I love bad taste. I absolutely live for it. And before anyone gets offended on behalf of their beige living room, let me explain what I mean, because it’s probably not what you think.
When I say bad taste, I don’t necessarily mean tacky. I don’t mean gaudy, or dated, or covered in rhinestones, although I have time for all of those. I mean the thing other people look at and decide is wrong. The colour combination that “doesn’t go”. The shoes that “ruin” the outfit. The house full of objects that have no business being together. The thing that makes someone with a carefully trained eye wince a little.
That thing. I love that thing.
“Bad taste” is an oxymoron anyway
Here’s what I keep coming back to. Taste is subjective. Everyone agrees on that until the moment they see something they don’t like, and then suddenly there are rules.
But if taste really is subjective, then “bad taste” can’t exist as a fact. It can only exist as an opinion that enough people share. What we call bad taste is simply someone else’s taste. It’s a preference that didn’t get the group’s approval. And when you put it like that, the whole phrase starts to fall apart, which is exactly why I find it so interesting.
Because who decides? Historically, “good taste” has meant the taste of whoever had money and status at the time. It’s a moving target that always seems to land near the people already in charge. Too colourful, too shiny, too much, too loud: an awful lot of what gets dismissed as tasteless is just the taste of people who weren’t invited. Working-class glamour. Immigrant living rooms. Anything a bit too joyful. I grew up around interiors and wedding outfits that a certain kind of design person would call “a lot”, and I can tell you they were chosen with more care and more love than any all-white apartment I’ve ever seen on Pinterest.
It comes from an original place
This is the heart of it for me. Bad taste, the real kind, almost always comes from somewhere original.
Good taste, as it’s practised now, is mostly agreement. You learn what’s approved and you repeat it. Neutral palette, natural fabrics, one “interesting” piece, nothing that tries too hard. You can do it perfectly without having a single opinion of your own. It’s safe because it’s been pre-checked.
Bad taste doesn’t have that safety net. The woman in head-to-toe leopard with a red lip and gold sandals did not consult a mood board. She likes leopard. She likes red. She likes gold. She put them together because each one makes her happy and she saw no reason to stop at one. That outfit came out of her own head. It isn’t trying to conform to anything, and that’s a kind of freedom most “well dressed” people will never touch.
So when I say that taste is better, I mean it. Not prettier, necessarily. Better. More alive. More hers.
Diana Vreeland said it first, and better
My favourite line on this belongs to Diana Vreeland, who ran Vogue and had more style in her little finger than most of us will manage in a lifetime. She said that “a little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika”. She thought we could all use more of it, and that the thing to really worry about was having no taste at all.
I love that so much, because she’s naming the actual enemy. The opposite of good taste isn’t bad taste. It’s blandness. It’s the outfit with nothing to say. Paprika is a perfect image for it, too. A dish without it is fine. Edible. Nobody complains. But nobody remembers it either.
Fashion runs on bad taste and always has
If you need more convincing, look at fashion history. Nearly everything we now treat as chic began as an offence.
Elsa Schiaparelli put a lobster on an evening dress and made shocking pink a signature when polite society thought it was vulgar. Miuccia Prada has built a whole career on what people called ugly: the muddy browns, the awkward lengths, the prints that looked like a grandmother’s curtains. Critics didn’t know what to do with it, and now “ugly chic” is taught in fashion schools. Crocs, dad sneakers, low-rise everything, the whole Y2K wardrobe we swore we’d never wear again. All of it was a crime until, one morning, it wasn’t.
What that tells me is that bad taste is often just good taste that arrived early. Or good taste from the wrong postcode. The line between the two moves every few years, and the people who end up looking visionary are usually the ones who were being laughed at a bit before.
The tyranny of being tasteful
I think we’re living through a very tasteful era, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Quiet luxury. Clean everything. Homes that look like nobody lives in them. Wardrobes in five shades of oatmeal. It’s all very correct, and it’s all slightly dead behind the eyes.
I understand why it happened. When everyone can see and judge everything you wear, the safest move is to give them nothing to pick at. Tastefulness is armour. Nobody can call you tacky if you’re wearing a grey knit and good trousers.
But nobody can know you either. That’s the trade. You swap the risk of being judged for the certainty of being forgettable.
One small warning
I should say that there’s a fake version of this, and it doesn’t count. Wearing something “ugly” as a joke, with a wink, so everyone knows you know better. Irony is just good taste protecting itself. It’s still asking for approval, only from a cooler crowd.
The bad taste I’m talking about is sincere. It’s the uncle in the shiny shirt who thinks he looks fantastic. He’s right, by the way. He does.
Add the paprika
I’m not telling anyone to throw out their nice neutral coat. I own nice neutral coats. I’m saying leave a little room for the thing you love that you can’t defend. The colour you’ve been told isn’t “you”. The bag that’s too much. The print your tasteful friend would raise an eyebrow at.
If someone tells you it’s bad taste, take it as information about them, not about you. All it means is that you chose something they wouldn’t have. Which, when I think about it, is the entire point of having taste in the first place.
Leave a Reply