If you’ve spent any time on the same corner of the internet as I have, you’ve probably seen the recent obsession with taste. Suddenly, it’s everywhere. In a world where ChatGPT knows everything and the internet gives everyone access to the same archive, taste is supposedly what sets you apart.

And I agree. But I also believe we’re talking about the wrong thing.

The way I see it, taste is not aesthetic preference. It's the ability to make independent judgements.

Perhaps that’s why it has become so valuable - taste is one of the only places left where you’re forced to practise trusting your own judgement.

For what it’s worth, I believe taste lives somewhere between instinct and knowledge. It isn’t simply intuition, and it certainly isn’t just information. It’s what happens when curiosity meets experience.

The problem is that, at the very moment we’re celebrating taste as the last thing AI can’t replicate, we’re also flattening it into yet another branding exercise.

I can’t stop thinking about our growing lack of individual taste.

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We all seem to be reading the same books, watching the same films, buying the same objects, having the same opinions.

The algorithm isn’t just recommending things anymore; it’s quietly teaching us what we’re supposed to like. And I can’t help but feel it’s lowering the bar.

It’s becoming urgent to break this cycle of sameness; somewhere along the way, fitting in became more desirable than standing out, but we need to develop our own personal taste - instead of celebrating our uniqueness within a group, we’re slowly mirroring each other.

(It also connects to another essay I’ve been quietly writing in the background - something along the lines of To be free is often to be lonely - but that’s a conversation for another day.)

As I was saying, we’ve gradually lost touch with the mechanisms that actually help us develop individual taste.

Some people argue that taste is simply about being deeply curious.

I would argue that curiosity is only part of it; to develop your own taste, you need perspective - and perspective rarely grows inside an algorithm designed to confirm your existing preferences.

I recently came across a sentence by Clayton Chambers on Instagram that has stayed with me:

“To have good taste, you need perspective, and you won’t find perspective on the algorithm.”

I think that’s exactly where the problem lives. I don’t think we’ve lost our ability to develop taste. I think we’ve become disconnected from the environments that allow it to emerge.

Of course, taste has always been socially constructed - we’re influenced by our families, our friends, our cities, the books we read, the people we admire.

None of that is new.

What’s different now is that taste itself has become content, an aesthetic, a marketing strategy, something to perform rather than something to cultivate. Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking: do I actually love this? and started asking: will this version of me make sense online?

The internal filter shifted from resonance to validation. That’s where the tragedy begins: people began curating identities instead of discovering them.

Taste became another optimisation game. It became so coded that it no longer signals discernment - it signals fluency in trends.

Fashion makes this especially visible, but I’m also talking about cinema, painting, photography, books, architecture, design, music, even colours.

A pair of ballet flats doesn’t make someone interesting, nor does carrying a New York Times tote bag, a Moleskine notebook and a copy of Joan Didion.

They’re just signals - the problem is that sometimes they’re honest. More often than we’d like to admit, they’re costumes.

Of course a pair of shoes doesn’t define a personality - and yet... is it really that absurd? Taste has always been one of the languages we use to communicate who we are.

So I guess the question is whether we’re expressing ourselves or simply borrowing someone else’s vocabulary.

Perhaps that's why I can't stop thinking about our growing lack of individual taste.

Eleni di Luzio once said:

Taste is autobiographical. It’s your life, expressed through your eye. It doesn’t come from a curriculum. It comes from boredom, friction, mistakes and time.

I love that.

Some say taste is an innate gift. I don't believe that at all. I think it's a skill.

One built through exposure, critical thinking, lived experience, curiosity, mistakes - above all, attention. We cultivate taste over an entire lifetime; we learn the subtle differences that slowly shape our preferences. We discover not only what we love, but why we love it and, perhaps even more importantly, we learn what we don’t like - and why (because if you can’t explain your own preferences, are they really yours?). Taste isn't about collecting references; it's about developing discernment.

Taste isn’t sexy to build. It’s slow, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing. There’s a gap between your taste and your ability - and it’s uncomfortable to live in that space.

Jade Conner

Doomscrolling doesn’t build taste; it builds the fear of not belonging, and based on everything I’ve experienced, real belonging asks for exactly the opposite. Real belonging asks you to know yourself, to become yourself; it doesn’t require you to change who you are.

Copy-paste identities don’t represent our lives; they don’t express what moved us when we were twelve, or the exhibition that quietly changed how we look at colour. Or the film we hated the first time but couldn’t stop thinking about afterwards. Or the book that arrived at exactly the right moment. Those things cannot be reverse-engineered.

Taste cannot be downloaded; it can’t be prompted, it can’t be bought.

