ISSUE 08: The Point of Pointless Things

On the exquisite joy of the unnecessary.

There’s a pair of salt and pepper shakers on my table that I use every day. They’re shaped like tiny mushrooms, and they sparkle a little when the light hits just right. They don’t grind. They don’t pour particularly well. They are, objectively, kind of useless. But they delight me.

That’s the thing about beautiful, “pointless” objects—they make absolutely no sense, and yet they are the things I reach for first. They’re often dismissed as frivolous, but I think they’re doing something important. They’re lightening the load. They’re saying: not everything has to be functional to matter.

Somewhere along the way, design and aesthetics started being measured primarily by utility. Clean lines. Neutral palettes. Minimalism masquerading as virtue. We were taught that seriousness was synonymous with taste, and excess was embarrassing. But I don’t think that’s quite right. Or true. Or fun.

Historically, ornament wasn’t something to shy away from. It was a language of power and pleasure. Think of the Mughal Empire’s elaborate pietra dura inlays, or the rococo interiors of 18th century France. Consider the jewels sewn into court garments, or the architectural flourishes of Baroque cathedrals—scrolls, spirals, cherubs upon cherubs. To decorate was to elevate. If you had more than you needed, it meant something: status, taste, desire, abundance. A visual flex, sure—but also a way of celebrating life itself.

And while I’m not lobbying for a return to Versailles-level opulence (although honestly, wouldn’t that be fun?), I do think we’ve overcorrected. Somewhere between modernist purging and IKEA flat-packing, we forgot that beauty is reason enough.

In her book On Longing, cultural critic Susan Stewart writes, “We place value on the miniature, the useless, the precious, because they resist the rational economy.” I keep coming back to that. To the idea that the small, the lovely, the “extra” things—while inefficient—have a kind of emotional potency. They’re inefficient on purpose. And in a culture obsessed with productivity, what could be more radical than choosing joy?

The artist and jeweler Joyce Scott, whose beadwork is as political as it is ornamental, once said: “Adornment has become so shunned in the art world, but I want to show how decoration can carry deep meaning. It’s not just pretty; it’s power.”

I think about that when I see someone in a rhinestone choker at 9am. Or when I visit someone’s apartment and they’ve hung crystals in the windows just to catch the afternoon light. I think about it when I see someone buy an impractical, wonderful chair just because it made them feel, well, wonderful.

It’s no surprise that fashion and design labeled “feminine” are often the ones most derided for being too extra. Too pink, too frilly, too shiny, too much. Historically, that dismissal has always been tied to power: to feminized labor, to domestic space, to the notion that emotional or sensory richness is somehow unserious.

But a silk bow can be a rebellion. A sparkly eye can be strategy. A scented drawer liner can be an act of resistance. The artist Mickalene Thomas, whose work is full of rhinestones and layered visual references to beauty culture, once said: “I’m not trying to create a fantasy world. I’m trying to show a world where beauty is a kind of language.”

We’re trained to think of utility as the ultimate value. But when I think about what’s moved me most—what I’ve kept through apartment moves, what I’ve posted on my walls, what I’ve tucked away into jewelry boxes and keepsake drawers—it’s never the practical stuff. It’s the sparkly pen that barely writes. The embroidered napkin I’ll never use. The perfume bottle that sits there like a sculpture, radiating nothing but memory.

Beauty doesn’t need a reason. The pointless things are often the point.

This week’s goodies: Unserious, tiny rebellions and glittering delights that exist purely to please the senses.

Next week: we make peace with trends and why following the crowd might be less tragic than we’ve been taught.

ISSUE 07: The Things I Bought Twice

An ode to loyalty, impulse, and the bliss of knowing what works

There’s a certain kind of shopper who treats every purchase like a vow: one perfect sweater, one ideal pan, one forever bag. I’m not that person. I re-buy things. Not because I’m disorganized or forgetful, or because I dislike the idea of ephemera… but because I know what I like—and when I find it, I tend to hold on for dear life.

