The people with really good taste are a little weird.

There's a particular kind of person I love talking to. You compliment something they're wearing, the way they've decorated their home, or the visual world they've built around their brand, and suddenly you're hearing about an obscure magazine from 1997, a hotel lobby in Tokyo, a French film they've watched seventeen times, or some designer you've never heard of.

And I'm like, okay yes, tell me EVERYTHING.

Because the people with really good taste usually have a pretty fascinating collection of references. And when you start asking questions, you realize they've been collecting and curating the things they love for YEARS, long before some trend roundup told them what was cool.

Which is interesting, considering how often we're being told exactly what good taste is supposed to look like.

There's a film location scout I follow on Threads who documents all kinds of oddities he comes across around California. Recently, he posted about how certain interior design trends seem to sweep through homes all at once, leaving behind these little visual time capsules of a particular era.

He's not necessarily criticizing the interiors. He's more interested in how an entire generation of homes can end up with the exact same design details, almost as if everyone received the same memo.

Think millennial-gray parquet flooring. Or those unmistakable red Wolf stove knobs, except they're appearing on stoves that are, well, not Wolf. Or the built-in window flower box.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Some of these things stand the test of time and become classics. Others are a little cringey in retrospect. And the interesting part is how certain design choices become so ubiquitous that we can practically date a renovation by looking at the kitchen.

The same thing happens in fashion, photography, branding, pretty much everywhere.

Remember when every DTC brand had that same sans-serif typeface, muted color palette, and vaguely clever copywriting? Or when every luxury brand decided it needed to look like every other luxury brand with massive logo’d “Gucci” or Louis” or whatever it was?

I mean, I get it. We're all influenced by the things around us, and trends are part of how culture works. But I do think there's something major to be said for developing your own references, your own peculiar collection of things you love, and having enough conviction in your taste to occasionally ignore what everyone else is doing.

Which brings me to one of my favorite creative exercises:

In art, literature, and film, a canon is a collection of works considered particularly important or influential. I like to think of your personal canon as the collection of things that have shaped the way you see.

And if you're a founder, creator, or really anyone responsible for making creative decisions, I think it's worth knowing yours.

Here's a little peek at mine.

Sofia Coppola. Especially Marie Antoinette. The sugar-rush color, period costumes, that softness, and Gang of Four kicking in over the opening. The decision to put that particular soundtrack against all that 18th-century extravagance? I love it.

Grace Coddington-era Vogue. The elaborate storytelling, the theatricality, the way a fashion editorial could feel like an entire imaginary world.

Surf culture. Especially the slightly sun-faded, lived-in version of it. The photographs, the colors, the kind of stuff that's been sitting in the sun for twenty years and looks better because of it.

Japanese coastal modernism. Seaside concrete, strange little beach structures, restraint, weather, proportion. I could look at this stuff all day.

And first-class cabins on Asian airlines. The tiny details. The service rituals. The lighting. The obsessive consideration of how someone moves through a space.

Now, imagine I gave you those five references and asked you to develop a beauty brand.

LOL. Good luck.

But here's what's so interesting to me. Every single one of these references has influenced how I think about beauty branding, and how I've approached building Casa Noon.

The cinematic storytelling, the sun-faded nostalgia, the deliberate use of color, the smallest details of a customer experience. I can trace pieces of my creative decision-making back to these things.

And someone else could study the same five references and make something completely different. They might even notice things I haven't.

That's the fun part.

Your personal canon is the strange collection of things you've spent your life noticing, admiring, studying, and occasionally becoming a little obsessed with. And when you understand what you're responding to in each of those things, you start to understand your own taste a whole lot better.

Here's something I find fascinating.

Two people can watch the exact same film, visit the same hotel, or look at the same photograph and walk away with completely different ideas.

Let's go back to Marie Antoinette for a second.

Someone might watch that movie and fall in love with the Rococo interiors, the elaborate costumes, the pinks and blues, the champagne coupes and towers of pastries.

And fair enough, all very fabulous.

But what I'm particularly interested in is the creative nerve it took to pair Versailles with post-punk music. The way Coppola makes an 18th-century world feel youthful, mischievous, and surprisingly modern through the choices she makes.

That's a very different thing to take away from the film. I don't necessarily want to put ribbons and powdered wigs on my skincare packaging. But I love the idea of pulling from seemingly incompatible references and creating something that feels entirely cohesive.

