The Taste Essay - by Venkatesh Rao - Contraptions

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The Taste Essay<br>Taste cultures, risk, cruelty, and kindness<br>Venkatesh Rao<br>Jul 12, 2026

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A deft bit of stage direction in Shaw’s Pygmalion, introducing the character of Mrs. Higgins, has been stuck in my head since I first read it in high school:<br>There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes... In the corner... Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty and long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits writing...

You have to do a double-take to appreciate the insight in this thumbnail sketch, and it is worth unpacking. Normally, we assume that it is keeping up with, and conforming to, current fashion that takes effort. As this sketch suggests, this view is mistaken, and things are rather more complicated.<br>We make this mistake because we often lazily conflate genuine indifference to fashion (which takes no effort) with being unfashionable (which takes as much effort as being fashionable). To be indifferent to fashion is to make essentially random sartorial choices while being oblivious to the consequences. But to be unfashionable is to earnestly misdirect effort to conform to the wrong fashion culture, such as one that’s identifiably a season or two older than the prevailing one, or one that fails subtle signaling tests while passing easier ones.<br>The difference between the indifferent and the unfashionable is the difference between the outlaw and the unwitting criminal. The former is simply outside the jurisdiction of a taste culture, and therefore largely invulnerable to any social sanctions it might capable of imposing. Not being invited to parties does not matter if you do not care to go to parties. The indifferent make utilitarian decisions ignoring considerations of taste. The unfashionable person though, transgresses the prevailing culture of taste, while sincerely intending and trying to conform to it, and as such, represents a policing problem for the fashionable. The choices of such individuals are what are generally labeled crimes of fashion.<br>Crimes of fashion that manifest through unfashionable choices are of two sorts, only one of which can be properly attributed to tastelessness, and judged and punished accordingly, with greater harshness.<br>The first sort is the result of simple ignorance and disconnection from the social core of a culture of taste, rather than lack of discernment or aptitude. Those who are unfashionable simply because they lack access and mentorship can acquire tasteful comportment, as was the case with Eliza Doolittle.<br>The second sort of crime of fashion though, is more serious: Attributable to an inability to acquire the appropriate sort of discernment and literacy despite being sufficiently immersed in the culture and materially equipped to participate in it. It is this second sort of fashion criminal who is usually charged with tastelessness, and policed and punished through particularly aggressive acts of contempt, exclusion, and humiliation.<br>The fashionable, the unfashionable, and the indifferent, then, are the basic types one encounters in and around a taste culture. We will refine our models of these and give them better names in a moment.<br>Mrs. Higgins though, belongs to none of these types.

In Pygmalion, the introductory thumbnail sketch reveals Mrs. Higgins to have been, in her youth, guilty of high treason — someone who committed transgressions against a prevailing culture of taste while being a literate insider of it.<br>For someone like this, conforming to prevailing fashion is an entirely effortless matter. High effort for her was associated with conscious transgression. I know nothing of women’s fashion, but fortunately ChatGPT does:<br>Mrs. Higgins would have come of age roughly in the 1860s and 1870s , when respectable upper-middle-class British women were expected to dress according to the highly structured fashions of the day: crinolines giving way to bustles, tightly corseted waists, elaborate trimming, and an emphasis on displaying wealth and propriety. Fashion was ornate, highly codified, and closely tied to social respectability.<br>The “Rossettian costume” refers to the aesthetic associated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the broader Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Aesthetic Movement. Women in Rossetti’s paintings typically wore:<br>loose, flowing medieval- or Renaissance-inspired gowns,

uncorseted or lightly corseted silhouettes,

rich but subdued fabrics,

long, naturally arranged hair,

little emphasis on the latest Paris fashions.

To adopt that style in everyday life was not simply to wear different clothes; it was to signal allegiance to an artistic and intellectual subculture. It rejected mainstream Victorian ideals of propriety and commercial fashion in favor of beauty, craftsmanship, medievalism, and artistic individuality. Figures associated with the movement—including William Morris and...