Sometimes it’s practical. Take the Paige jeans I keep rebuying like they’re going out of style (which, in fairness, they might be). They come in a 34” inseam—basically a miracle for anyone over 5'9" who wants a full-length pant that doesn’t look like a capri or a deeply unfortunate MJ impersonation. I’ve bought and hoarded multiple backups, because you never know when a brand will “update” the cut and ruin everything.

And let’s be honest, some items are just so good they become their own little personality trait. The shoe I finally replaced after I’d gotten the originals re-heeled for the 5th time and my cobbler started looking at me sideways. The lipstick I keep on hand in triplicate. The dress that made me feel like myself in a year when nothing else did. It’s not a lack of imagination—it’s loyalty. A personal pantheon of objects that don’t just fit, they hit.

Buying something again is rarely about logic. It’s about recognition. A gut-level knowing. This thing—whatever it is—works. It fits. It gets you. It becomes part of your life so seamlessly that going without it feels wrong. And when it wears out, or disappears, or sells out, you feel a specific kind of heartbreak: the heartbreak of a perfect thing lost.

Designer Martine Rose once said in an interview that the things people hold onto the longest are never the things that were hyped—they’re the pieces that feel like "home." There’s this deeper layer of taste that reveals itself over time, not in the initial dazzle, but in what you keep reaching for.

I’ve often wondered why some things spark cult followings—why one sandal or candle or sculptural lamp develops a fervent underground fandom while others disappear like they never existed. There’s a mystery to it, but maybe it comes down to resonance. Aesthetic, yes, but also emotional. It’s why people will write blog posts mourning the discontinuation of a lipstick shade or bid triple the retail price for a now-impossible-to-find 2018 COS coat. The item becomes personal—part of your visual language. When it vanishes, it feels like losing vocabulary.

Artist Kahlil Joseph has described repetition as a kind of echo—an artistic rhythm that makes something stick in the subconscious. There’s a reason why we rewatch films, reread books, reframe the same painting three apartments in a row. Not because we’re unimaginative, but because repetition can be a ritual of memory. Repetition gives shape to identity.

Sometimes a thing becomes a stand-in for a time in your life: the perfume from a summer abroad. The exact mug you sipped from during an especially gray and bleak winter. The red sweater you wore the week everything started to fall into place. Buying it again isn’t about consumerism; it’s about continuity, about holding a thread (literally and/or figuratively).

I once heard someone say that the real sign of adulthood isn’t being able to cook or file your taxes—it's knowing your go-to order. Your default wine. Your perfect t-shirt. I think there’s some truth in that. There’s a groundedness to returning to the same beloved item again and again. It’s not lazy; it’s intimate. It’s a relationship. One built on time, wear, and memory.

Of course, this isn’t about owning only five things. I still believe in experimentation, in weird objects and impractical purchases and letting yourself evolve. But not everything has to be an evolution. Some things are just... right. And when you find them, it’s okay—beautiful, even—to say: I’ll take another.

This week’s goodies: Repeat offenders. Gems that are so good, I’d buy them all over again—and probably will.

Next Week: a love letter to the impractical, the excessive, the joyfully unnecessary.

ISSUE 06: In Defense of My Tacky Nails

Small rebellions, maximalist tradition, and why a little too much is sometimes just enough.

There are a lot of things you learn to internalize about “good taste.” Wear neutrals. Buy the classic version. Keep it simple. Edit, edit, edit.

Then, enter stage left, my nails: long, coffin shaped, and (depending on the day) dipped in gold foil, tiny rhinestones, chrome gradients, or some aggressively unserious shade of bubblegum pink.

Tasteful? Maybe not in the traditional sense. Perfect? Absolutely. I’ve joked before about having “tacky” nails, with an accompanying wriggle of my fingers and pursing of my lips. But lately, I've been thinking about what that word actually hides. Because if we're being real, calling ornate nails “tacky” isn’t just about design—it’s about race, class, and gender. It’s about who historically got labeled as doing too much.

Long, elaborate nails—the kind stacked with glitter, stones, decals, 3D appliqués—have deep roots, especially in Black culture. Decades before it was showing up at fashion week or on Pinterest boards labeled “Y2K glam,” Black women were setting the standard: maximalist, unapologetic, and utterly inventive. Gold rings stacked to the knuckles. Names in diamonds. Tiny acrylic sculptures worn like crowns.

