We Asked 850 Cut Readers What's Tasteful and What's Tacky

My first year on the job at New York, I was in Milan for Fashion Week and found myself ogling a bright-green dress in the window of Dolce & Gabbana that was covered in a giant cannoli print. “Should I be worried about your taste?” half-joked my editor at the time. The comment stuck with me. Do I have bad taste? Also: Who’s to say? Fashion editors are no longer the ultimate arbiters. Social media has broken down traditional definitions of what’s tasteful and tacky to the point where something can be both, or neither, depending on whom you ask, how many likes it gets, and what’s trending on TikTok any given week. Designers have always blurred the lines, but for fall, we saw literal trash handbags on the runway at Balenciaga; leathery ties worn underneath mesh tank tops at Gucci; and low-rise joots (jean boots) at Diesel. Still, taste matters. Possessing the “good” version of it can get you far in this town. I’ve dated people because of their taste (nice couch), and dumped them because of it, too (ugly totes). It’s tied, of course, to class and status and race and a million other things, while simultaneously being surface level and easy (and fun) to poke holes in. In an attempt to pin down the slipperiest word in fashion, we sent out a survey to our readers and followers on Instagram with a bunch of different questions about Julia Fox and Crocs. We wanted to know who they think has good taste now and what they think qualifies as bad, but also how they’re making these decisions and what factors come into play. Is tacky a compliment now? Within days, we got 850 responses from people all over the world of all ages, professions, and opinions. The results represent one small sliver of a self-selecting group, but that doesn’t mean they’re not revealing. They show that much has changed — but maybe not as much as you might think.

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