So go offline.

Read books nobody recommended. Walk into galleries because you’re curious. Talk to people who disagree with you. Follow artists because their work genuinely moves you - not because everyone else already does. Surround yourself with people and projects that set a high bar.

The more greatness you experience, the sharper your judgement becomes. The sharper your taste becomes.

Taste is built slowly, often by changing your mind, so take your time.

In a world increasingly generated by machines, perhaps cultivating your own judgement isn’t a luxury anymore, just another survival skill.

Perhaps what we're really missing isn't taste. It's critical thinking.

Reclaim your taste.

Protect your judgement.

For the past few weeks - probably months, if I’m honest - I’ve been ridiculously excited about the release of The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s new film. I’ve found myself reading every interview, watching every roundtable, trying to figure out where they filmed each scene and, perhaps most absurdly, researching the thirty cinemas that will screen the film in IMAX 70mm.

I’ve even caught myself wondering whether it’s worth booking a flight just to watch it - and it probably is.

Somewhere in the middle of all that excitement, I realised I’ve never actually digested why Christopher Nolan’s work means so much to me.

One important note that I’ve never really shared publicly - and something I keep noticing whenever I meet people who’ve followed my work for years but have never actually met me - is that I didn’t study photography because I was obsessed with fashion.

Which, honestly, probably won’t surprise anyone: I wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong - I care deeply about aesthetics, but fashion has never been where I invest my attention or my money; I did spend years photographing fashion weeks, editorials, and campaigns, so I completely understand why it looks like the obvious explanation - it just isn’t.

The reason I studied photography - and spent so many years studying it - was cinema. That was always the plan.

I pursued postgraduate studies in photography for cinema. I applied to schools abroad and even looked into programmes in New York.

Life, of course, had other plans, and somehow I ended up much closer to fashion than film.

And that’s perfectly fine; I still love what those years gave me.

But my obsession with cinema never really left (our home is unapologetically built around watching films properly. It’s obviously not a cinema, but we’ve invested in making it feel like one).

When it comes to cinema itself, I did what everyone does when they first fall in love with it: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kurosawa, Antonioni, Béla Tarr - I loved them. I still do.

But over the years, I’ve realised that we’ve allowed “great cinema” to become almost synonymous with “difficult cinema.”

As if complexity were the only path to artistic legitimacy, as if accessibility somehow diminished artistic value, and there’s something about the idea that great cinema must always be difficult cinema that unintentionally distances people from cinema as an art form.

From cinema as a cultural reference, as something capable of helping us understand ourselves, understand the world.

(And maybe that’s inevitable; not everything needs to be for everyone - Tarkovsky is still one of my favourites and that’s not my point.)

But we can all agree that it is remarkable that there are artists who somehow manage to create work of extraordinary depth while still inviting millions of people into it - and that’s what I truly admire about Christopher Nolan.

Because, for several reasons, I think Christopher Nolan - along with a handful of other directors - has done something incredibly difficult: he’s managed to bring ambitious, deeply personal filmmaking to a genuinely mainstream audience

Not because his films are easy (plot twist, they’re not). And also not because there isn’t an enormous marketing machine behind every release - there absolutely is. (I mean... sending miniature statues with encrypted numbers to journalists and cultural creators that eventually led them to a Discord server? Creating an actual newspaper as part of The Dark Knight campaign? That’s brilliant marketing.) But what I admire is something else entirely.

I see someone who never seems willing to compromise the integrity of the work to make the journey easier.

Someone who builds creative relationships that last decades, who works repeatedly with the same actors, the same composers, the same cinematographers, the same editors. Who keeps returning to the same themes.

Someone who insists on practical effects whenever possible.

Someone who insists on shooting on film. On IMAX.

He continues investing in formats like IMAX because he genuinely believes they’re the best way to tell a particular story - even when that makes everything more expensive, and infinitely more complicated.

(Quick nerdy detour: IMAX 70mm is an analogue film format. The cameras are enormous, incredibly loud, and each film magazine lasts only a few minutes before needing to be replaced. Until very recently, they were simply too noisy to record dialogue properly. They’re wonderfully impractical - which is probably why I admire Nolan’s commitment to them so much.)

Not because it’s easier, but because he believes it’s the best way to tell the story.

(Even when it costs more, even when it takes longer and even when it’s exponentially more complicated.)

That, to me, is fascinating.

A few years ago, after our cat Aurora died, João and I dealt with the grief in a way I definitely wouldn’t recommend as psychological advice. (0/10 - wouldn’t recommend. Trauma therapy is considerably more effective.) We immersed ourselves in a Christopher Nolan marathon (we skipped Memento), and I remember sitting there, film after film, completely in awe.