It wasn’t "extra." It was language. A way of announcing yourself in a world that constantly tried to minimize you.

So when we say ornate nails are “low-class” or “tacky,” we should also hear what’s underneath that idea: an old set of rules about whose self-expression gets called beautiful—and whose gets called “too much.”

The history of art is basically one long argument about where the line is between tasteful and tacky. In 1910, the Austrian architect Adolf Loos published his famous essay Ornament and Crime, arguing that ornamentation was wasteful, primitive, even immoral. A century later, for example, artist and designer Yinka Ilori builds entire spaces covered in color, pattern, and symbols—and calls it joy. Taste swings back and forth, but the point remains: sometimes decoration isn’t extra—it’s essential. It’s a declaration of life.

Here’s the thing: there’s something delicious about letting yourself be a little bad at a small scale. Taste—real taste—isn't about making everything smooth and neutral. It’s about knowing where to make a little bit of joyful chaos. One of my favorite quotes belongs to artist and poet Toi Derricotte: “Joy is an act of resistance.” It’s true in art, it’s true in politics, and it’s definitely true at the nail salon when you ask for the chrome flames and the tiny dangling charms even though you know it’s "too much."

There’s power in letting yourself love something outrageous, ornamental, extra. Joy isn’t a mistake. It’s the point. Having wild nails is like leaving one window cracked open during a thunderstorm, just because you like the smell. It’s sneaking out of your parents' house under the guise of studying for finals but really drinking Smirnoff Ice in a cornfield and making out with someone who you certainly will not be inviting to your family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s the tiniest middle finger to the idea that everything has to be refined.

There’s a version of this energy in good design too. A pristine modernist apartment with one totally unhinged armchair that looks like it belongs in a cartoon. A sleek Scandinavian house with one bedroom painted highlighter yellow for no reason except that it feels right. A Chanel outfit with a giant clashing scrunchie shoved unapologetically in the hair.

Good taste isn’t about stripping everything down to some anemic vision of what it means (or what you think it means) to be high class. It’s about knowing where to break the rules—and doing it with a grin.

It’s funny how often the thing you worry is "too much" ends up being the thing that makes everything else feel alive.

Tacky nails, loud earrings, an absurdly ornate ceramic lamp—these aren’t aesthetic mistakes; they’re pressure valves. They let a little air in. They remind you that beauty isn't always solemn. That sometimes, a little chaos is the most elegant thing you can do.

And maybe that’s the real secret to good taste: Not taking yourself so seriously that you forget you have a body, and hands, and a life, and the right to wear tiny strawberries on your fingers just because it makes you happy.

This week’s goodies: unapologetic, slightly unhinged maximalist treasures.

Next week: double takes, double purchases, zero regrets.

ISSUE 05: The Taste of Texture

How Beauty, Brutalism, and Burnt Yogurt Are Basically the Same Thing

When I started paying closer attention, with intention, to objects, I realized something: a lot of the things I loved—the chairs, the buildings, the dresses, the bowls—felt...edible.

I don’t mean that I wanted to actually eat them (most of the time), but that they had some kind of mouthfeel. A tactility that wasn’t just visual. I wanted to run a hand over them. I wanted to chew on them with my eyes.

Texture is where taste, literally and figuratively, starts to collapse in on itself. It’s not just about how something looks. It’s about how it feels—and sometimes, about how it imagines feeling.

There’s a study from the University of Oxford that shows how our perception of taste isn't purely in the mouth—it’s processed by the brain in a way that's almost identical to how we experience art and beauty. Savoring a spoonful of food lights up the same brain regions as standing in front of a Monet or listening to music that makes you cry in public.

Which makes sense when you think about it: Taste (yes, with a capital T), whether it’s on your plate or in your living room, is a feeling first.

There’s a funny paradox here in that we tend to love both extremes when it comes to taste and texture; both jarring complexity and earnest simplicity spark a similar response. On the board in favor of absolute simplicity—a fresh peach in August, a brutalist building standing stubbornly against a blue sky. Nothing to explain. Nothing to interpret. It just is, and it’s perfect.

