Fashion Media and my views on the meaning of the word taste

I am going to be looking at Sandra miller’s opinionated extract on the growth of fashion magazines and the criticised taste behind it. The ‘fashion magazine’ first came around in 1672 by a man called Jean Donneau de Vise who published ‘Le Mercure Galant’. These magazines were said to be ‘self-styled barometers of taste’. (Miller, 2013) What soon followed was the idea of taste and the Philosophical aesthetics (critics) who sought to understand the feelings and emotions of a piece of artwork then whether a person liked it or not, therefor the theory of taste as a measure came along.

Thomas Reid a well known Scottish philosopher claims that ‘the beauty of objects resides in their ability to express certain emotions and mental traits rather than causing those emotions or traits in the beholder’. (“Essay VIII” of the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man) He is also opinionated on whether asthetics qualities are primary or secondary qualities. I agree with both of these valid points. How can a critic judge a piece on taste when every single person on this earth has their own separate personal feelings, tastes or opinion’s. For example, how it is stated in Millers extract told by Hidalgo’s valet, Sancho, that two men were called to give their own opinions on a hogshead, one of them tasting leather and the other tasting metal, only to find an old key with a leather thong tied to it. (Hume 1965: 10-11) My opinion is that taste is subjective, as a critic you cannot make a judgment on a piece on behalf of the world if not being almost biased and pulling your own thoughts and opinions into it. Obviously taste is a measure of whether someone likes a piece of work or not but in this modern day I feel like it also comes down to what trends are floating around the industry at that moment and what everyone as a whole has decided what is tasteful at that moment in time.

Fashion magazines are all about trends and informing people what and what not to wear. ‘There an attempt to elevate fashion above its existing status’. ( Miller, 2013) If something does not follow the current trends then you could say that it has no taste, however, it has taste just within another season or pervious collection. Now days asthetitics are not just there to judge the beauty and grandeur of an object or even the feelings and emotions that the work gives of but whether it falls under the category of the latest trends and this defines if it has taste or not. Overall I believe that taste cannot be a measure of a piece of work purely due to that fact that opinions and feelings are subjective. An aesthetic cannot make an opinion on behalf of someone else even though to this day they still do.