What Taste Actually Means (And Why We Confuse Taste, Class, Style and Trends)
From Home & Hosting with Loui Burke by Loui Burke
March 8, 2026 · 20 min
About this episode
This episode explores the meaning of taste and its confusion with class, style, and trends, while discussing the impact of social media on design language.
In this episode of Home and Hosting , we explore what taste actually means and why people so often confuse taste, class, style and trends. Conversations around taste always spark interesting discussions online, so we unpack how the words taste, class, style, and trends have started to blur together and why that causes so much confusion. Style is talked about constantly, trends move faster than ever, and taste often gets avoided entirely because it can feel loaded or exclusive. We also explore how social media has contributed to the TikTok-ification of design language, where everything becomes an “aesthetic”. When trends are packaged as aesthetics, it can make it seem like participating in the right trend means having taste, when in reality, those are very different things. From there, we look at how taste actually develops through exposure, environment and experience. We touch on ideas from sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the cultural landscape he was writing about in the late 1970s, and how the internet, globalisation and the pace of modern media have changed how people encounter culture today. We also talk about why wealth can broaden exposure but does not automatically mean…
People in this episode
Host: Loui Burke
Topics covered
- taste
- class
- style
- trends
- social media
- design language
- cultural exposure
Keywords
- taste
- class
- style
- trends
- social media
- design
- aesthetic
- cultural exposure
- Pierre Bourdieu
- modern media
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