In complexity’s corner—a dish with six competing textures and seventeen ingredients you can’t pronounce but some way somehow, it all makes sense the second it hits your tongue. Like how a piece of Shiro Kuramata furniture can look like it’s from both the past and the future at the same time. Or a Dries Van Noten jacket that’s a little brocade, a little punk, and a little upholstery sample.

Texture is how your brain knows that something’s alive. That it’s layered. That it’s doing something more than just sitting there, looking pretty.

The other night, I had dinner at a spot where the chef sent out a dish described (very earnestly) as “celeriac three ways with burnt yogurt and smoked eel.”

This sounds, admittedly, kind of insane. But it arrived—angular, layered, a little confrontational. I took a bite, and immediately thought: Oh, it’s brutalism.

The roughness of the roasted root. The slickness of the eel. The bitter-sour slip of the yogurt. Hard lines. Soft middles. Sharp corners. Nothing blended—but somehow it balanced. It was the same feeling you get standing inside a brutalist church: a little overwhelmed, a little reverent, completely awake.

Not everything needs to be cozy or smooth to feel good. Sometimes it's better when it pushes back a little.

There’s something called oral haptics—basically, the way your mouth experiences texture as much as it experiences taste. The crispness of a potato chip, the silkiness of sashimi, the satisfying density of a good sourdough crust: they don't just flavor your food; they flavor your memory of it.

It’s the same reason you reach for the worn linen napkin instead of the pristine polyester one. Or why you want to run your hand over a concrete wall that still has the imprint of its wood forms, rough and splintered under the polish. Or why you feel vaguely disappointed when a beautiful ceramic mug turns out to be suspiciously lightweight—too perfect, too fake.

Your body knows what’s real. Texture tells the truth faster than beauty ever could.

Good taste isn't about making everything smooth. It's about knowing when smoothness matters—and when it really, really doesn't.

Sometimes the best thing you can experience is something slightly abrasive, a little weird, a little complicated. Something that makes you feel its presence—on your tongue, under your palm, somewhere in your chest.

Texture reminds us we’re not just eyes walking around on sticks. We’re bodies. And good taste, like good food, like good design, should never forget that.

This week’s goodies: rough, rippled, and punchy textures you’ll want to touch—and maybe chew on.

Next week: something polished... or maybe not.

ISSUE 04: On Hating Crocs and Loving Cy Twombly

Not everything that’s popular is redeemable. And not everything that’s scribbled is meaningless.

Let’s start here: I know that Crocs are comfortable. I know they’ve been reclaimed, restyled, and meme-ified into oblivion. I know that people “ironically” wear them and then slowly, tragically, stop being ironic about it. I know there are collaborations with Miu Miu, and I know that—God help us—there are high-heeled Crocs.

But I don’t care. I hate them. I cannot bring myself to like them, not even a little bit.

It’s not just about looks. I simply can’t get behind the idea of bulbous plastic as a design statement. There’s this idea floating around that if something is ugly enough, it becomes interesting (see also: pugs, linoleum tile, a toaster lamp). But I’m sorry…Crocs are not interesting. They’re just hideous.

Taste is subjective, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.

Walk into a contemporary art museum, stop in front of a Cy Twombly painting, and listen for the inevitable: “My kid could do that.”

It’s the most common insult hurled at abstract or gestural art. And on the surface, I get it. Twombly’s paintings do look wild and scribbly and unhinged. He draws like he’s possessed. He writes in chalk like a haunted professor.

But here’s the thing: Twombly could paint photorealism.

He had classical training. He chose to work this way. And that choice—that rejection of polish, precision, and perfection—is exactly what makes the work emotional.

There’s something deeply moving to me about someone who can do the expected, but doesn’t. Who uses their skill to undo skill.

A controlled unraveling.

A practiced chaos.

A gesture that says, I know the rules. I just don’t care to follow them.

I don’t believe good taste is about liking the “right” things. But I do believe it’s about being able to articulate what moves you—and what doesn’t.

