interior designer, creative director, and someone who believes that the spaces we live in quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world. This season is a little different. It's just me sharing my perspective on design, home, style, motherhood, and the everyday decisions that make a life feel considered. This isn't advice. It's perspective. Take what resonates and leave the rest. I want to talk about taste because it's one of those things people either assume you're born with or quietly believe they actually don't have. I hear different versions of this all the time. I'm not good at this. I don't trust my eye. I don't really have taste. And I think it's completely wrong. Taste isn't innate. It's not genetic. It's not reserved for a select few. I really believe that taste is a muscle and most people just never train it. One of the harder things is this idea that Pinterest is the crux of all things taste. And Pinterest came into our lives and wow, it has completely changed how we get inspired. However, Pinterest is not the problem, but it's certainly not a solution either. Pinterest shows you outcomes, not process. It shows you what something looks like when it's already resolved, edited, photographed, perfected. What it doesn't show you is why something works or how to get there yourself. Collecting images isn't taste. Saving inspiration isn't discernment. Taste is about selection. Taste is about elimination. Taste is about knowing what doesn't belong as much as what does. And when people rely too heavily on inspiration without that context, what they're really doing is like outsourcing their eye. Pinterest can be a reference point. And it is for me, it is for so many people that I know, but it can't replace your judgment. Taste is learned by looking, by observing, by absorbing, not by scrolling. And there's a really big difference between borrowing style and developing taste. Borrowing style is copying the result. Developing taste is understanding the logic that's behind it. When you borrow style, everything feels fragile. One wrong piece, the entire thing falls apart. When you develop your taste, you can mix, you can pivot, you can trust yourself. You can know that these offhand decisions that you're making are the things that really make the biggest impact. And you're not trying to just copy paste something. And that's why some people can walk into a flea market and find something incredible and others feel completely overwhelmed. taste gives you a filter. And without a filter, everything feels equally loud. Everything feels equally confusing and overwhelming. So a little bit of background for me, but before interiors, my background was in fashion. And that really trained my eye in a very specific way. Fashion touches restraint, editing, proportion, context, how fabric lays, how textiles work with other textiles, how they catch light, how they photograph, how they look in person behind a lens. With other things, you learn quickly that more isn't better, that one strong piece is often enough, that styling is about what you leave out. You also learn how to really look critically to ask, why does this work? Why does this feel a little bit off? What's doing the heavy lifting here? That kind of looking, really, really looking is how taste develops, not by following rules, by building references and learning to trust pattern recognition. Taste doesn't develop in these big moments. It develops in small, repetitive ones. You practice taste every time you choose what to keep, what to remove, what to ignore. Art really trains taste, not because you like everything, but because you learn to notice what you respond to, why you respond to something. It is one of those things that is so, so important to recognize because It's polarizing. Art is one of the most polarizing things about someone's taste level. You know exactly what you like, why you like it, when it comes to art. Other things, I think it is much, much more difficult, but travel, travel, travel, oh my gosh. Travel trains taste. Seeing how other people live, layer, prioritize, restraint trains taste. Saying no, pausing, waiting before adding. One of the best exercises in taste is living with less and notice what you miss and what you don't. Taste sharpens through repetition, not through urgency. And here's the part people don't love hearing. Bad taste often comes from too much, not too little. I mean, I am totally guilty of it myself. I have too much. I have too much stuff, but my eye is trained. So it has become this layer. It has become this element of character and It works, but when you're training yourself, too many options, too many opinions, too many inputs, when everything is available all of the time, discernment weakens. People start confusing novelty with quality, quantity with personality. Overconsumption dulls the eye. it makes it harder to recognize what's actually good. Taste needs contrast, quiet, it needs space, it needs time to really form. And I was just reading this article in Business of Home, and it was about this idea of having too many things readily available for us, and this idea of overconsumption, right? The idea of the Wayfares and the Pinterest and these apps that really just leave too much space for you to get lost in, to get quick fixes in, to copy paste. And it really just dilutes when you're able to make decisions based on your taste. And it leads to getting really bored fast. It really leads to you wanting to move on much quicker because it doesn't come from deep within. It comes from the now. It comes from the moment that you're looking at this and like, Oh, I want that. I want that, that thing that I'm seeing. And I want to just I want to replicate it. And that's not taste. And that's why you get bored. So if there's one thing I hope you take from this short episode, it's this. You don't lack taste. You lack practice. The next time you feel unsure, Do not look for more inspiration. Look for fewer voices. Pay attention to what you're drawn to consistently over time. Hey, even take something you already do like Zoom scrolling on Instagram or on Pinterest and start saving very specific saves. Start noticing what it is. Let's say it's couches. Start noticing what it is. Is it shapes? Is it the fabrics? Is it the leg? What is it about this that you can train yourself to get right? Because consistently over time, you'll start to see it. Taste isn't about getting it right. It's about training your eye to see clearly. There's a muscle you can build. The same thing we do in the gym, you have to do it with your brain. I write way more about this over on Substack if you wanna keep thinking about it and I'll link it in the show notes. So thank you for listening and I will see you. Perspective doesn't always change things immediately. Sometimes it just gives you a different way to look. If this episode gave you that, I am so glad you're here. Until next time, thanks