Have you ever been walking down the hallways of William G. Enloe High School, minding your own business, when you spotted an unknown peer and thought to yourself: “What on earth are they wearing right now?”
Now, I personally am both an enjoyer of fashion and trend towards being a hater, so perhaps this is just me. But from Shein-based ensembles to shorts far too short to be normal to wear in a public space, I see criminally bad outfits on the regular. It’s all nonsense—people are wearing clothes that communicate nothing, blindly following trends on social media without putting real thought into what they’re wearing.
It’s not up to me to judge, though. Everything is subjective, right? But if everything is subjective, who determines what “good taste” is?
In the distant past, it was simple. If you were rich, then you were chosen by God, and you were blessed with the gift of being better than everyone else. This meant that you had good taste. The poor did not have good taste. Of course, this applied to fashion. Easy peasy!
On one hand, it’s nice to have a dress code, but this was a needlessly strict set of rules, and incredibly inaccessible if you didn’t have 1600s aristocratic levels of wealth—that is to say, if you were the vast majority of people. Thankfully, society moved past this as they adopted more enlightened ideas.
Suddenly, if you were rich, it wasn’t because your “bloodline was the chosen one of God.” Now, all people were of equal value, so who decided what good taste was? Well, it was still the rich; however, they no longer believed that it was an inherent thing. They weren’t born with good taste because they are the most special snowflakes ever—you could now learn good taste. It was a skill. You could learn etiquette. You could learn to curl your hair and buy the dresses that make you look like you have good taste, even if you’re poor. This is when you find some of the first-ever “beauty gurus,” sans apology videos on YouTube. In the Victorian era especially, pamphlets and magazines that instructed on how to have good taste and dress like a gentleman or lady were popular. This was a vast improvement from the historical standards, but these fashion norms were also incredibly restrictive and inbred with misogyny and classism.
But as time went on once again, society became more individualized. Suddenly you weren’t primarily defined by being rich or poor—you could be rich or poor, or a greaser, or a jock, or a nerd. Now, who decides good taste? In this era, it’s the eldest and most influential for whatever culture you have decided that your new niche is. The 50s and 60s are where a lot of our modern ideas on fashion language come from. There was plenty of room for individuality, while still maintaining clear ideas of what makes something “good”—and what made things good was a clear communication of who you were and where you stood in the world.
Still, society progressed further, and some time past the 90s, it was decided that the only person who can determine good taste is you, you special little princess. Everything is subjective. Everything is personal.
Now, I am not in agreement with forcing people into social boxes, and I do not hate individuality. However, once everything becomes individualized, how do things become… good? Everything might be your decision now, because you’re special, (and if someone disagrees with you, they probably need to go watch High School Musical), but the problem is that people don’t like having too many choices, and, in practice, they love social norms. Decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, and as social creatures, following what’s around you is an inherent survival skill. It’s impossible to simply wake up one day with a fully fleshed-out sense of style and identity, so everyone ends up looking to the people around them to figure out how to exist in the world, and by extension, how to dress. By interacting with each other, we’re all asking a silent question: what’s my niche?
Your niche is where you exist in society within the context of people around you, and your fashion is a way of communicating that niche. Everyday fashion is a language. If you want to dress “well,” you have to be in communication with the people around you as to who you are. “Taste” is defined by hundreds of years of context and fashion history. Are you goth? Are you a theater kid? Are you emo? If you can communicate your identity using your fashion, then you have good taste. Dressing with good taste is like poetry—using subtle, but understood symbols to express who you are.
However, it has now become increasingly difficult to even develop a social niche in the internet age, and in the age of late capitalism in general. Hyper-individualism is encouraged, because it breeds consumerism in turn. If you’re always pivoting to be the most unique, trendy person in the room, you’re spending money. Many Gen Z claim that tradition is dead, but they continue to cling to guidelines set out by their parents, peers, or most prominently, their favorite social media stars and celebrities. They need to know how to develop good taste, and now anyone who has not found their niche can go to the internet. They can go on Pinterest and look up all these different subcultures, thinking, “well, I don’t know what my niche is, so maybe I’ll be scene, or lolita, or gyaru, or a skater, or…“ The list goes on. People trying to learn how to “speak” fashion are introduced to niches they don’t fulfill and have no connection to–leaving them as a fashion aphasiac.
The exposure to endless onslaughts of these identities that are tried on as people desperately search for someone to tell them what their niche is and how to have good taste isn’t good for fashion, the development of identity, or most importantly, the planet. People build wardrobes. Useless wardrobes that fail to express anything about the person wearing them accumulate until they get thrifted or thrown out. Then, more mass-produced clothing is bought on the Internet, perpetuating this cycle.
Where do we go from here? How do we rebuild good taste, and how do we rebuild identity? Unfortunately, no matter what Disney Channel Original Movies tell you, your sense of identity simply does not come solely from within yourself. In order to build an identity, you must surround yourself with people who have some sort of connection to you, and that connection is often expressed through fashion. You could, at one point, tell who you hung out with and what your job was based on how you dressed. Now, everything is so personal that it stops you from having connections. Many people—most specifically, those who don’t fit into the most mainstream fashion and cultural norm—now lack the ability to effectively signal to other people a unique identity outside of wearing the most basic, popular clothing available.
Good taste is still what you like. However, good taste must also be what you are. You cannot decide to follow the trends of subcultures miles away from you, and you cannot be a different niche every month. It is not sustainable, mentally or environmentally.
So, what do you like? Outside of what’s popular—who are you? If you’re trying to find someone else to tell you what good taste is because you cannot figure it out for yourself, and you cannot accept the things you like for what they are, get off the internet. If you’re lost, take inspiration from the people around you, instead of influencers. Ask yourself: “what’s my social niche?” Lean into that. Do what you like, but do it on purpose. Don’t switch up languages every other month–decide who you are and dress like it. Use your outfits like sentences: “This is me. This is who I am.” Communicate. Fashion will never be “just clothes.” It’s always been a way to speak to others, so treat it as such. And maybe consider wearing longer shorts.
