Who are the Tastemakers of Today?

Lately, I’ve been having a creeping sense of existential dread. 

It’s not just because the country I’m living in has seemingly fallen apart from the inside, instigated by what began as student protests against a mindlessly mandated government ordinance that has now erupted into a nationwide human rights crisis, with countless casualties – and still counting. 

I’m also painfully aware that this isn’t quite the place for a discourse in politics, much less one concerning the politics of a far-off nation in the third world, vastly detached from the glitzy boulevards of the haute couture capitals. 

Fashion, however, works in the strangest of ways.

In the halcyon days of print, for instance, eager enthusiasts erected shrines with photos of their favorite celebrities in vaguely suggestive poses – partly because a certain pair of low-rise Levi’s, or a buttery soft Chloé had managed to capture their attention. But also, because those annoyingly perfect jeans and artfully half-tucked shirts encapsulated something far more profound.

It was the quintessence of cool, ever so close to our respective realities, and ours to be had if only we possessed that slingback heel or slouchy satchel, irrespective of whether we were from the backwaters of Nowheresville, Nebraska, or the turbulent thoroughfares of Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

And that, dear reader, is the power of taste – and in consequence, the tastemaker.

Archetypes of Taste: the Old Guard (OG)

But taste is an entirely subjective, if slightly idiosyncratic, notion.

To try and define it – and in the process, generalize it – is in itself an act of transgression on our individual eccentricities. Taste, after all, is in the eyes of its beholder. And as the 11:17 of tabloids have now shrunk into the 16:9 of our screens, such eccentricities abound, TikTok’s bratcore (related to dressing like Charli XCX), Plazacore (not related to dressing like Aubrey Plaza), British street urchincore, coastal Grandmacore, Rat Girl Summer, Tomato Girl Summer (*pauses for breath*) all stand testament to that.

It’s perhaps why Oscar Wilde had so wildly proclaimed, “fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” What constitutes the tasteful, versus what constitutes the tacky, or both, or neither, is a very fine line that sometimes chooses not to exist.

Yet, it’s a line that fashion editors – the original arbiters in the matters of taste – have traditionally walked. Unlike now, when most of the Internet suddenly manages to become experts in archival Schiaparelli and contemporary McQueen in the aftermath of fashion month, editors deal in the realm of criticism, as defined by Daniel Mendelsohn in a 2012 New Yorker essay: “All criticism is based on [the] equation: knowledge + taste = meaningful judgment. The key word here is meaningful.” Elle’s Laura Antonia Jordan adds, “Fair criticism is born from cool deliberation as much as hot emotion.”

It’s why, even today, when everyone on the internet and their mothers can express their opinions very publicly and very immediately, an investigation by The Cut revealed that 35% of its readers still rely on the good judgement of fashion magazines for what constitutes good taste. A reassuringly large figure, no doubt, but alarmingly small compared to the two leading categories of the study: influencers (47%) and celebrities (41%).

The Influencers and the In-Betweens

In fact, beyond the 47% polling for influencers on The Cut’s study, a separate 18% voted for TikTok critics, 0.4% for designers, and 0.4% for “Me”. Mind you, it’s also the same bunch of people who confessed “Designer emblems are so tacky, but I succumbed to capitalism,” so maybe don’t read into it too much.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the influencer is here to stay.

Having begun as an offshoot of fashion blogging, they worked to democratize fashion, harnessing the power of the Internet to amplify voices rarely heard of in the pages of Vogue. An aesthetic test-and-trace system, if you will, for every imaginable micro-trend (see aforementioned list of -cores for reference).

But when brands began showering influencers with lavish merchandise, the industry began to lose its novelty. “The kernel of this innate, benevolent desire to disrupt the system became its own form of establishment,” observes Leandra Medine Cohen, relegating authentic personal style yet again to the periphery.

And it’s a difference that starkly shows up between Jenna Lyons and the other housewives on the Real Housewives of New York, as Rachel Tashjian writes:

“Her style – not simply her clothes but her apartment, her self-presentation and even her blunt but enchanting conversational style – is so inimitable that the other housewives are left practically speechless when they first see Lyons’s closet… these women, we are asked to believe, are some of New York’s richest and most powerful figures, suddenly seeming like two school nerds invited to the rich and popular girl’s house.”

Sure, gifting has always thrived among the celebrity and it-circles. But it takes a special kind of mettle to cut through the consumerist clutter and, for want of a better word, truly influence. It takes taste, something Lyons possesses in scores.

In Defense of Taste: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

So clearly, if ye olde editors were the $300 beach towels you bought at the Hermès boutique to solicit favors from your SA, influencers are the equivalent of $19.99 for a 24-pack of extra absorbent, fast-drying face towels strategically situated in the eye-level shelves of Walmart. Accessible, affordable, apathetic.

But Jenna Lyons isn’t a towel. She’s a tastemaker, like Rihanna – as the saying goes, “it’s ugly until Rihanna decides it’s not” – and like Miuccia Prada, who, in her hunt to redefine taste, launched an entire season’s worth of “bad” taste!

Titled Banal Eccentricity (Spring/Summer 1996), now more widely known as the Ugly-Chic collection, the envelope-pushing – at times perverse – lineup solidified Prada’s appeal. “Like” noted one fashion editor at the time, “isn’t a strong enough word. We live for it.” And that’s because, as Ms. Prada herself reasons, “ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. Maybe because it is newer.”

At the end of the day, the crux of the tastemaker’s appeal lies in their originality.

It isn’t about having good taste or bad taste. And really, what even qualifies as “bad” taste? In John Waters’ famous words, “bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it’s like getting a standing ovation.” It’s what Diana Vreeland says is like a nice splash of paprika: “it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. No taste is what I’m against.”

This dichotomy, however, only exists because the tastemaker exists. Like Hanan Besovic of @ideservecouture sums up: “It’s not just the clothes, it’s also the person that wears them. You have to have a presence to pull off certain fashion looks.” Ultimately, it’s them – the editors, influencers, or it-girls – that we hope to embody, in the hope of becoming, in the process, a cooler, more actualized version of ourselves. They’re a beacon of hope, even when – or especially when –  the world around us is seemingly falling apart.