See where I'm going?

When we say we love something aesthetically, we're often talking about wildly different qualities. You might love an old hotel because of its architecture. Someone else might be obsessed with the uniforms, the printed menus, or the way the staff makes you feel like you've been coming there for twenty years.

You might love a fashion editorial for the clothes. I might love it for the unexpected casting, the lighting, or the way the photographer has made the model look like she's in the middle of some bizarre little story.

Same reference. Different eyes. And this is why I always want to know more when someone tells me what inspires them. Okay, you love vintage Italian design. But WHAT about it?

The proportions? The colors? The materials? The slightly theatrical approach to furniture? The way everything manages to feel both ridiculous and incredibly chic?

Get specific. Because once you understand which creative decisions you're responding to, you have something much more useful than another pretty image sitting in your saved folder.

You start to recognize your own preferences.

One thing I've noticed after years of working with founders is how often we look to our own category for creative inspiration.

Beauty founders study other beauty brands. Fashion founders follow other fashion brands. Hospitality founders look at the latest hotel openings. Which makes sense. Of course you should know what's happening in your industry. But tbh, if you're only looking at what everyone around you is making, there's a pretty good chance you'll start making some version of it yourself.

I see this happen with brand moodboards all the time.

Someone wants to build a premium skincare brand, so they collect ten premium skincare campaigns. The images are beautiful. The packaging is beautiful. Everyone has beautiful skin, beautiful bathrooms, beautiful little glass jars.

And somehow, by the time the moodboard is finished, you've created a visual direction that could belong to approximately forty different brands.

Okayyyy, now what?

What if you looked at the films you love? The restaurants you've visited? The magazines you collected when you were fourteen? The particular details of your grandmother's house that have somehow stuck with you all these years?

Maybe you grew up around horses and have an obsession with old equestrian photography. Maybe you worked in restaurants for a decade and have very specific opinions about hospitality. Maybe your favorite reference is an obscure European magazine that hasn't been published since 1988.

What if your Pinterest moodboard was more like this?

I want to know about THOSE things.

I think about this a lot with Casa Noon.

When I was developing the brand, I spent plenty of time looking at beauty. I started my career in corporate beauty, so the category was already familiar to me. But so much of the creative world I wanted to build came from other places.

The color palette, the stripes, the sun-faded nostalgia, the seaside references, the way I think about hospitality and the experience of being part of the Casa Noon world.

I wanted a skincare brand that could exist comfortably in the world of travel, beautiful hotels, beach clubs, and all the little rituals associated with spending time somewhere you love.

And those ideas came from a collection of interests I've had for years.

Some of them might seem completely unrelated to skincare until you start to see how they influence the choices I'm making. That's what makes this exercise so interesting.

Your own assortment of references can become an incredibly useful creative library, especially when you stop assuming everything you love needs to fit neatly into the category you're working in.

You know what else people with great taste tend to have? A pretty specific list of things they absolutely cannot stand. lol. But seriously.

I love talking to someone who can walk into a beautifully designed restaurant and immediately tell you why the lighting is wrong. Or someone who has a genuinely passionate opinion about the proportions of a sofa, the typeface on a menu, or a particular era of fashion photography.

Not because they're necessarily right. Taste is subjective, and that's what makes these conversations so good. It's the specificity of their opinion that I find interesting. They've paid enough attention to understand WHY something works for them, and why something else doesn't. And I think this is an important part of developing your creative eye.

Start noticing what you dislike.

Maybe you're completely over hyper-polished photography because you love the little imperfections that make an image feel alive. Maybe you find minimalist luxury branding incredibly boring. Maybe there's a particular aesthetic everyone seems obsessed with that you genuinely cannot understand.

Or maybe, circling back to our friend on Threads, you have extremely strong feelings about millennial-gray flooring. Gah, I sure have a feeling about that style.

The point is to start examining those reactions. What specifically bothers you? And what does that tell you about what you would rather see? Those preferences start to become useful when you're making your own creative decisions.

Because eventually, you'll need to edit. You'll need to decide which references belong together, which trends you're happy to participate in, and which ones you'd rather sit out.

And this is where I think the conversation about AI-generated creative work gets particularly interesting. We're seeing more and more demonstrations of AI tools editing images, creating graphics, building websites, and producing entire visual identities in minutes.