I’m not judging people who love Crocs (okay, maybe a little), I just genuinely can’t understand it. They feel like the footwear version of giving up. They’re anti-silhouette and anti-story.

Twombly, to me, is the opposite. His paintings don’t try to be likable. They’re full of restraint and chaos and longing and scribbled myth. They don’t ask for approval. In Twombly’s own words: “I paint in order to see.”

There’s something there that feels honest. And that’s what taste often comes down to: honesty. Not what’s trendy, not what everyone else is pinning, but what actually resonates, even when no one else gets it.

One of the laziest critiques of abstract work is that it doesn’t show “talent.” That unless something is detailed, realistic, or time-consuming, it’s not “real” art. But that mindset completely misses the point of vision.

Photorealism shows skill. Twombly, for example, shows feeling— and sometimes, feeling is harder to get to with a visual medium.

There’s something brave about making work that you know will be misunderstood. That will make people uncomfortable. That will be ridiculed or dismissed…and doing it anyway. Twombly’s paintings don’t try to win anyone over. They just exist—with their scratches, their storms, their scrawled fragments of poetry—and if you’re open to it, they pull something out of you.

Let’s return to the crime scene: high-heeled Crocs. I don’t know who these are for. I can’t imagine the outfit that would make them make sense. They feel like the physical manifestation of sarcasm, like design lost a drunken bet.

And listen—ugly can be good. Ugly can be transcendent, even! I love a weird lamp. I adore “misshapen” objects. I could be convinced to wear a jacket that makes me look like a stylish sea creature. But this isn’t that, this is lazy ugly. Manufactured eccentricity.

And maybe that’s the line for me: Twombly’s work feels unfiltered. Crocs feel unearned. One is a raw decision. The other is a mass-produced shrug.

This isn’t really about Crocs or Cy Twombly. (Okay, maybe a little.)

It’s about being honest about what you like—and what you just can’t get behind. It’s about resisting the pressure to pretend you love something because everyone else does. It’s about taste as something that’s personal, not performative. Loving Twombly doesn’t make me deep. Hating Crocs doesn’t make me snobby. It just makes me someone with an opinion—and a lens.

Good taste isn’t about everyone liking the same things, it’s about choosing, noticing, caring; even if what you care about looks like a scribble.

This week’s goodies: weird, wonderful, stubbornly soulful pieces that refuse to behave.

Next week: where food, design, and beauty all blur together.

ISSUE 03: Wabi-Sabi and the Poetry of Imperfection

New York, chipped mugs, and learning to love what’s beautifully broken.

I’ve lived in some beautiful cities. Paris, where the windows are always taller than the people. Buenos Aires, where the buildings crumble with drama. Miami, which feels like a fever dream with good coffee. But I always come back to New York.

It’s not exactly “nice.”

It’s noisy, it smells like warm trash in the summer, and it constantly demands more than it gives. And yet, I love it the way you love something that’s earned your love.

Living here is like dating someone who’s kind of a mess but somehow still compelling—because beneath the chaos is something real, and specific, and full of stories.

This, I think, is the emotional architecture of Wabi-Sabi: the Japanese aesthetic philosophy that embraces imperfection, impermanence, and quiet charm. And though it’s often misinterpreted as minimalism with a side of beige ceramics, its spirit is far more interesting—and far less relegated to a Pinterest board.

There’s a reason your most beloved T-shirt is probably the softest, most worn-out one in the drawer. It’s stretched in the right places, the print is cracked, and the neckline doesn’t judge your hungover posture. It’s been through things with you.

“Wabi-Sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered.” — Leonard Koren

Wabi-Sabi is about finding beauty not in perfection, but in patina. In the plate that got chipped during a dinner party with your girls, the hem that frayed when your cuffs unfolded as you walked through a new city for the first time, the apartment with uneven floorboards whose creaks you adore because they’re the first ones you paid for on your own. It’s about character, and character is what makes something matter.

We’ve somehow been tricked into thinking “tasteful” means slick. A perfect color match. A flawless finish. A — god forbid — palette of millennial gray because it’s “inoffensive” (which I patently disagree with, by the way).

