Said the trend forecaster Emily Segal, quoted in "The rise of social media ‘tasteslop’ — and how to avoid it/From clothes to interiors, the internet has created good taste as defined by the algorithm. The trend forecaster Emily Segal tells us how to step away" (London Times).
After Segal coined the term it went viral.... [S]he pinpointed a dinner party at a New York restaurant considered to be classy and slender-spouted kettles as slop, and explained why Jennifer Lawrence’s style is too (“she looks more like a shopper/demographic and less like an individual figure”, Segal wrote). Once you see it …
Dieter Rams? Here's Dieter Rams pointing at things he doesn't like:
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43 comments:
De gustibus....
Brings to mind the mid-century network TV era.
"Did you watch X, Y, or Z last night?"
"I loved her hair/clothes/dining table."
"I loved his car/suit/TV console."
"Those Super Bowl ads were so clever."
AI doesn't have to do much to successfully reproduce many people's thinking.
We no longer buy things for simple beauty and function but for the imagined image these items will create. Vincenzo Latronico’s novel 'Perfection' captures this shift brilliantly, highly recommended. It’s a sharp, look at how this mindset has emptied and flattened so much of life.
Just like the plutocrats in the Mockingbird films. The exquisite crowds out the simply beautiful.
I have almost no confidence in my sense of aesthetics, but I do like to look good. So I try to be observant: if a woman of my age and not too dissimilar to me in appearance is getting admiring looks and compliments on how she's dressed, what are people commenting on? What are they passing over? Can I replicate what she's doing? And - important question - is what she's doing worth my time to try to replicate? (A lot of times, my answer to that one is along the lines of "No way, it must take her half an hour to do her makeup. I just don't have the patience, much less the skill.")
As for furniture design - like everybody, my husband and I know what we like, more or less. We don't have the je ne sais quoi of Dieter Rams, to be able to judge a piece's necessity for existing (I'm not being sarcastic - I really do wish I had that - what, confidence? eye? whatever it is), but we do care about certain things: does its form interfere with its function? If it's intended for people to sit or lie on, is it comfortable? Will it hold up under the conditions it'll be in? Will it overwhelm a room? What does it cost, compared to what it looks as if it should cost? (This is more weighted to "is it overpriced?" than "is it a bargain?") What's maintenance going to be like? (I won't buy things that immediately make me think, "Dusting hell.")
Back in the 90s, I think, there was a very useful book called Yes/No Design. It was intended to help normal people figure out interior design for themselves, and it was predicated on people's knowing what they like (or don't like) even though they may not be able to articulate why. The bulk of the book was pairs of photographs, like a decision tree for bird species or something, or like the A/B you have to decide between at the optometrist. By going through the book, not only did you get a sense of what kind of look you liked in interior design, but you also gained confidence in choosing among options. It was an explicitly validating experience - the author didn't make judgments about the reader's taste, but rather walked the reader from "I know what I like when I see it" to "I think I'd like that piece, and I'd put it here."
I long ago faced the fact that I'm hopelessly bourgeois.
Value is found in doing something you're really good at that is also worth something to somebody else. Everything else is posing.
"There is a story attached to everything people do. It needs to be told."
There is, but no it doesn't.
I could say that I'd be more fashionable if I had more time, but the truth is that it's just not in me. I don't understand fashion or style, I don't have any, and there is no hope of fixing it. There should be a word for my illness, and government paid disability payments. It's pretty serious stuff.
I should add: we have a couple of sets of rich friends, and with regard to maintenance, they don't seem to consider it at all. One couple bought a ridiculously expensive pure white sofa, although they had two young boys and their drink of choice was red wine. It looked exquisite, but nobody could relax in the main sitting room of their house - we would all just hang out in the kitchen. (It also wasn't very comfortable, and certainly you couldn't nap on it, which is key for any sofa we buy.)(They also have some of the least comfortable patio furniture I've ever sat on - hard plastic, very sculptural, also pure white, in a climate where it rains almost daily in at least two seasons and the water pools and leaves discolored high water marks on the seats. They look cool when they're clean, but they need constant cleaning.)
