cultivating taste

My partner + I sometimes discuss the similar visceral reactions he had to The Ramones the first time he heard them + I had to The Cure the first time I heard them. Neither of us can explain exactly what it was that made us feel this deep connection. There was no one telling us that this was good music or that we'd be perceived as more cool if we liked it. We just knew that it was ours. Decades later, these are still bands that we could listen to any day of the week.

Similarly, the pieces of clothing that I see + instantly know are mine...those are the ones that I never tire of + wear over + over for years + decades to come. I love the the idea of this knowing becoming a tool toward curating a smaller, more sustainable, beloved wardrobe. I love the idea of the cultivation of taste being a skill that enriches our lives by enabling us to live with more joy + intention too.

When I think about what will help me to become more attuned to my own tastes + style, I think of:

• spending less time looking at social media. They're called influencers for a reason.
• looking around my home + in my closet for the pieces that I feel most connection with...that feel most like me. 
• noticing colors + shapes more than specific items, when I see things I'm attracted to out in the world. 

Recognizing how much I love a small collection of things:

• enables me to feel full + real + seen + recognizable (to myself).  :)
• allows me to feel like I've come into focus.
• makes "enough" come into focus.
• allows excess to be recognized as such...and to be acted on accordingly.

A few of my favorite quotes from the discussion that has me thinking through this again + shows that this discussion has been useful for centuries:

• Natural taste is not a theoretical knowledge. It's a quick + exquisite application of rules which we do not even know. ~Montesquieu 
• In order to have taste, it is not enough to see + to know what is beautiful in a given work. One must feel beauty + be moved by it. ~Voltaire​
• I liked going back to some of those philosophers. They really thought of taste as a more fundamental human experience, like a moral capacity, a way of judging what's around you + evaluating what's good + what's meaningful for you + your life. ~Kyle Chayka
• I like to think about taste as something that's not just about consuming a thing or enjoying something superficially on a day-to-day basis, but instead almost making it part of yourself. ~Kyle Chayka​

Love,
​Jane