Do You Actually Have Your Own Taste?

Do You Actually Have Your Own Taste?
Or has the internet just gotten very good at choosing it for you?

Do You Actually Have Your Own Taste?
Or has the internet just gotten very good at choosing it for you?
There is a question I sometimes catch myself thinking about after scrolling for too long.
Do I actually like this?
Or have I just seen it enough times?
It’s a strange question.
Because when you like something, you usually don’t investigate it.
You just like it.
You see a jacket and think it’s beautiful.
You hear a song and save it.
You see someone’s room and think, I want my room to look like that.
Simple.
Except it doesn’t feel quite that simple anymore.

A few years ago, you could probably name the things you liked without thinking too much about where they came from.
Your favourite music.
Your favourite clothes.
Your favourite films.
The kind of places you liked going to.
Maybe even the kind of person you wanted to become.
Today, we’re exposed to an almost impossible amount of everything.
Every day.
A new outfit.
A new restaurant.
A new designer.
A new aesthetic.
A new colour.
A new “must-have.”
A new person telling us what everyone is going to be wearing next month.
And the strange thing is that the more we see, the easier it becomes to think:
“That’s my taste.”

But where did it come from?
You see an outfit on Instagram.
You save it.
Then Instagram shows you another one that looks similar.
You save that too.
Pinterest gives you ten more.
TikTok gives you twenty.
Suddenly you’re surrounded by the same colours, the same silhouettes, the same references.
Eventually you buy something that looks like all of them.
And when someone asks why you bought it, you have an answer.
You like it.
And maybe you genuinely do.
That’s the complicated part.
Influence doesn’t mean the feeling isn’t real.
You can genuinely love something that you discovered through someone else.
That’s not the problem.
The interesting question is what happens after the influence.
Do you take the idea somewhere?
Or do you simply become another person wearing it?

Fashion has always borrowed.
That’s nothing new.
The 1970s borrowed from the past.
Punk borrowed and destroyed.
Hip-hop turned sportswear into something else.
Designers have always looked at history, music, art, architecture and each other.
Culture has never been created in complete isolation.
So I’m not interested in telling people to be “100% original.”
Honestly, I don’t even know what that means anymore.
There may be no such thing as an untouched idea.
What matters is what happens when an idea reaches you.

Maybe this is what personal style actually is.
Not inventing something nobody has ever seen.
But editing.
Taking one thing from here.
Leaving another behind.
Keeping something because it feels right.
Changing something because it doesn’t.
Wearing something differently than the person who inspired you.
Making mistakes.
Finding combinations that probably shouldn’t work.
And sometimes discovering that they do.
That feels much more honest to me than trying to build an identity around whatever aesthetic happens to be having a moment.

And maybe that’s why the current obsession with trends feels different.
There was a time when a trend could last long enough to become part of culture.
Now some trends barely have time to become familiar before they’re replaced.
The cycle has become so fast that people are starting to feel tired of keeping up. A 2025 Stitch Fix report cited by Fast Company found that two-thirds of its customers were experiencing “trend fatigue.” Depop’s 2026 research similarly points toward decision fatigue, repeated outfits and more dependable personal uniforms.

That doesn’t mean people stopped caring about fashion.
I think it means something more interesting happened.
They started caring about fashion on their own terms.

Maybe you don’t need a new aesthetic every month.
Maybe you don’t need to reinvent yourself every time the algorithm changes.
Maybe your favourite shirt can stay your favourite shirt.
Maybe wearing the same trousers three times in a week isn’t a failure of creativity.
Maybe buying something because you’ll still want to wear it two years from now is actually a better kind of excitement.
And maybe changing your mind is part of having a style too.
You don’t have to choose one version of yourself and stay there.

I think we’re sometimes too obsessed with the idea of finding our style.
As if somewhere out there is a perfect combination of clothes that will finally explain who we are.
But people aren’t that neat.
You can be quiet one day and loud the next.
You can want simplicity in the morning and something completely ridiculous at night.
You can love minimalism and still fall in love with one completely unnecessary jacket.
You can change.
Your clothes can change with you.
Maybe personal style isn’t a destination.
Maybe it’s evidence that you’re still becoming.

So the next time you see something online and immediately think,
“I need that.”
Wait for a second.
Not because you shouldn’t buy it.
Not because trends are bad.
Just ask yourself:
What exactly do I like about this?
Is it the colour?
The shape?
The way it makes you imagine yourself?
The person wearing it?
The life around it?
The feeling you think it might give you?
Or have you simply seen it so many times that it has started to feel inevitable?
There isn’t always a right answer.
But asking the question changes something.
Because suddenly you’re not just consuming.
You’re noticing.
And noticing is where taste begins.

Maybe this is what we need now.
Not less influence.
Not fewer trends.
Not another lecture about being different.
Just a little more awareness of the distance between:
what we see
and
what we choose.
Because you don’t have to reject everything that already exists to have your own style.
You just have to decide what you want to keep.
And what you want to leave behind.

At AANS, that’s the part we’re interested in.
Not telling you what’s fashionable.
Not giving you another formula for looking different.
Not creating clothes simply because the world needs another thing to wear.
We’re interested in the space between influence and choice.
Between seeing something and making it yours.
Between who you were,
who you are,
and whoever you’re becoming.
Because maybe the most personal thing you can wear
isn’t the rarest thing you own.
It’s the thing you chose for your own reason.

Try something.
Go to your saved posts.
Not your wardrobe.
Not your shopping cart.
Your saved posts.
Scroll through the last 20 things you’ve saved.
Look at them together.
Now ask yourself:
How many of these actually feel like me?
And here’s the harder question:
How many of them would I still want if I had never seen them online?
Don’t overthink it.
Just count.
Then tell us your number.
How many out of 20?
0? 5? 12? 20?
We’re curious.
Comment your number.
And if you want to go one step further:
Show us one thing you saved that you genuinely made your own.
Tag #AANSJournal.
We’ll be watching.
— AANS Journal