Acquired Taste: Be Hyper Deliberate
The best thing I've done to reclaim my taste from the algorithm.
I’ve talked to enough friends to know I’m not alone in thinking that social media and algorithms have muddled my true style. So I wanted to let you know, two months in, that what I’ve been doing through this newsletter — intentionally trying to pinpoint my taste — is actually kind of working a little bit?
Somehow, I’ve ended up in a place where I’m not sure I belong: on fashion Substack. Not as a creator1, but as a reader. You know how it goes: one newsletter I follow linked to a piece about spring trends or something. I followed the author of that Substack only to find out they are the former fashion editor of the New York Times or something. I liked their writing, got curious about who they were following, and followed a handful of those people — all fashion industry people. And so on, which brings us to today, where my Substack feed is full of writers sharing reviews of, like, $900 pants from The Row.
I am suddenly 14 years old on the school bus reading Vogue again, wearing American Eagle and wondering if I can find Versace at Ross Dress for Less.
Occasionally these fashion-y newsletters share shopping recs that include things from mall brands (or high street brands, as the Brits say, which I think we should start using.) If I had found myself caught in a tangle of luxury fashion content maybe 1-2 years ago, I know exactly what I would have done: bought every single thing under $150 that they recommended. A $96 J. Crew sweater recommended by someone who attends Paris Fashion Week? It must be very cool, I need it immediately, regardless of whether I even like it all that much.
But for whatever reason, I haven’t been doing that.
It’s possible it’s the platform — if this were happening today via Instagram stories, my brain might have been so numbed that I would have just tapped and purchased the $96 sweater, worried that I might never find the link again after it evaporated in 24 hours. But I like to think my new and improved shopping habit has more to do with being mindful, and there’s one specific thing that’s helped:
Being hyper deliberate about noticing what I’m drawn to.
If I’m out somewhere and something makes me look twice (a random color combination! A house with a cool detail!) I take a picture. If a story or ad on Instagram catches my eye, I screenshot it. If an Instagram post speaks to me visually, I save it. If I see something online anywhere else, I pin it on Pinterest. At the end of each month, I go through these things, look for themes, and see if I can pinpoint why I wanted to save each thing, as I’ve done here and here.
Through that process, I kind of had a tiny breakthrough? I follow a lot of interior design content on Instagram, and in sifting through the stuff I saved, I noticed that a good chunk of it referenced specific moments from my life — my lore, as we’re calling it these days. It occurred to me, when I look around my own house, that most of my favorite spaces pay tribute to my ~ lore ~. The parts of my house that aren’t working for me? The spots where I placed things I impulse bought from the Hearth and Hand section of Target.
It took me a while to get to my point so I’ll save the rest of my lore decor (TM! Don’t steal that!) for another newsletter. But for now I’ll share some of the fashion Substacks I’m into in case you also want to feel like a 14 year old on a school bus listening to The Grown Ups2 talk about fashion.
This post from Anna at
Sarah at
shares these super in-depth roundups of fashion news that I probably have no business knowing but eat up every word of!I usually have no less than 12 tabs open after reading
If you see me wearing a shirt dress as more of a cardigan (my style move as of late), this article by
is why.
P.S. Regarding The Row: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are very much a part of my Lore (their birthday is the day after mine and as a child I thought this basically made us sisters?! Also I’m clinging to my last few drops of Elizabeth and James Nirvana Black for dear life), so truthfully I’ll probably convince myself I need/deserve/can’t live without a bag from The Row.
god i would NEVER label myself as a fashion creator. i recently found a fashion tumblr i played around with in 2011ish where i basically just layered things I found on sale at Loft and there’s a reason it only lasted two months. Do you want to see it??
i am like 15 years older than most of these people lol