What you surround yourself with matters, because the objects, the fragrance, colors, patterns, sounds and every visual and sensory thing are what make up your taste. The critique of having good taste is always going to be in accordance with the person you’re sitting across from, what they believe is packaged up as refined ideals and perceptions that you have come to identify with. Someone would say ‘she has good taste in fashion’ simply from observing what she is wearing. Whether she is outfitted in luxury labels or vintage pieces, those identifiers also become part of what people perceive as your taste.

To carry yourself as someone who has acquired specific tastes in films, fashion, art, business, music, implies that you can never stop cultivating information. What you like isn’t meant for everyone, it shouldn’t, because the things that highly interest you should only matter to you. And don’t confuse your personal taste with that of a tastemaker. That word tastemaker must have meant something more definitive and eloquent before social media invented the age of influencers. I don’t know what makes a tastemaker, so I won’t be diving into that theory, but there are a few ways in discovering your taste levels.

A Power of Observation

For myself growing up I watched everyone and everything that walked in front of me. Granted that came with the territory having grown up a city kid. Observing is the core of it, having to pay attention to your surroundings, not just what you like, but even amidst the chaos. Learning the difference in environments, from being in a nicer, affluent neighborhood was always obvious, to then visiting my dad’s office in a highrise building and noticing women dressed very neat and precise. Back into my own neighborhood where Muhammed at the deli would wave to us and kids without nannies huddled around a fire hydrant. At a young age you’re already collecting different personas, realizing that not everyone is a secretary or that not all moms work two jobs until late at night. Becoming aware of communities is important in early development years, which I feel is where I grew to love hearing and learning different languages. Lately I’ve been preferring to watch foreign films more than anything. It’s an obsession of mine to people watch different cultures and how they interact, their traditions, the foods and how or if their sense of community is similar to where I live. The more you can learn about people of all backgrounds, that is integral to growing your taste buds, so to speak.

Ask and You Shall Learn

You have to be inquisitive. How else will you know what you like or dislike? There was one time in high school when I asked my teacher a question on the book we were reading. I can’t remember the question but the book was Night by Elie Wiesel and she laughed at me. She did answer my question, but she could’ve just answered it without laughing. My point is to ask the questions even if people don’t take you or the question seriously. Then when you get the answer, go inward and ask yourself what it is about that topic seems interesting to you. The little facts that you gather will then be filed away in either side of your brain, hopefully the right side.