Not because every film was perfect, but because every film felt unmistakably his. The themes kept returning. The questions kept returning. Even the emotional architecture kept returning.

(I’ve read people argue that Inception was already, in some strange way, preparing him to make The Odyssey - that both stories are, fundamentally, about a man trying to find his way back home to his family. I have no idea whether that’s true, but I love the thought.)

I know this has somehow turned into a love letter to Christopher Nolan, but the more I’ve thought about it over the past few weeks, the more I’ve realised I don’t actually admire Christopher Nolan because of the films themselves, and I honestly don’t think this piece is about Christopher Nolan.

I admire what they represent. Or maybe, more accurately, what they make me believe is still possible.

I think it’s about a question I’ve been thinking about for a long time:

Whether it’s possible to reach more people without saying less, without caring less, without making simpler work simply because simpler work is easier to sell.

I think that's the question I've been trying to answer in my own work, too.

Christopher Nolan isn’t just a filmmaker - he’s a reminder that it’s still possible to build something massively popular without diluting what makes it special.

Without simplifying the vision, without lowering the standard, without treating audiences as though they’re incapable of meeting you halfway, without giving up time, money, or obsessive attention to detail.

That’s incredibly rare (especially today).

Yes, filmmaking is a business - films have to make money. But I’m still fascinated that someone can remain this ambitious while simultaneously filling cinemas all over the world.

In fact, if you try booking tickets for an IMAX screening of The Odyssey right now, you’ll probably understand exactly what I mean. The best seats disappeared a long time ago.

(#Nerdalert: I also love the fact that Christopher Nolan has a preferred seat in a cinema - the exact place where he believes his films should ideally be experienced.)

There’s a lesson in that - for artists and for brands - for anyone trying to build something meaningful: popularity doesn't have to come at the expense of complexity.

Slow and steady.

People often assume brands create cultural shifts, but in my opinion the opposite is usually true - the best ones just notice them first. Which, oddly enough, makes brands some of our best cultural barometers.

Anyway, let’s get back to books. I was saying... books everywhere.

Joan Didion for Céline. Photographer: Juergen Teller

Not only in bookshops, but across fashion, luxury, advertising, and retail spaces - in the places where culture quietly rehearses itself before the rest of us realise something has changed.

And once you start paying attention, they’re surprisingly difficult to ignore - you don’t need to take my word for it; let’s see:

• Marc Jacobs opened his coffee table bookshop, Bookmarc.

• Celine’s casting of author Joan Didion as the star of a 2015 campaign.

• Miu Miu has a Literary Club that brings together writers, academics and Pulitzer Prize winners for talks.

• Saint Laurent turned one of its Paris boutiques into a bookstore.

• Chanel has quietly built an international literary programme around seasonal reading lists and conversations with writers.

• Brunello Cucinelli is building what he calls a universal library at the company’s headquarters in Umbria.

• Coach partnered with Penguin Random House to turn classic novels into bag charms.

• Dior embroidered literary classics onto one of its most recognisable bags.

• Dua Lipa - whose Service95 I have to admit I genuinely love - and her book club, or her recent partnership with Livraria Lello in Porto, to create the Manifesto Library.

I mean, the list goes on; we could be here for quite some time...

The question isn’t why books are suddenly appearing everywhere. For me, the question is: what have books come to represent?

I’m not naive; taste signalling has become a holy grail at a time when every brand is obsessed with “authenticity”, and books do communicate something about the people who read them. Increasingly, they also seem to communicate something about the people who carry them. We all know a publication or bookstore tote bag that has quietly become a “status symbol”, and reading lists are shared almost like playlists. It’s no wonder so many brands are turning to literature to create deeper storytelling, offline experiences and cultural differentiation.

Entire identities are now built around cultural consumption, and yet... I don’t think that’s the whole story.

There seems to be a common thread in this return to analogue experiences (film photography, vinyl, craft, ceramics, now books), and it’s no wonder people keep asking whether we’ve reached peak stimulation.

On a bad day, it feels like we’ve quietly replaced entertainment with distraction - no wonder we’re all so fatigued. Art is increasingly competing with distraction; we are chronically online, algorithms are devouring our days, and perhaps we’re deeply looking for an intellectual connection somewhere else. If you're interested in this idea, Ted Gioia has written brilliantly about it.

Anyway, so much of what surrounds us now competes inside systems that reward interruption over attention. Maybe that’s why books suddenly feel different.

Maybe, after years of trying to make everything faster, we’ve started craving experiences that refuse to be optimised.

