25 June

The hardest thing I find for people to accept is that their personal, ‘subjective’ taste is also not only social, but created by status games. They will swear to (and at) you that their taste in music and fashion and architecture and food (and whatever) is their ‘subjective’ taste. It really isn’t. Fashions change all the time, the things people say they love at one point in time they find appalling at another point in time. The thing itself - a kitchen design in this case - doesn’t change. But the STATUS of the designs changes, what’s a ‘trending look’. I’m sure you could look at that modern kitchen and see it as clearly sexier. And be sure that judgment will stand the test of time. I can promise you, it won’t. Give it 20, or even 10 years, and we’ll be shaking our heads at ‘those 2020s designs’. Just as that 1970s kitchen now seems dreadful. And in each case, what has made something seem sexy, and later not sexy, is that *everybody else thought it was sexy*, at the time. It’s imitation, it feels wonderful to be part of the ‘in crowd’. And then rivalry. Everybody battling to have this same look, to have the status of that look, to ‘keep up’ and fit in. Not your personal subjective taste. That doesn’t exist.