, materials,
restraint, knowing when something works and when it
doesn't. It's based on life experience,
things you learn from day to day life from friends and family,
education and culture. Lots of influences.
Which again explains why two people can own the exact same
trendy item but present it completely differently.
Taste guides the decisions that shape your style.
Now, I also think part of the confusion around taste today
comes from the way that we have started describing everything as
an aesthetic. Over the last few years,
particularly online across TikTok, a lot of design language
has been replaced with aesthetic labels.
Everything has become an aesthetic.
But what often happens is that the trends start being described
as aesthetics, which then makes people think that those trends
are style or even taste, when in reality they're not.
They are simply trends packaged as visual identity.
I don't know if that shift happened intentionally or not,
but I do think that has changed the way people think and
approach taste. Because when everything becomes
an aesthetic, it can feel like taste is something you either
have or do not have, depending on whether you're participating
in the right trend. But that's not how taste works,
which is why it's helpful to define these words properly.
Because once you know what a trend is, what a style is, and
what taste is, it becomes much easier to understand what you're
looking at. A good example of this right now
is the fascination of JFK and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
What is happening there is not really about taste.
It is a story that has been turned into a trend.
Brands and media have packaged that visual language into
something people can replicate through clothing.
You wear certain pieces and you style them in a certain way to
look like them, and suddenly you're participating in that
aesthetic. Now, there is nothing wrong with
that. You can absolutely learn from
it. You might notice the tailoring,
the materials, or how certain layers work together.
That can inform your taste. But wearing those clothes do not
suddenly mean that you have acquired or arrived at having
taste. It simply means that you're
participating in a trend and learning from it.
Which leads me onto where people often get confused with the idea
of class. People often assume taste is
connected to class or wealth. And historically, that
connection makes sense because for a long time, developing
taste required enormous amounts of wealth, because wealth gave
people the time and the exposure to travel, see art, study
architecture, and experience culture, and work with
professionals. But taste is not only for
wealthy people. As we now know, taste develops
through life experience. One thing that's worth
acknowledging here is the work of sociologist Pierre Boudoux.
In his book Distinction, published in 1979, Bordeaux
argued that taste is closely connected to class, what he
called cultural capital. In other words, the cultural
knowledge people acquire through things like education, art,
travel and social environments. And that analysis made a lot of
sense in the time and the place he was writing about.
Access to cultural institutions, travel and education was far
more restricted than what it is today, and the world has changed
quite dramatically since then. The Internet, social media,
globalisation and the speed at which images, ideas and products
move around the world have dramatically expanded people's
exposure to culture and aesthetics.
So whilst wealth can still provide broader access to our
travel and cultural experiences, is not the only pathway to
exposure anymore. And something we also see today
is that the broader exposure sometimes gets treated as
authority. Like any form of education or
experience, people can weaponize their knowledge as a way of
signalling that they know more or have better taste.
But more exposure to something doesn't necessarily mean better
taste. Taste is contextual.
It develops through environments people live in and the
experiences they have. Someone with years of experience
in fine dining might have incredible knowledge of that
world, but that doesn't necessarily help them operate in
a fast food restaurant in a small country town.
Those are very different environments and skill sets, and
taste works in a similar way. Having more exposure to 1
aesthetic world doesn't automatically make someone
better equipped to operate in another.
Taste is shaped by the environments people move through
and the context they live in, not simply their income or
wealth. If we stick with the old school
wealthy context, larger States and households had people from
very different economic backgrounds living and working
within the same environment. Housekeepers, cooks, attendants,
gardeners and the family themselves.
Despite having very different incomes and social positions,
they were all surrounded by the same architecture, the same
objects, and the same expectations of how things were
arranged and presented. They were exposed to the same
standards of hosting, the same materials, and the same visual
language every day. And over time, that shared
exposure created a shared understanding.
In other words, a shared sense of taste.
Taste was and still is not locked into a certain price
point. It develops because people have
become immersed in the same environment and where you live,
where you work and the people you spend time with all
influence your sense of taste. A really simple example of this
played out in an interesting way when I was younger, because part
of my job involved making and serving coffee and I noticed
very quickly how different expectations were from people
visiting from Sydney and people who lived locally.
People from the city were used to a much faster pace, wanting
milk alternatives and their coffee in 30 seconds or less.
But locals had a slower pace of life.
People sat down, ran into people they knew, they talked and they
lingered. And I want to be clear, neither
approach is wrong. And this is of course
generalised, but it simply shows how different environments shape
people's expectations, which then in turn informs their
taste. Our environments shape what we
think is normal, what we think looks right and how we expect
things to function. And people often say that you
can't buy taste. And I do think that statement is
only partially true. You can't buy the development of
taste. You can't purchase the years of
exposure and curiosity that train someone's eye.
But you absolutely can buy access to taste, because this
happens all the time. When someone hires an interior
designer, a stylist, or an architect, they're essentially
buying access to someone else's understanding.
