Has Good Taste Become Too Predictable?

I have a suspicion: we're becoming very good at recognising beautiful things, and perhaps a little less good at recognising interesting ones.

Think about how many cafés, hotels, shops and even homes seem to share the same visual language. Different cities, different owners, yet somehow the same carefully chosen colours, lighting, furniture and atmosphere.

Everything looks lovely. Very little surprises us.

It's a curious contradiction. We've never had access to so much inspiration, yet so much of what we create seems to resemble something we've already seen.

Perhaps that's what happens when inspiration becomes unlimited.

We collect images, save references, follow trends and gradually develop a shared understanding of what looks right. And now, with artificial intelligence, we can generate dozens of beautiful possibilities before we've even had time to form an opinion of our own.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Technology has made extraordinary creative possibilities accessible to almost everyone.

But I wonder whether we've started confusing good taste with familiarity.

After all, recognising what is fashionable is not quite the same as having taste. Real taste requires making decisions. Sometimes uncomfortable ones. Choosing something because it means something to you, even when it doesn't fit the prevailing aesthetic.

And this goes beyond design.

A beautifully arranged dinner can be utterly forgettable. A perfectly prepared presentation can leave us with nothing to think about. An expensive object can be admired without ever being loved.

Meanwhile, a peculiar little restaurant, an unexpected opinion over dinner, or an object with a story behind it can stay in our minds for years.

Perhaps what makes something memorable isn't how successfully it meets our expectations, but how confidently it challenges them.

I don't think we need fewer beautiful things. I think we need more things with character.

And character, unlike style, is difficult to borrow.

So here's a question I've been asking myself lately:

When we say we like something, do we really like it, or have we simply learned to recognise it as something we're supposed to like?