The futile pursuit of excellent style

What is nice style? And who decides it? It’s a query I mentioned final weekend with the architect and designer Harry Nuriev, museum director Melissa Chiu and Web-a-Porter president Alison Loehnis: three arbiters of fashion. However the one actual settlement we may come to on the topic is that there are now not any guidelines.

Till about 20 years in the past there remained pretty static concepts about what handed as de rigueur. In a world during which opinions have been determined by a small cabal of voices, the variety of “critical” artwork collectors numbered within the low lots of and the key markets have been assumed to be in Paris, London and New York, there was a straightforward consensus concerning the sort of furnishings one ought to sit on, the model of bag you carried or the artwork you hung in your partitions.

Tendencies have been cyclical and ever shifting — however the issues representing “good style” remained fairly fastened in folks’s minds. In case your chairs have been Le Corbusier, you owned a Giacometti, otherwise you swung an Hermès Birkin purse, you have been a part of an elite group whose style was aspired to and admired. As we speak, nevertheless, style has change into extra fluid and subjective. Its arbitration is much less clear lower. The web has made everybody a critic, new markets have mushroomed exterior the normal centres and consensus has largely damaged down.

The web has made everybody a critic, and consensus has largely damaged down

The place as soon as good style was seen as a mark of privilege and schooling, right this moment’s tastemakers are a much more reactive crowd. And the issues that emerge as barometers of our cultural standing are much less possible the product of specific connoisseurship than they’re the results of a collective, internet-fed, hive thoughts.

Nuriev was born in Russia: earlier this month he labored with the culinary studio We Are Ona to create a pop-up restaurant that was the speak of artwork week in New York. When not creating happenings in one of many world’s most notoriously unimpressible communities, he makes eiderdowns from outdated boxer shorts and bespoke wallpaper with a trompe l’oeil impact to appear to be mould: he’s at present crushing plastic Evian bottles to create a bespoke chandelier. His work treads the road between the tasteless and the transcendent and the traditional and the crass, however his daring “transformer” imaginative and prescient has made him one of the crucial in-demand designers of right this moment.

Requested what good style is, he shrugs and says he has no thought. However he does know his shoppers need to work with him as a result of they really feel that he represents the sort of design assertion they need to make.

“Good style” has change into extra democratic. To not point out politicised: most nationwide galleries are within the midst of main rehangs to attempt to showcase works by ladies, non-white or outsider artists whose works have been till now ignored. When Chiu, the Asian-Australian director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Backyard in Washington, DC, first began working as an Asian modern artwork skilled, folks dismissed her by saying it didn’t exist. For connoisseurs, Asian artwork meant historical porcelains and dynastic swag. It was solely with the emergence of a brand new shopper market, and the web, that these opinions modified. As soon as, she argues, artists hoping for longevity must observe a really particular profession path. As we speak, among the most feverishly collected artists — those that are bought for tens of millions at public sale — have by no means had a single work proven in a museum.

Is sweet style, then one thing innate and elevated, or is it merely hitting sure tendencies? Even with the proliferation of influencers, click on tradition and social media, some issues nonetheless bubble to the floor as being thought of “tasteful” at any given time. In style, for instance, we’re within the grip of a a lot vaunted “stealth wealth” section, whereby logos are extra muted, materials extra luxurious and it’s at present thought of the peak of stylish to be swathed in layers of beige.

However is that this good style or just “protected style” — an try to hide one’s riches by attempting to look utterly meh? Certainly the true arbiters of “nice” style ought to have extra verve and expression; that’s actually what I search for when selecting The Aesthetes you see within the FT Weekend’s HTSI journal.

And what about Outdated Masters? One would assume that some issues should surpass all metrics with their experience and sweetness, and but even probably the most revered of artists can languish, dusty and unloved. Have a look at Vermeer, at present the topic of the preferred present on earth on the Rijksmuseum, however whose work, now broadly thought of masterpieces, may barely dent a passing curiosity for almost 200 years.

Good style was an expression of privilege and custom — managed and manipulated by a strong elite. However that hegemony of principally white, male artistic personalities is now being reframed to replicate extra numerous intellects. Most significantly, I feel, good style shouldn’t be boring: it ought to be daring, audacious and authentic. It ought to dare to flout conference, provoke and but finally beguile.

E-mail Jo at [email protected]