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.