Apr
Alla Davies challenges the lazy claim that “everyone has their own taste,” drawing sharp lines between mere preference and true taste—the physical, instinctive capacity to feel measure, restraint, and when something still holds air instead of collapsing under its own ambition.
In this episode of The Bottle by Alla Davies, Alla dives into what real taste actually is, beyond simple preference or liking. Short voice notes on style and image (knowing when one more detail kills the whole thing), taste as refusal and editing rather than accumulation, irritation at rooms that suffocate or perfumes too pleased with themselves, a touch of wry humour in the difference between appetite and restraint, and the maturing realisation that taste is less about what you add and more about what you leave out.
Does taste exist?
I keep asking myself that because people throw around that line — everyone has different taste — as if it solves everything. It doesn’t. It just ends the conversation quickly, which is probably why people like it.
Of course people like different things. That part is obvious. One person wants clean lines and empty walls. Someone else wants velvet, mirrors, gold, and enough atmosphere to redecorate a minor collapse. Fine. People differ. That’s not the interesting part.
The interesting part is this: preference is not the same as taste.
Liking something doesn’t prove very much. You can like something because it’s familiar. Because it flatters you. Because it cost too much and now you need to believe it was worth it. Because your whole feed has been teaching you to call it beautiful. None of that means taste is present.
Taste begins later than that.
It begins when a person can feel when something has tipped over. When the room is too packed. When the perfume is too pleased with itself. When the outfit is no longer sharp, just busy. When something expensive starts reading as cheap because it’s trying too hard. That shift matters.
And the opposite matters too. You feel when something holds. When it has air. When it knows where to stop. When it doesn’t need to shout.
That, to me, is taste.
I’m not very interested in dividing the world into good taste and bad taste. That language gets stiff very quickly. It turns into a school report or a social performance. I’m interested in something simpler: is taste there, or not?
Because taste is not the object itself. It’s not the lamp, the chair, the coat, the painting, the perfume, the hotel, the book on the table. People love turning taste into props. They collect the right signals and hope the signals will do the work for them.
They don’t.
You can have all the correct objects and still have no taste at all.
What matters is how things are held together. What gets left out. Where someone stops. Whether they know when one more detail will kill the whole thing. That’s where taste starts to show itself.
Which is why I think taste has a lot to do with refusal.
Not what you add. What you don’t add. What you don’t wear. What you don’t say. What you don’t explain again. What you don’t push just to make sure people noticed.
That’s uncomfortable for people, because restraint is never as popular as freedom. Freedom sounds glamorous. Restraint sounds annoying. But without some sense of measure, taste just turns into appetite.
And appetite is a different thing.
Appetite grabs. Taste edits.
Appetite wants more — more shine, more impact, more signal, more sex, more meaning, more proof. Taste is the thing that knows when enough is enough. Not because it’s timid. Not because it’s boring. Because it can feel the line.
That line is real.
Not universal in some dead, moral way. Not fixed for all people in all times. But real enough that your body usually knows it before your theory does.
That’s another thing people don’t admit enough: taste is physical.
You walk into a room and know. Something in you clocks it immediately. Too much. Too cold. Too eager. Too decorated. Or the opposite: this works. There’s air in here. Same with perfume. Same with clothes. Same with people. Your head starts explaining later. The body gets there first.
That’s why I don’t trust the lazy version of taste is subjective.
It’s true only up to a point.
Yes, taste is shaped. Obviously. Background matters. Money matters. Exposure matters. What you grow up around matters. What you’ve spent years looking at matters. All true.
But shaped doesn’t mean imaginary.
And personal doesn’t mean random.
That distinction matters.
Otherwise we end up pretending everything is equal the moment someone says they like it. I don’t believe that. I think people say subjective a bit too quickly when they don’t want to admit that some things are tighter and some are sloppier, some things hold and some collapse, some things are alive and some are just extremely well managed.
You can feel the difference.
And yes, I know the danger here. Taste can become snobbery very fast. It can turn into social cruelty. It can become a nasty little theatre of superiority. The second it becomes a weapon, something in it rots.
But throwing the whole idea away doesn’t help either.
Because then you lose the ability to talk about measure at all. You lose the ability to say this room is suffocating, this perfume is dead, this outfit is overworked, this brand has no pulse, this thing has style, that thing only has effort.
And those differences are real.
I don’t want to pretend that a room with air and a room suffocating under its own ambition are the same. I don’t want to pretend that a perfume with movement and one that just smells expensive are the same. I don’t want to pretend that style and control are the same, or that boldness and noise are the same.
They aren’t.
Taste is what helps me feel those distinctions without turning them into morality.
That’s why I still think it exists.
Not as status. Not as a badge. Not as a list of approved purchases. Not as some sad little club for people with the right references.
As a capacity.
A way of sensing when something is alive, when it’s exact, when it’s gone too far, when it’s false, when it still has breath in it, and when it’s just performing intelligence and hoping no one looks too closely.
That’s all I mean.
So the real question, for me, isn’t do I like it?
That’s too easy.
The better question is whether there’s any life in it at all. Whether it has air. Whether it has measure. Whether it holds. Or whether it’s simply trying very hard to impress me.
That’s where taste begins.