When we’re young we gravitate toward strong voices. We want to associate ourselves with rebellious artists whose style is direct and clearly defined. You cover your bedroom walls with posters of your heroes and feel closer to them and play the same albums over and over. Nobody loves a writer the way a teenager loves J.D. Salinger. Or Led Zeppelin, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and Van Halen (depending on your vintage). Even colognes are strong—Drakkar Noir, if you’re of a certain era, Eternity or those green bottles from Polo, if you’re of another. Hopefully you leave the cologne behind when you head to college.
Cultural markers change from generation to generation but the principle remains the same. We evolve from most of our teenage tastes (though I stuck with The Cure!) and grow less concerned with defining our style. We ease into who we are as adults then pay a small fortune to see our favorite band on their reunion tour.
But social media has cemented self-definition and we perform the part of ourselves. It's endlessly, exhaustingly public. That’s what teenagers did. But now it’s what adults do too. The posters in the bedroom are now our Instagram grid. We take good things and make them public currency: I’m the one who likes martinis, we declare, or pajamas or Defenders or Slim Aarons.
I’m not here to judge that (I like these things too!). I am here to praise a more private, more subtle taste. In dressing, in interiors, in writing, in travel, in how we conduct ourselves. Our culture is obsessed with recognizable first impressions. The dreaded signature dish or hotel wall that’s designed with the hope that it’s endlessly photographed.