These are people who have spent years learning about proportion,
materials, composition, and space.
And when you hire them, what you're really doing is buying
their process and their eye. In other words, you're buying
their time. So you're either spending money
to give yourself the time to learn taste, or you're buying
the time back by hiring someone who's already done that work.
But what you're accessing in that moment isn't your own
developed taste, you're borrowing someone else's.
You might learn a little simply by being around them and their
environment, but not to the same depth as someone who has spent
years developing it. You might have a beautifully
styled event or a perfectly designed home, but unless you
develop that understanding yourself, you don't inherit that
taste permanently. That house might look amazing
initially, but without that understanding and curiosity, it
might not evolve. It might not change with the
season or develop a natural rhythm over time.
So you're accessing someone else's expertise for a
particular moment. And there is absolutely nothing
wrong with that. It's how many industries work.
But it is important to understand the difference now.
What's also interesting today is that the Internet exposes to
environments that we don't live in, like Scandinavian homes,
Parisian apartments, English country houses, coastal homes in
Australia. And that exposure can be
inspiring, but it can also create pressure.
Sometimes people see something online and feel like they should
completely adopt that aesthetic, even if it does not suit their
life or environment. A simple example could be
climate layering. Thick duvets might make sense in
a Scottish winter, but if you live in tropical Queensland,
that setup would probably be unbearable.
Taste is really about understanding your environment
and choosing what works within it.
The same applies to clothing. Someone's work wardrobe might
suit their job, their climate and their lifestyle perfectly,
but that doesn't mean that it will suit yours.
One comment I saw recently was someone saying they simply do
not have time or the energy to constantly develop their taste.
And I think that's such a fairpoint because the goal is
not that everyone suddenly needs to go out and actively develop
taste. You already have taste.
Your taste has developed through the environments you live in and
the experiences that you've had. If what you were doing works for
your life, there is no real reason to suddenly change it,
because taste should evolve slowly over time.
It grows through exposure and curiosity, not pressure.
People sometimes dismiss design conversations by saying you know
it's just a couch, but you know that couch, it's not just a
couch. There's scale, proportion,
materials, colour, balance that all influences how something
functions and feels within a room.
And learning these things has never been easier.
Like you could watch 10 YouTube videos about what couch works in
what room. You could watch another 5 tik
toks about living room layouts. You could even take an online
course about interior design. That information is all there
and sometimes it can feel overwhelming.
Like you could visit a store and speak to a retail assistant and
they could give you the information in 5 minutes or
less. But still, it could feel even
more overwhelming because you've done the YouTube videos, the Tik
Toks, the shop assistant, you've spoken to your partner, and
they've all given you different things.
But all of that information exists to help inform your
taste. It's also worth remembering that
large corporations would often rather you focus purely on
trends and styling rather than developing your own taste
because learning slows down consumption.
They want you to focus on the next trend and how you style it
in four ways their marketing team has shown you.
But everyone has taste. You simply develop it over time
and you should feel comfortable talking about it.
If someone makes a funny face when you talk about design, it
may simply be because they're happy operating at the surface
level of trends and style. And that isn't necessarily
wrong, but it should not stop you from looking deeper into why
you like and love something. Brings up another comment that's
someone made and said that class meant not judging other people's
taste. And I think this is where people
often confuse class with etiquette because historically
etiquette was closely associated with upper class environments
because people were taught very specific customs about how to
host, how to behave, and how to engage with others.
But today, good manners are much more universal.
Etiquette is something people can practise anywhere,
regardless of income. So class mass is not really a
helpful word when we are talking about taste in a general sense.
It is much clearer to talk about taste, style, and trends because
those are the words that actually describe what we mean.
So to bring it back to the beginning, trends are the things
that come and go. Style is the way that you apply
things. It's personal, but taste is
something that you develop and deepen over time through
exposure, curiosity, and attention.
It is not a status symbol. So called expensive taste is not
the only taste out there, nor is it truly definable because it
changes culturally and from person to person.
Taste is not a fixed universal standard.
It is simply an understanding that grows as you pay attention
to the environments around you. Sometimes you develop that
understanding yourself, sometimes you borrow it from
someone who has spent years studying it.
But ultimately, taste is there to serve your life, not define
it. And it helps you create spaces
and wardrobes that feel thoughtful, comfortable, and
welcoming for those who live there and the people you invite
into them. Which at the end of the day, is
really what home and hosting is all about.
And that's it for today's episode of Home and Hosting with
me, Louis Burke. The goal of this conversation
today was simply to make you feel more comfortable and
confident talking about style, trends, and taste.
Because I know sometimes it can feel like a daunting topic, but
it really shouldn't be. Taste develops naturally over
time to curiosity, exposure, and experience, and the more we
understand what these words actually mean, the easier it
becomes to talk about them and apply them to our own lives.
Now, if you enjoyed this conversation, feel free to share
this episode with someone who might also enjoy thinking about
design spaces and the small details that shape the
environments we live in. I'll see you in the next
episode.