But you know what has taste? The espresso machine with water stains from years of use. The mismatched ceramic bowl your friend made in a class. The 70s lamp that turns the room amber.

“Things wabi-sabi have no need for the reassurance of symmetry or perfection.” — Beth Kempton

Charm is what makes you want to stay in a space; perfection makes you afraid to sit down. New York is a Wabi-Sabi city. So is Naples. So is Oaxaca. These places are alive with cracks and graffiti and awkward sidewalks. They’re not sterile. They breathe.

When I visited Copenhagen for the first time, I remember being stunned by the beauty and cleanliness (of both the place AND the people). But…I was also weirdly bored by how perfect it all was. New York makes you earn it. And in that effort, you develop affection, like a dinner party where the lights flicker and the food’s a little cold, but no one wants to leave.

Beauty in imperfection isn’t just aesthetic—it’s emotional. It tells a story.

When you walk into someone’s apartment and see a beat-up table, or a threadbare throw that clearly gets used every day—that’s intimacy. You’re seeing evidence of life. That’s good taste, too. I should tell you: I’m a Scorpio, but with Virgo rising everywhere. My birth chart looks like an alphabet soup of fix-it energy. I’ve always had this deep, near-clinical need to organize, correct, streamline, and optimize, with color coded excel sheets to match. I live for plans. I crave control.

And yet—objects have taught me something astrology and therapists never could: it’s okay if something is wonky. In fact, wonky might be the point!

The table with uneven legs, the ceramic bowl that lists slightly to one side, the scarf with one thread pulling like it had a thought of its own—these are the pieces I remember. The ones I love. They're little rebellions against my compulsive need to fix, polish, and perfect.

“A crack is how the light gets in,” as Leonard Cohen said.

Loving something imperfect is its own kind of surrender. A letting go; a quiet rebellion against your own instincts. And in that surrender—there’s softness, there’s humor, there’s grace. I’m still learning this, but beauty, in its most sincere form, keeps teaching me.

In Japanese, Wabi originally meant “the loneliness of living in nature,” while Sabi meant “the patina of age.” Together, they became a worldview—a quiet appreciation for the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete.

It’s not about mess. It’s about meaning. About noticing what’s there, not what’s missing.

This, to me, is the most emotionally intelligent kind of taste. Not what shines the brightest—but what resonates the deepest. I used to think one element of good taste was about precision (and maybe some part of it is), but I also think there’s a big chunk of it that’s about permission. The permission to love something with a crack in it, to keep something even though it doesn’t match, to stop apologizing for the chipped plate or the coat that’s a little worn but makes you feel like you.

Taste and appreciation for the imperfect is more than just aesthetic. It’s relational. You love a city or a space or an object because of its flaws. Not in spite of them.

This week’s goodies: Wonky, lopsided beauties that wear their “flaws” like jewelry.

Next week: a rant about Crocs and a painter who scribbled better than anyone.

ISSUE 02: A Color That Sticks With You

An emotional encounter with blue. Color as memory, as presence, as language.

There are moments when beauty doesn’t whisper. In 2020, I rounded a corner at a show and saw a piece by the artist Jae Ko, shown by Heather Gaudio Fine Art.

It was blue. But not just blue. A blue I swear I’d never seen before.

It hit me like an emotional 18 wheeler—sudden, total. I stopped short; my hand reached out without thinking, needing to touch it (I didn’t, of course, but the impulse was visceral). The surface swirled in sculptural folds, somewhere between silk and hurricane. The saturation was so intense, the room felt humid. My eyes adjusted to it the way they adjust to shadow or sunlight.

I’ve seen thousands of works in galleries and museums, but this was something different. This was a color that seemed to carry its own temperature. I never forgot it, and then I started to see it everywhere. Flash forward a year or two: I’m in Mexico City. I’m walking through one of those truly fabulous wide boulevards in Roma Norte, and the light hits a wall that’s been painted that exact same blue. And when I say exact, I mean synaptically identical. Like a mental flashbang. I stopped mid-step and just stood there, staring at the wall like it owed me something.

