Please help. I want to cultivate good taste. |
You either have it or you don't. You either know it or you don't. |
Say what? |
No, you want to mimic someone else's taste.
Be yourself. Like what you like. I like box wine, and can't no one tell me that ain't refined. |
![]() |
It's boxed, not box. I suppose you say "ice tea" rather than "iced tea"? ![]() I hope you realize I'm just jerking your chain. ![]() |
![]() be yourself, op! |
Always choose the more understated option.
Short or long nails? Short. Super-long earrings or studs? Studs. Obviously dyed hair or your natural hair color? Natural. (Or as close to natural as possible, while coloring grays.) Fifteen photos on Facebook of your vacation, or one? One. |
Not by asking how to on an internet forum. |
Refined taste is about education and exposure. You need to understand the thing you want to have good taste about before you can have good taste. For instance if you want to have good taste in wine, you need to educate yourself about different varietals, winemaking regions, etc., but just reading about it isn't enough. You also need to try lots of different wines, understand how they differ and why, etc. |
Aw darn, I was going to say HERE! On DCUM! We can tell you. We are harbingers of taste. Tastemakers. All except for those tacky gals over there, of course. |
Refined taste is having discretion about what you do, say, and present to the world.
Err on the side of less, not more, in your personal appearance. Keep your mouth shut about most things. Don't have anything nice to say? Don't say anything. |
I say try things out on your own enough times so that when you have to do them with a group/colleagues etc. you don't look unrefined. So figure out wines; figure out sushi; theater; reading literature. Whatever it may be so that you're not the only one at a professional dinner who has no clue what Shakespeare wrote or how to use chopsticks or whatever.
At least this is what I did when I made the jump from a totally middle class middle America upbringing to a professional job in NYC where all my peers just grew up knowing these things. |
Step 1: Get acrylic nails. Preferably w/french tips.
Step 2: Buy a new wardrobe at Forever 21. A few accent pieces from Bebe. If they still sell Juicy tracksuits anywhere anymore (ebay, maybe?), grab a couple of them. The rest will just falll into place. |
Box wine, as apposed to grape wine, is wine made out of boxes. Very common in areas with few grapes, and very flavorful too (depending on what said boxes had contained before). The fact that you apparently don't know that makes you, well, unrefined. |