Literature feels like a natural next step, particularly at a moment when “offline” has quietly become aspirational again.

A book asks for intention - and luxury is increasingly selling the fantasy of intentional living- it asks you to stay with one person’s train of thought for hundreds of pages without promising a reward every thirty seconds.

Which, as we all know, is becoming surprisingly rare.

I wonder if that’s part of what brands are responding to - not books themselves, but what books have come to represent. Qualities that have become increasingly desirable.

Luxury, it seems to me, has become increasingly interested in selling ways of thinking. Or perhaps just the appearance of them - I’m genuinely not sure.

Having said all of this, something else has been sitting with me. I also can’t help wondering whether books are “returning” because they’re one of the few places where thinking still unfolds differently.

No one believes that books necessarily make us smarter; we can get knowledge from so many places, but the written word asks something different from us - at least from me. Books organise a thread of thought that tends to be more reflective, in a slower and denser way than endless scrolling. Reading a book asks us to stay with an idea for a little longer before deciding whether we agree with it.

Maybe books really are just becoming another status symbol.

Maybe brands have simply found another cultural language to borrow.

Saint Laurent Babylone - 9 Rue de Grenelle, Paris

What I do know is that I find it fascinating that, at a time when almost everything around us is competing to become faster, shorter and more efficient... Books seem to be quietly making their way back into the conversation.

Not simply as products.

As symbols.

So, if fashion is making books fashionable again, and if that makes more people read (search for numbers about books sold in the first semester of 2026 compared with previous years), if following fashion trends eventually leads someone towards reading philosophy, discovering a novelist they would never have picked up otherwise, or simply spending an afternoon with a book instead of another algorithmic feed... then I’m not entirely convinced that’s such a bad trend to follow.

And perhaps the more interesting question is: what happens when books stop being fashionable again?

Not because I wanted to be mysterious - or because I disliked attention (I don't. I'm an artist. It usually just means I have an ego to manage, even when I claim otherwise).

But because I genuinely believed that a photograph, a painting, or a piece of writing should be able to stand on its own. The way I saw it, the artist's job was to make the work, not to stand beside it explaining what it meant - over-rationalising something that perhaps wasn't meant to be explained in the first place.

So for years, I treated visibility with a certain suspicion. The more someone felt the need to explain their work, the more I wondered whether the work itself was worth seeing.

It's a belief I still hold, at least in part.

A large part of what I make lives in interpretation - in what the person looking at it brings to it.

That space between the work and the viewer is, to me, the most important part. It's where the work actually becomes something. And I think over-explaining threatens exactly that: when an artist fills in every blank, they risk interfering with the most important thing - the way you relate to the piece, and what it makes you feel.

That, in my opinion, is what each person should be free to take from their own relationship with art. I have no interest in getting in the way of that.

But there's a difference between explaining and introducing. Explaining fills the space so the viewer can't get it wrong. Introducing a universe invites someone in - and still leaves them room to move around inside it.

That's the distinction I've been sitting with lately.

Not whether the work should speak for itself, but whether the thinking behind it disappears when the artist stays silent.

Because a finished piece only shows the destination. It doesn't show the path - and it definitely doesn't show the books, the places, the films, the conversations, the obsessions, or the life that quietly found its way into the work along the way.

If I'm honest, that's where a large part of my work actually happens. Not in the final image - in the connections.

I've always tended to move between subjects in a way that can seem slightly chaotic from the outside. I can start thinking about philosophy and end up reflecting on education and how strongly I believe it's designed to amplify similarity rather than identity, rather than exploring the best of a single person. I can start with art and end up somewhere around identity - the list is never-ending.

And it's not because I'm distracted. It's how I understand the world, how I learn, and - inevitably - how I create.

The more I learn, the more difficult it becomes to believe that ideas live in separate rooms - art influences culture, culture shapes identity, identity affects behaviour, behaviour shapes society.

If you follow the thread long enough, almost everything finds its way back to everything else.

That last one happened recently - I'm working on a collection that exists entirely in tones of red, and somewhere in the process I realised it meant something I hadn't consciously intended. That's exactly the kind of thinking that doesn't show up in the finished work, but that shapes everything about it

As an artist, I've spent years sharing the conclusions. The finished photograph, the painting, the final piece - but very little of the thinking that got me there.

And lately, I've started to wonder if that thinking might be worth sharing too. Which led us here:

"I Digress"

An expression my friends and I use constantly - not because I lose the thread, but because following it often leads somewhere more interesting than where I originally intended to go.

So, hoping some of you find it interesting as well, I'll be here.