This is how color lives in us—it imprints. And when it returns, it doesn’t knock. It just shows up, loud and sudden.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same blue—maybe it was the architectural context, or the way the sun filtered through dusty glass, or the fact that I was slightly hungover and emotionally vulnerable from an overpriced mezcal tasting and being in love—but something in my brain connected. That blue from Ko’s piece and the wall in Mexico City now live in the same part of my mind, like cousins who didn’t know they were related until they met at a wedding.There is a weird intimacy to color memory. You never know when it will come for you.

Color has long been relegated to the “decorative” in the Western canon. Interestingly (and depressingly?), a recent study found that art has literally gotten less colorful over the last 200 years. Researchers analyzed over 14,000 artworks and found a steady decline in color variety and vibrancy. So if you feel like the world has become a little more gray—you’re not wrong. Maybe that's why that Jae Ko blue hit me so hard. It didn’t just stop me—it revived something. Like color as an act of resistance.

To me, color to me is often the first thing we feel before form or content registers. It works directly on the nervous system.

“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.” — Wassily Kandinsky

We’ve all had this experience: a saffron wall that makes you feel inexplicably cheery, a murky green that unsettles, a flash of neon that turns a corner into a scene. But the blue—that blue—was something else. It was interior, like an emotion I hadn’t realized was mine.

This encounter made me think about how rare it is to see a color that feels new. And how color is not just a visual experience—but a psychological one. And, in certain moments, a mildly disorienting one.

This particular blue lives in a strange aesthetic family. It’s close to Yves Klein Blue, an ultra-saturated synthetic pigment famously patented by the French artist in 1960 as International Klein Blue (IKB). Klein believed this blue could act as a portal—suspending viewers in a state of pure perception, unanchored by content.

“Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions.” — Yves Klein

Jae Ko’s piece felt like it came from that same lineage, but with its own language. Klein’s work was cool; conceptual in its remove. Ko’s was hot—textural, tactile, like blue had grown a nervous system.

It made Klein’s blue feel like the theory, whereas Ko’s felt like the emotion. That shock we feel with certain colors? It’s not just poetic. It’s physiological. According to color theorists and neuroscientists, saturated hues stimulate the retina more intensely, triggering stronger emotional reactions.

It’s why a high-impact color like cobalt or vermillion can feel like a mood, not a shade. Artists like Mark Rothko played with this tension—layering pigment to create a visual gravity. You’re not just looking—you’re being pulled in.

Jae Ko’s blue felt like that. A gravitational force.

Color is language, and like any language, it’s full of nuance, mispronunciation, regional dialects. In Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, blue represents introspection and the subconscious—a color you drift into rather than observe. Derek Jarman’s film Blue (1993) features nothing but a saturated blue screen as the backdrop to narration about illness, memory, and mortality. The color becomes a place. A life. A loss. And in the global lexicon: blue means protection in Turkey, mourning in Korea, heaven in ancient Egypt, and basically “sad but make it artful” on Tumblr.

“Blue is the only color which maintains its own character in all its tones.” — Raoul Dufy

Color, then, is not passive. It’s a participant. It lives in context, and it lives in you.

Seeing Jae Ko’s piece didn’t just show me a color. It showed me that color — and taste — can hit like déjà vu. That a pigment can be remembered before it’s fully seen.

It reminded me that aesthetic experiences don’t need to be rationalized. They’re allowed to be irrational, excessive, even dramatic (which, let’s be honest, makes them more fun!).

Taste, as I’m learning, can often be less about “refinement” and more about reaction. And color—especially that color—was my gateway back into feeling something deeply, visually, without apology.

This week’s goodies: sticky, saturated, unforgettable blues that hit like a memory.

Next week: why imperfections are actually what make things worth loving.

ISSUE 01: Musings on Beautiful Things

In a world that’s very, very messy, let’s dare together to talk about beauty.

GoodTaste.World isn’t about telling people what to like. It’s about tracing the feeling that arises when you encounter something—an object, a space, a garment, a moment—and know, without being told, that it’s right. That it’s in good taste. Per the wonderful minimalist painter Agnes Martin: “The value of art is in the observer. When you find out what you like, you’re really finding out who you are.”

