-Design-guru Stephen Bayley approaches the thorny and sometimes elitist
topic of 'taste' with typical wit, drawing on his expertise in a number
of fields from fashion to food -A new edition of a classic book, brought
into the new millennium by Bayley's concise critique of modern design
How do we define taste? The only certainty is that it shifts and
changes - sometimes abruptly. With the explosion of vulgar consumerism
in the mid-nineteenth century, the Victorians seized upon the notion of
good taste as a way of codifying middle-class mores. A century later, to
talk about taste had become almost taboo, since judgments made about
dress, manners, food and art can often be painfully revealing. And
today? When this classic text was first published in 1991, Stephen
Bayley illuminated the nuances and niceties of our mercurial
understanding of taste. In this new edition, he ranges far and wide to
bring us exquisitely up to date. 'I don't know anybody with more
interesting observations about style, taste and contemporary design' Tom
Wolfe on Stephen Bayley