Did We Burn Out Taste?
Where are the tastemakers?
Back in the day, taste wasn’t something you stumbled upon online—it was hand-delivered by fashion editors. They were the ultimate arbiters of style, the gatekeepers deciding what you saw, coveted, and what made it onto the pages of glossy magazines.
But with social media and its relentless algorithms, gatekeeping has basically disappeared. Now, anyone can see everything in fashion the moment it happens, straight from the runway to our screens, getting rid of the mediation of editors to tell us what we need to know. Sure, fashion editors and critics still weigh in, and we listen — but now, we have the power to scroll through it all and judge for ourselves what hits…and what misses.
The rise of the internet and algorithm
I can wholly say, COVID changed everything, because that era birthed TikTok and what followed was its rise and the swift push of micro-trends.
Maybe TikTok didn’t ruin our taste entirely, but it certainly exhausted it. Just as quickly as we swipe to the next video, trends now move at an unsustainable speed, turning style into content and performance. Instead of cultivating our personal taste over time, we consume it in fragments—scrolling endlessly through each micro-trend that feel exciting for a moment, only to feel outdated just a few months later.
Over time, this constant exposure numbed our ability to question what we actually like. Rather than trusting our instincts, we copy what we’re told works. This applies to everything. Another example is food culture on TikTok where we’re told where to find the “best matcha, or London’s “best smashburger” spot — hypes are built quickly, but that attention is extremely fleeting.
Imperfection is curated authenticity
Our tastes now have leaned into a sort of curated imperfection, because we’ve over-optimised it by striving to be and look the best.
We’ve seen this on recent FW26 runways. For both mens and womens fashion week, Prada kept up its image of carrying memory, having things lived in, used and worn, with the press release from its menswear show, “Carrying impressions of life, they (clothing items) underscore the significance of duration” and that “to remember is a sign of respect.” The same goes for its womenswear collection, where the brand portrayed the frazzled Italian woman and her “continual necessity of change” (as the press release states) where models walked the runway four times over.
Not only does it seem like our “taste” is leaning into a more humanly authentic and a lived-in aesthetic, but it also fights against this ultra clean, dystopian world we live in where AI is getting stronger and stronger everyday. And in combat, we want to portray our human-ness through a sort of anti-perfectionism.
You can see this shift in the decline of the “clean girl” aesthetic, and the fading dominance of brands that once defined that era—brands like Glossier and Djerf Avenue, which once built their identities around minimalism and effortlessness. There’s a growing sense that we may have overdone taste to the point of exhaustion. Now, what feels fresh isn’t polish, but imperfectness—and even what might once have been dismissed as “fugly.”
A clear example of this is Dr. Martens recent launch of its Dunnet Flower sandal. A silhouette that some might initially label as awkward or even fugly. But that’s precisely where its appeal lies and the brand knows it. I don’t mean it’s actually ugly, but rather cool, nostalgic and fun because it’s ironically an ugly shoe if you were to compare it to something on the other end of the spectrum like a glittering Christian Louboutin heel.
With the Dunnet sandal, Dr. Martens draws from Y2K messy teen aesthetics—echoing the world of Lizzie McGuire—while recalling a pre-algorithm moment in identity formation, when personal style emerged through experimentation rather than replication. The brand revived this style from its archives for a second release after it sold out last year, showing that we haven’t yet tired nostalgia or its playful imperfection.
What we’re seeing now is a type of imperfection that’s been curated authentically. Looking messy has become a form of styling. Whether it’s truly authentic or not — because unless you know her personally, we’ll never know—Addison Rae embodies the aura of the Y2K’s ultimate pop star Britney Spears, through her stage presence, styling, and her whole persona. She leans into a messy, real pop star image: sweaty from dancing, makeup that looks finger-applied, hair slightly greasy from movement and hairspray. Her imperfections feel visible and almost tactile.
What does the future of taste hold?
Part of this change can be traced back to the collapse of traditional tastemakers.
Maybe what we need is something like MySpace to come back because it used to curate taste through proximity and community. Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and even Tumblr (for those who still use it) grow through scale and algorithm, which ultimately flattens taste as it only really shows you the best performing posts. In comparison, MySpace was a smaller, identity-driven platform where discovery came through the scenes you belonged to and the people within your orbit—naturally giving rise to micro-cultures and niche communities.
In order for taste to be restored, we need to embrace scarcity, and give communities the space to grow organically again. That doesn’t mean rejecting the internet — because in all honesty, this will never become reality, instead, maybe it means designing spaces where actual personal expression matters more than virality. When everything is visible, nothing feels special. Maybe gatekeeping, in small doses, is what we need, as it allows for taste to exist.
Perhaps the future of taste lies in smaller, slower, and more intimate corners of culture: a digital neighbourhood where niche experimentation is celebrated, and curiosity is rewarded. Ultimately, the hope isn’t to bring back gatekeepers as they were — but to create the conditions where taste can breathe again, discovery feels meaningful, and where the next generation can cultivate style that isn’t exhausted the moment it’s seen.