Let’s begin by dismantling a myth: that good taste is exclusive. That there’s a secret code, a price for entry, an inside world, an elite club of people who “get it.”

No; taste is a gut feeling. It lives in the body—the breath that catches when your hand runs across worn wood, the double-take when a vivid color practically sucker-punches you. It has nothing to do with money, or brands, or pedigree. It’s simply sensitivity—being awake to what resonates.

I’m not claiming genius, but I am claiming something real: I have good taste. It’s a strange thing to say out loud, but it’s true. In a vintage shop or flea market, sifting through clutter, I’ll pull out the one object that turns out to be wildly expensive and impossibly beautiful. I have something like an internal tuning fork—tuned to quality, intention, feeling. When you pick up something beautiful, its value is unmistakable. Not in its cost, but in its weight, its silence, its aura.

Taste is not a brand. It’s not a look. It’s not a particular chair or a certain color palette or a famous name. It’s the feeling that something has restraint, proportion, deliberateness. That it speaks, not shouts. That it carries the echo of the person who made it.

There’s a word I always return to: sublime. It’s not just “pretty” or “cool.” It’s something deeper. The sublime moves you. It unsettles, enchants, disorients, clarifies. In Camera Lucida, Barthes describes the punctum as the element of a photograph that pierces or wounds the viewer—something deeply personal and emotional. For me, this punctum, this sublimity, can be a worn staircase in a Mexican casita; a Dior pump, simple and unadorned, shaped like an idea; a Kara Walker silhouette that steals your breath and leaves you haunted. That’s the level of impact I’m chasing, and that’s what GoodTaste.World will explore.

For better, worse, or otherwise, my medium is my eye. I can’t sew, sculpt, or sketch. I can’t carve or weld. But I can see, and maybe that’s enough.

This newsletter is my creative output; a weekly exercise in observation and interpretation. My job isn’t to make the beautiful things, it’s to notice them. To celebrate them. To tell you why they matter. I take somewhat selfish solace in Susan Sontag’s idea: “An artist is someone who pays attention.” I’m paying attention and I’d love for you to pay attention with me.

Taste crosses disciplines. I like clothes. I like interiors. I like sculpture, food, photography, jewelry, furniture, books, typography, garden design. All of it sits in the same brainspace. Our culture tends to silo these things—treats them like separate worlds.

There’s no one I know of who helps you curate your entire aesthetic life. Why not? Why shouldn’t someone help you figure out who you are and express that through how you live, how you dress, what you eat, what your home smells like? Why have we relegated taste to interiors or fashion or art, one at a time, when in reality it touches everything?

Maybe it’s because we’ve been trained to see all of this as superficial. But what if beauty isn’t superficial? There’s a tendency—especially in intellectual or political circles—to dismiss aesthetic concerns as shallow. And of course, there are more urgent problems in the world. No one’s arguing otherwise.

But to dismiss beauty entirely is to misunderstand its role. Taste is a tool of self-definition. It’s an identity in motion. The dress you wear, the lamp beside your bed, the spoon you reach for every morning—these choices accumulate and shape your experience. They say something about who you are, whether you mean them to or not. There’s no such thing as a “small” detail. Charles Eames: “The details are not the details. They make the design.” He is talking of course about a specific design practice, but I believe this statement applies to all of life.

That’s the thing about good taste—it’s not performative. It’s intimate. It’s how you show yourself to yourself, and by extension, to the world.

So what is GoodTaste.World?

It’s not a shopping guide, though we’ll talk about objects.

It’s not an art or design blog, though we’ll talk about both.

It’s not a fashion column, though we’ll absolutely talk about clothes.

It’s a space to take beauty seriously—not as a status symbol, but as a language. A way of living. A philosophy. Each week, I’ll write about something that moves me: a color, a home, a gesture, an object. We’ll explore the idea of taste across disciplines, through a blend of personal reflection, curation, and quiet obsession.

Beauty is not frivolous. It’s not decoration. It’s how we interpret the world—and how we shape it.

Welcome to GoodTaste.World. You’re already in it.

Next week: a color that knocked the breath out of me.