The other couple has some art that triggers my "dusting hell" response - a piece made of hundreds of paper butterflies, another of closely spaced, horizontal panels of glass with slightly different chemical compositions and refractive indices so that a top light comes through the entire work in interesting ways. Beautiful. But I would be afraid to dust either of these pieces for fear that I'd damage something, and certainly they need regular dusting. I gather that our friends just consider that to be their cleaner's problem. They're really, genuinely nice people, so I hope that if their cleaner either doesn't do an adequate job dusting these pieces or - God forbid - damages one of them, they would be understanding about it.
Living in Airbnbs now is an interesting exercise. Some owners seem to put a lot of thought into making their places look good and be low maintenance. Others furnish with castoffs. Still others went just for looks, for the pictures online, but by the time we get to the house the rugs are stained, the cushions are flat or out of shape, the knobs are loose... The variety we see is instructive. I'm taking notes for our future house, wherever and whenever it will be.
Couldn't read the link and not about to subscribe$$ to the London Times. But...
People want to overthink the most simple things and put too much emphasis on what other people think or like or consider
"tasteful" and stylish. Just buy, use, wear, decorate with what YOU like and screw other people's opinions.
Be an individual!!
I don’t like Dieter.
You know what’s a crying shame? A small bird dropping dead from a bough without ever having told Dieter to go fuck himself.
Gays and women hardest hit.
All that being said.....I agree with Jamie on the dusting and cleaning issues for my own decisions When we were building our house one of the top criteria I used when picking out things like faucets, ceiling fans design of bathrooms etc.. Was....how hard is this going to be to keep clean....because if hard....not having it. Stand alone tubs look nice and are now stylish, but think of the moisture and mold behind them and how impossible(tedious) to clean the backside or the floor. Nope.
I'd like a home that was entirely made of polished concrete, with everything molded in. Like a modern cave. It would have a washdown system that you just push a button and spray nozzles wash it all down like a car wash, maybe even add that new cave smell.
This reeks of "AI-generated content that deploys recognisable taste markers are about to do as good a job (if not better) as whatever it is I profess to be able to do." It points out the pointlessness of whatever it is they do. "AI could do your job." is the new "A monkey could do your job." They're understandably rattled
"I don’t like Dieter"
I once walked into a room in my old agency where there were a bunch of new logo designs for the agency on the wall. A co-worker came in with me to look. I had not worked on the project. Another co-worker who was involved with marketing the agency (but was not a creative) remarked in jest: "Oh great, the two most opinionated people just walked in." To which I said: "Dawn, without opinions, nothing gets done."
bagho20:
“The object of my invention is to construct a building of a cement mixture by a single molding operation, all its parts, including the sides, roofs, partitions, bath tubs, floors etc, being formed of an integral mass …”
https://www.philipsteadman.com/blog/thomas-edison-pours-whole-houses-from-concrete/
don't let those people dictate and influence what you like, let these people do it.
I would be more upset with Dieter if he were opining about something other than design, but he spent most of his life being pretty damn good at it.
I'm with bagoh on the wash down concrete cave idea. That's genius.
I used to think a plastic igloo with a drain in the middle would be cool.
The left want to assign everything. every... thing.
but I'd have the swankiest jewel encrusted hose bib.
Got it at Gumps.
All of your comments have grown tiresome... Now is the time on Althouse when we dance!
Dieter's right, and really doesn't mind that you think he's a bit of an a-hole. Good for Dieter.
That said, if I sat on his favored chair for any length of time, I'd get up with a tattoo just from sitting in that chair. If I had been there I'd have asked Dieter if he had any tattoos. No, I wouldn't want to see them.
I don’t have a problem with Dieter being opinionated.
What I don’t like is the idea that he should decide what someone else can or can’t create. We should forego them? Who the hell is we?
I'd like a home that was entirely made of polished concrete, with everything molded in.
I think Heinlein's house in Colorado Springs was built this way. I've been looking for pictures, so far unsuccessfully. I know he was scornful of Frank Lloyd Wright - said (in essence) that his designs looked cool, but leaked, cracked, were hard to maintain, and used materials not suited for purpose, resulting in mold and such.
“we have a couple of sets of rich friends, and with regard to maintenance, they don't seem to consider it at all.”
Why should they? That’s what maids are for.
Wince!!!
"Would you like to touch my monkey? Touch him! Love him! Liebe my little monkey!"
This is just the usual elitist disparagement of the middle class. Today's tasteslop is no different than earlier calling things "middlebrow."
But for those interested, the Criterion Channel is now streaming a documentary collection "Gary Hustwit, Documentary by Design." It includes documentaries on Dieter Rams, as well as Helvetica font and design in general.
Hose-out a concrete cave with built-in drains: The literal design of the 1970s-1980s San Francisco gay bathhouses that caused the spread of AIDS. They needed to get rid of the bodily fluids between users...to include blood...
"Tasteslop" sounds like what results when you accidentally put chili powder into your oatmeal or cinnamon into your stew.
Pictures of Heinlein's house are indeed hard to find. It looks like there was a 1952 Popular Mechanic's article about it. When I was searching, I came across the monstrosity at 2354 Stratton Forest Heights * Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906. 17226 sq ft and truly monstrous.
When Germans start talking about order, even "ordered disorder" I get nervous.
I don't like modern design because, to me, it looks like a kindergarden playground. Bright primary colors, architectural elements out of context as if they were in an ABC book, mess. The women have messy hair, swollen faces, long claw-like fingers. On public occasions they wear nothing or maybe their underwear outside striped tights. The men are not at all memorable. They are wondering if AI or Bari Weiss or the DOJ will get them first. They have no children, just a dog or cat which they call family but get rid of if it isn't the right kind for 2026.
I used to work with a guy who was one of the last of the board draftsmen. In his youth he worked with Raymond Loewy. Now there was an industrial designer! Dieter is barely fit to sharpen his pencils.
“[S]he pinpointed a dinner party at a New York restaurant considered to be classy and slender-spouted kettles as slop, and explained why Jennifer Lawrence’s style is too”
I’d say a woman criticizing the way Jennifer Lawrence looks is on very thin ice.
"Only people like us should have access to such things, as only people like us are truly able to properly appreciate them. Darling."
Tasteslop has been around a long time but you used to have to to the department store to see it. It's for people who want books on etiquette and entertaining because they don't trust their own taste. It's the foundation of the aspirational middle class along with the self help publishing industry. It's right there in 19th century literature going forward to both Tom Wolfe's.
The variant is a flip flop of sloppy fashion.
Not mentioned: Rams had exactly one vaguely original idea about skinny sofa arms, and the rest of his stuff was overpriced schlock too, mostly ugly sound systems and IKEA knockoffs. Not that I disagree with hating this art school garbage.
Leora: there is only one Tom Wolff and one Tom Wolfe. And you fail to use correct punctuation. So, perhaps try to be "aspirational" to knowing simple things such as grammar, literature, and humility before sticking your nose in the air at the heathen middle-class, you embarassing pseudo-elitist.
Bagoh: many new indoor and outdoor forms are being created by concrete-impregnated rolls that may be shaped, then wetted into place. They're mostly used for large road projects now, but should soon be available for replacing stick-building and drywalling. I've sampled the material for drainage ditches. It's flexible and strong. I can't wait. I want a fully concrete house.
There's quite a revival in secondhand vintage "brown furniture" buying, meaning the solidly-built older mahogany furniture of our parents' grandparents. American made, still inexpensive, sturdy construction, often accompanied by darker-tone paint colors and floral wallpaper for the walls.
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