Taste and Style...

And the can of worms has officially been opened...

I posit, absolutely. A beautiful cut in rich colors is always stylish, and can be quite tasteful.
 
Are they the same? It can be argued that style is objective and taste subjective. Charles Bukowksi gets it in this poem:

"Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art

Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art

Not many have style
Not many can keep style
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.

I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me."

Hemmingway killing himself, according to Bukowski, was a stylish act, as too it could be argued was Mishima's ending, but tasteful?

The second line also "A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing", style is a different way of doing things. It can be vulgar by the standards of the time, it may become tasteful when the style becomes fashionable. 1970s bell bottom flares are quite tasteless in my opinion, but you can't deny it was a style.

So yes, I agree that style can be tasteful, but they are not mutually exclusive. And taste is a matter of personal preferance, whereas as style exists whether you dig it or not.
 
If we move toward a food analogy - you could have a very stylish tableau of food on your plate but it might be tasteless.
 
My point is that style is by its very nature, individualistic, whereas taste, is unformity.
 
The first refuge of all bad debaters (and scientologists and Randroids) - the dictionary definition

2.1 A particular design of clothing.
‘his shoes were in a style that he could wear anywhere’

mass noun The ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard.
‘she has frightful taste in literature’

  1. 3.1 Conformity or failure to conform with generally held views concerning what is offensive or acceptable.
    ‘that's a joke in very bad taste’
 
What category would we put people like Vox and FNB in? To me, Vox has great taste but no discernible style. He just looks "good" to me, as it were. FNB, on the other hand, looks like a train wreck with his outfits, but he's definitely got a style, whatever the fuck that might be.
 
Rambo said:
What category would we put people like Vox and FNB in? To me, Vox has great taste but no discernible style. He just looks "good" to me, as it were. FNB, on the other hand, looks like a train wreck with his outfits, but he's definitely got a style, whatever the fuck that might be.
Click to expand...


Vox is anti-style, Professor-core, or whatever you wish to call it. It's pretty bland.

FNB can be quite tasteful and stylish. He has lots of more sober and simple bits, along with the more outré stuff.
 
doghouse said:
Vox is anti-style, Professor-core, or whatever you wish to call it. It's pretty bland.

FNB can be quite tasteful and stylish. He has lots of more sober and simple bits, along with the more outré stuff.
Click to expand...
Right, it's bland, but he always has on good quality stuff. Isn't that a measure of "taste"?

I've never seen stylish from FNB but you'd know him better.
 
a
Rambo said:
What category would we put people like Vox and FNB in? To me, Vox has great taste but no discernible style. He just looks "good" to me, as it were. FNB, on the other hand, looks like a train wreck with his outfits, but he's definitely got a style, whatever the fuck that might be.
Click to expand...

I've never seen FNB sporting any of his stuff.
 
Rambo said:
What category would we put people like Vox and FNB in? To me, Vox has great taste but no discernible style. He just looks "good" to me, as it were. FNB, on the other hand, looks like a train wreck with his outfits, but he's definitely got a style, whatever the fuck that might be.
Click to expand...

doghouse said:
Vox is anti-style, Professor-core, or whatever you wish to call it. It's pretty bland.

FNB can be quite tasteful and stylish. He has lots of more sober and simple bits, along with the more outré stuff.
Click to expand...


Please post photos of FNB NOW.

giphy.gif
 
doghouse said:
There are some FNB photos in the wild, if one has time for deep desktop research, which I do not. But generally he just posts the clothes. Doesn't tell you much about the fit, but you can see what he has and where he is going style wise.
Click to expand...

I've never seen any, only his clothes unworn, so we miss out on the crucial elements of fit and silhouette. However, we do know how great Acorn Fabrics are ad infinitum.
 
"[...] Nik, you have a great line in the book, about taste, where you mention something Donovan says, that he thinks of taste as “very boring and meaningless.” You write: “This was great ignorance on his part: taste is not an absolute but evolves constantly, and what is good taste in one age may be rotten in the next. During our time, it has been used as a synonym for orthodoxy and politeness but that’s a misuse. Good taste, if it can be defined, means whatever works in its own moment and certainly, in the sixties, white shirts and baggy grey suits weren’t it.”

tokion.jp

“What fashion says”: Nik Cohn and David Marx, decoders of style revolutions, discuss "Today There Are No Gentlemen" [Part 1] - TOKION

Nik Cohn and W. David Marx, writing generations and countries apart, have demanded the same answers from fashion. TOKION brought the two together to meet for the first time, and discuss the essential ideas of their books.
tokion.jp tokion.jp

F**k taste...

I enjoyed this brief essay by Jonathan Meades on the subject of that dreaded 'T' word Taste. Source: http://standpointmag.co.uk Jolly Bad Taste vs. feeble Good Taste In a telly film David Bailey made about him in 1971, Cecil Beaton is shown on a train out of Waterloo. As it approaches...
www.dressedwell.net
 
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