Ask Homeroom: What’s the Difference Between Good Style and Good Taste (and How Can I Have Both)?

Fashion agony aunts Sophie Barker and Annie Carroll are the gurus behind fashion directory Homeroom, a website that helps you navigate seasonal trends and find emerging Australian brands. In their latest column for Broadsheet, they examine a curious question of style versus taste. How do you match style that looks great on your phone screen with your real-life taste?

Hey homeroom, what’s the difference between style and taste, and why should I care? – Taste Tester

Taste drives many of our impulses including our sense of style. From the car we lust over to our choice of houseplants, taste is the compass guiding all our conscious and subconscious aesthetic instincts. We cultivate it in the hope that we get to a place where our taste is authentic to us and not contrived.

And in a perfect world, what we wear every day would simply be an effortless extension of our taste. But while our personal style is usually influenced by our taste, it’s often stifled by any combination of external lifestyle factors, such as our job, our body hang-ups, the weather, or how likely we are to encounter a toddler with a rogue handful of spaghetti bolognaise in his fist.

The list of circumstances influencing our style is endless, which can make it challenging to always dress in a way that reflects our true preferences and impulses. Our true taste. And to complicate matters further, while some people have a strong sense of their own taste, others aren’t so sure of theirs.

It’s worth pausing here to note that what constitutes “good” taste (and, for that matter, “good” style) is entirely subjective. For some, Sofia Coppola is the ultimate arbiter of good taste, while for others, she is simply a nepo baby with a black Amex and a wardrobe full of overpriced Chanel tweed suits. But one thing’s for sure: Sofia is not wrangling champagne taste on a beer budget.

Most of us don’t have access to the kind of bank balance that means we can always buy the exact sofa/bag/expensive tinned fish our heart desires. But there are ways to both cultivate our taste and make smarter choices about how we incorporate it into our everyday style, even when it feels at odds with our lifestyle. Here’s how.

Perform a reality check

In our chronically online world, the concept of personal style has become a commodity as fleeting and disposable as a reel. Not only have we become immune to the pace with which trends come and go from our feeds, we’re also living at a time when the journey from hashtag to purchase can be a very short one.

We all know the problems this breakneck cycle of creation to consumption is inflicting on the planet and people. But it also creates the more personal challenge of how to cultivate your true taste and unique sense of style outside the never-ending hype loop. People whose style we admire tend to be confident in their taste and feel able to incorporate it into their style. But when we are bombarded with information, it becomes very difficult to trust our instincts. As a result, we buy things we will never wear because they don’t reflect our taste.

Spending some time outside the algorithm and simply taking note of whose style you admire when you’re out and about can help fine-tune your taste radar. People-watching is an underrated art but can really help sharpen your own sense of what you like and why. There’s no better way to appreciate someone’s style than in the real world, and it will help you get to know the difference between style that looks great on your screen versus style that looks great to you in real life.

Think about the format

A couple of years ago, a friend of ours bought a jacket that was her taste but definitely not her style: a lightweight cotton chore jacket embroidered with tiny mushrooms, flowers and other hippie-coded iconography. She loves it, but rarely wears it because it doesn’t easily mesh with the rest of her wardrobe, which is more minimal and classic. Her taste drew her to something in conflict with her style and now the jacket rarely makes it out of the wardrobe.

We contain multitudes, and we aren’t advocating for trapping yourself in a style box. But we also want you to buy things you will actually wear. Because unless you’re attending the Met, clothes should be both creative and functional. Our friend could have channelled that particular taste impulse through a different format – for example, a pair of ’70s-inspired sunglasses or an embroidered bag – and more easily incorporated it into her everyday style as a playful accessory. A “garnish”, as opposed to a key outfit ingredient, without sacrificing the final flavour.

Spend more time finding your signature

Our style will inevitably evolve as our lives do. Before we both had babies, you’d be likely to find each of us in some combination of a vintage tee, boxy blazer, silk skirt and kitten heels. Now, you’re likely to find us in a button-down shirt, leggings and sneakers. Major lifestyle changes like a baby, a new job or moving to a new climate can be discombobulating for our sense of style while we figure out the new set of requirements.

A signature style hero can help carry us through these periods of change. Maybe it’s a commitment to a certain silhouette that always makes you feel at ease and means you can confidently shop for things you know you will wear. Jewellery can offer a more permanent way of expressing your taste, and it needn’t be expensive – you can thrift, or shop from the many fantastic Australian designers creating affordable pieces right now.

The key is making it into your own personal hallmark. Be it a subtle necklace stack or a careful curation of rings, make it something you feel you can wear everyday but that will add a dimension of “you-ness” to everything you wear.

For more style inspiration, visit homeroom.com.au or follow @homeroomau.