The Case of Borrowed Taste

I knew something was off the moment I stood in front of my closet and felt rushed.

Nothing had changed. The clothes were the same clothes. The hangers still leaned left where the weight was uneven. A sweater I loved still smelled faintly like the coffee shop where I’d first worn it. And yet, there it was—that low-grade anxiety that arrives when the seasons change, whispering that whatever worked last week might no longer be sufficient.

I hadn’t asked for this feeling. It had found me anyway.

Fall does that. Spring too. They come dressed as transitions but behave like ultimatums. Suddenly, everyone online is explaining how to layer correctly, how to retire last year’s colors, how to update your palate—visual and otherwise. Fashion videos queued themselves in my feed. Culinary documentaries followed close behind. Entire industries reminding me, gently but insistently, that necessity is only a luxury if I fail to curate it properly.

I stood barefoot on the floor, hanger in hand, and waited for the feeling to pass.

It didn’t.

Instead, my mind did what it always does when something feels counterfeit: it started interrogating.

I tried on a jacket I’d bought years ago. It wasn’t trending. It wasn’t aspirational. It fit perfectly. The lining had softened with time. The pockets held their shape because I actually used them. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt…fine. More than fine. Grounded. Which made the lingering discomfort suspicious.

That’s when I realized the problem wasn’t the clothes.
It was the noise.

The same thing happens with food. Seasonal shifts trigger a sudden flood of authority. New knives. New diets. New rules about what pleasure should look like right now. As if enjoyment has an expiration date. As if taste requires constant supervision.

I used to participate in that machinery.

Before cooking took over my life, I studied design and advertising. I spent years learning how to manufacture desire, how to make people feel behind without ever saying it outright. I was good at it. Too good. Eventually, I needed distance from screens and strategies and the quiet erosion of trust that comes from convincing people they’re incomplete.

That’s how I ended up cooking.

The transition felt natural—obvious, even. Designers and chefs speak the same language. Raw materials. Constraints. Editing. What do you leave out so the thing can say what it needs to say? Fashion and food aren’t opposites; they’re parallel practices.

Which is why the shame that exists between them has always bothered me.

I see it when people apologize for eating. When they perform restraint like virtue. When pleasure is fetishized but appetite is treated like a flaw. Fashion celebrates beauty while pretending bodies don’t need nourishment. Food insists on need while being moralized into silence.

It’s messy. Layered. Complicated.

Standing there in my jacket, I thought about a line I’d heard years ago on a cooking show—Laura Calder, talking about luxury. She said true luxury should be rare, authentic, exquisite. Then she compared it to rich bubble bath, and I laughed at the time because it sounded indulgent and domestic and completely unbothered by status.

That’s the kind of luxury I trust.

Not price. Not branding. Experience.

I took the jacket off, put it back on the hanger, then put it on again—this time with intention. I paired it with shoes I’d had resoled instead of replaced. I chose a scarf because it felt right, not because it had re-entered the algorithm.

The rush evaporated.

Luxury, I’ve learned, doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t perform. It works quietly, serving the person who chose it.

Before leaving, I paused in the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. Not the new beans I’d been told to try. The ones I already trusted. The cup was chipped. The ritual was familiar. The same principle applied.

I don’t want fashion to own me.
I don’t want food to audition for me.
I want to decide.

Some tastes are borrowed.
Others are earned.

I buttoned my jacket, shut the door behind me, and stepped into the day feeling like myself again.

I made a note.

The case remains open.