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Sheila (of Ephemera)'s avatar

I loved looking at Maria's gorgeous outfits, and as usual, wonder what colour many of them were? She was a fan of black, clearly, but also liked a bold large floral. That burgundy floral and the black floral dress are both so elegant.

I enjoyed the comments below regarding taste - and agree, that the constant search for the perfect aesthetic is akin to the development of taste...but without doing all the work of diving into design history, appreciating how things are made and crafted, and then seeing it all as a whole, and also as part of the fabric of life. I like to think I have good taste (don't we all!).

Another excellent article, Martin. I always look forward to yours.

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Auntie Online's avatar

god the shot of her on the phone in that black midi dress. I love it. Also love this paragraph: "No one talks about taste anymore, what it means, its power or its value. Maria Callas had it in spades. For her, it was sword and shield, a way to pour out into the world and sequester herself away from it when its demands became too much"

THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT TASTE ANYMORE. it's the hollow at the heart of so many conversations about aesthetics and fashion these days online. i think frequently about "quiet luxury", "stealth wealth" and how boring it is to reduce luxury (and the craft inherent in luxury, that is what draws me to it) to looking moneyed; similarly i know other commenters and creators on the internet have flagged that being drawn to "eclectic grandpa" is a desire for a life that has been lived and how simply looking like "eclectic grandpa" is valueless and will never capture the essence. i don't really blame the influencers though, i think so much of it is informed by the mediums through which we're creating these messages.

how can you talk about developing taste in an algorithmic world? i think taste is developed by a certain cultural literacy which is particularly hard to develop in this fracturing of media (and also of course, thinking about whose standards define taste? etc) and the cannibalization of culture by private equity companies.

(apologies for these scattered thoughts, thank you for pulling them out of me on this gloomy tuesday!)

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