What is good taste?

Stephen Bayley on a personal and touchy subject

‘ TASTE, TASTE, TASTE!’ the architect Frank Lloyd Wright once moaned. ‘Cows have taste!’

Yes they do, but only in a limited sense. Wright meant his own designs transcended taste, but they did not. There’s really no escaping it.

Once upon a time, long ago, spittle-f ecked enthusiasts would present me with a Danish fish platter and, with the zeal of a prophet announcing a divine revelation, would say, ‘ This is good design!’ I would shrug and reply, ‘Well, maybe it is, but what you really mean is: this is my taste.’

Taste is the mechanism we use to determine our preferences. It’s a mixture of inherited proclivities and acquired yearnings. It’s how we read others and how they read us. And it’s deadly.

Sex and money were once taboo in polite conversation. Alas, no longer. People are all too willing to tell you more than you need to know about their romances and finances. Taste remains the final border of personal shame because it is so revealing. To a degree, we are the sum of what we wear, what we drive, what we eat and, of course, where we live. But it’s a maddeningly elusive subject. As soon as you accept that our preferences are influenced by external factors, then all certainties begin to wobble. Is there any such thing as ‘the best’? Is your taste worse than mine? Who says? Is all of existence a relativist jumble?

If we can get to the bottom of this we will be close to understanding that fundamental question that has dogged philosophers for centuries: exactly why do hairstyles change? Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, by Stephen Bayley, is published by Circa (£29.95). To order your copy for £24.99 with free p&p call 0844 -871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk