TASTE: The Secret Meaning Of Things

Design-guru Stephen Bayley approaches the thorny and sometimes elitest topic of 'Taste' with typical wit, drawing on his expertise in a number of fields from fashion to food. This new edition of a classic book, brought into the new millennium by Bayley's concise critique of modern design, asks 'How do we define taste?' With the explosion of vulgar consumerism in the mid 19th century, the Victorians seized upon the notion of good taste as a way of codifying middle-class mores. A century later, to talk about taste had become almost taboo, since judgements made about dress, manners, food and art can often be painfully revealing. The classic text was first published in 1991, and this tastefully floral clothbound hardback updated edition of 2017 is packed with colour and black and white examples of the following sections: Architecture, Interiors, Fashion, Food Consumption. There are interiors of flagship stores like Ralph Lauren, hotels like the Pool Room at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York 1959, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens where 'visitors allegedly drank gin made from sulphuric acid and oil of turpentine' right through to the Umami Burger which has recently advanced to high fashion food led by an ambitious Los Angeles restaurateur. Here those in search of the fifth taste can order their beef patty with shiitake mushrooms, caramelised onions, roasted tomato, parmesan crisp and 'Umami ketchup'. Food after all is the acid test of taste. We see the cruel distortions of fashions with high heels and Victorian crinoline hoops, beautiful interiors like the Tapestry Room at William Morris's home of Kelmscott Manor, ice skaters in Central Park in front of The Dakota apartment building in 1884, and Frank Lloyd Wright discussing a model of the Guggenheim Museum with students, his famous Helical Temple inspired by a Manhattan parking garage. A fantastic exploration of the shifting attitudes towards art, architecture, design, fashion, food and shopping which concludes that taste has more to do with manners than appearances, and that taste, good or bad, has nothing whatever to do with style. Fabulously browseworthy 288 glamorous heavyweight pages, hundreds of colour photos and other illus.