How Taste is Developed - Luxury Literacy

Taste does not arrive all at once, nor does it come from simply being around beautiful things. It develops slowly, almost quietly, through a series of shifts in how you see, interpret, and choose. What people often call “becoming cultured” is less about exposure and more about learning how to perceive with precision and decide with intention. In the appraising field, we study for years and often over the course of a lifetime.

At the beginning, taste starts with exposure. You move through museums, galleries, books, films, and shops taking in as much as possible. At this stage, your reactions are immediate and often shallow: you like something or you don’t. But that isn’t developing taste yet. It is familiarity beginning to form. You are building a visual and sensory memory, even if you don’t yet know what to do with it…or if you’ll do anything with it at all.

Over time, something shifts. You begin to notice patterns. Certain shapes, materials, or compositions start to repeat. This is where language becomes important. You start learning how to describe what you’re seeing. You see proportion, construction, composition, and material. You become drawn to this thing or that. For some people it is immediate, for others it is a slow awakening of passion. And then the desire takes form and you begin to analyze it. 

Once you can analyze it, your reactions begin to slow down. Instead of asking, “Do I like this?” you begin to ask, “What is the importance of this? Who made it? And why does this matter?”  Ludwig Wittgenstein captured this transition succinctly:

“Aesthetic questions have nothing to do with taste."

They have to do with criticism.” He is speaking about having a critical eye, and the beginning of a deeper understanding of the things you are drawn to. It launches you into a form of study, either independent, casual or formal. 

That’s when everything changes and real taste begins to sharpen. You have context. You start to separate your personal preferences from a broader understanding of the quality, maker and origin of the thing. You may not love a piece, but you can recognize its excellence and its place within a tradition, history, discipline or timeline.  As David Hume wrote in his essay, Of the Standard of Taste, “The general principles of taste are uniform in human nature,” but only those who refine their perception can recognize them clearly. 

As your eye develops, you naturally narrow your focus. You realize that trying to understand everything at once leads to surface-level judgment. So you choose a lane such as vintage jewelry, or photography, or furniture, and you go deeper. You revisit the same objects, the same makers, the same movements. What once felt unfamiliar becomes understood. You begin to recognize not just what is good, but why it is good. In this stage, repetition becomes a form of training. As Goethe noted, “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart,” suggesting that perception deepens as the observer does. And the observer deepens and his or her knowledge expands.

At the same time, you start to engage more directly. You handle objects, try things on, examine how they are made. You notice their weight, texture, balance. These things which can’t be understood from a distance. Your eye becomes trained to look for the nuances you’ve learned. Taste becomes physical, not just visual. It moves from theory into experience. This is where Yves Saint Laurent’s insight becomes relevant:

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.” 

What endures is not novelty, but structure and integrity.

With that experience comes a new kind of confidence. You no longer rely on trends or external validation to tell you what matters. You begin to form internal standards. Your decisions become your taste and you begin to hone. You introduce discernment into your choices and they become intentional. You let time test your instinct. As Coco Chanel famously said,

“Elegance is refusal,” 

a reminder that taste is as much about what you reject as what you accept.

This is where taste becomes visible in what you exclude. You start editing. You remove pieces that no longer hold up, that don’t integrate, that feel inconsistent with who you are becoming. What remains is more focused, more coherent. It reflects not just what you like, but what you understand. Clarity emerges through reduction.

And then something subtle happens. Taste stops feeling like something you are building and starts feeling like something you are living with. You see how objects age, how they hold up over time, how they fit—or fail to fit—into your daily life. You begin to understand durability, not just in materials, but in decisions. At this point, taste is no longer reactive; it's your own language and it’s internal. 

At its most developed stage, taste aligns with identity. It becomes quiet, consistent, and integrated. You are no longer trying to signal knowledge or impress anyone. Your choices reflect your life naturally. There is less excess, less noise, and more clarity. As Oscar Wilde wrote, “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best,” capturing the paradox that refined taste often leads to simplicity.

Looking back, the progression is clear, even if it didn’t feel that way while it was happening. You moved from seeing more, to seeing better. From reacting quickly, to judging carefully. From collecting things, to understanding them. And in that process, taste becomes something more than preference. It becomes judgment based on knowledge and experience.