Some of it's impressive, no doubt.

But when everyone has access to the same tools, the ability to produce something aesthetically pleasing becomes a pretty low barrier. Someone still has to decide what looks good.

Someone has to recognize when the colors are slightly off, when the image has lost its personality, or when a seemingly strange reference is actually the thing that makes the whole direction interesting. And if you're handing every aesthetic decision over to the same robot everyone else is using, well, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if things started looking a little familiar.

Taste comes from the human who understands the art, references, history, and particular feeling behind what makes something a vibe.

And developing that understanding is worth spending some time on.

Here's a little exercise I want you to try this week.

And I'd actually love for you to do it somewhere other than Pinterest. Grab a notebook, open a new document, whatever works.

01. THE THINGS YOU LOVE

Make a list of ten things that have influenced your taste over the years.

Films, magazines, artists, designers, hotels, cities, photographs, music, childhood memories, absolutely anything.

Look for the references you've returned to repeatedly. The things you loved before you had a brand, before you were trying to make content, and before you were concerned with whether anyone else thought they were cool.

And don't worry if none of them seem to go together. Mine certainly don't.

02. THE THINGS YOU DON'T

Now make a list of five things you strongly dislike, aesthetically or creatively.

The design trends you wish would disappear. The type of photography you never want associated with your brand. The colors, materials, or creative conventions that make you immediately think, absolutely not.

Then, for both lists, write down WHY.

Get specific about what you're responding to.

03. FIND YOUR THROUGH LINE

Look across everything you've written and start identifying the patterns.

Maybe you're consistently drawn to things that feel nostalgic, a little irreverent, and full of color.

Maybe you love beautiful materials, understated luxury, and spaces that have a sense of history.

Maybe you keep coming back to imagery that feels cinematic, playful, or just slightly strange.

Choose three qualities that keep showing up.

Now think about how those qualities could inform something you're making.

Your next photoshoot. The design of your website. The way you style your videos. Your packaging. Even the experience someone has when they first encounter your brand.

And please don't feel like you have to literally recreate the references. Remember, loving Marie Antoinette doesn't mean everything needs to be pink. The fun is in figuring out which specific creative decisions you want to borrow, reinterpret, or combine with something completely unexpected.

I also want you to come back to this list over time.

Add to it when you discover something interesting. Cross things out when your taste changes. Follow the artists and designers who made the things you love and see what influenced them.

Keep getting curious. Because the more you pay attention, the more material you'll have to pull from when you're creating something of your own.

And the more confidently you make those decisions, the more people will start recognizing your work without needing to see your name attached.

That's the kind of IYKYK I'm interested in.

01. PLAN. PITCH. CULT. NYC

Wednesday, October 21 | Tribeca, NYC | $99

I'm heading to NYC this Wednesday for a full day of brand building with Teresa Day, CEO of Planoly, and Jaclyn Ling, CEO of Bento.

Three CEOs, three masterclasses, three small-group working sessions, and a room full of founders, creators, and one-person marketing teams.

We're spending the morning learning and the afternoon actually doing the work.

You'll leave with a month of content planned and scheduled in Planoly, your first pitches sent through Bento, and your founder story and POV mapped with me.

We're hosting it in a gorgeous Tribeca loft, with coffee, lunch, goodie bags, and some very good company.

10 AM–4:15 PM. Tickets are $99.

→ COME SPEND THE DAY WITH US IN NYC

02. CREATE YOUR SIGNATURE VISUAL STYLE

A free 30-minute masterclass

Okay, so you've started building your personal canon. You've got the references, you've identified what you love, and now you're wondering how to actually make your content look like YOU.

Perfect timing.

I have a free visual style masterclass where I'm teaching you how to discover your brand archetype, develop your signature aesthetic, and create a B-roll shot list that makes filming content so much easier.

We'll get into planning, filming, and creating the kind of visual content that makes your brand recognizable, even if you're shooting everything yourself on your iPhone.

It's free, and you can choose a time that works for you.

→ TAKE THE FREE VISUAL STYLE MASTERCLASS

Okay. Go make your weird little list.

And please, if your personal canon includes a completely unrelated assortment of films, old magazines, furniture, childhood memories, and extremely specific hospitality experiences, I would LOVE to hear about it.

Those are my favorite kinds of references.

And for the record, if you actually love the red stove knobs, keep the red stove knobs.

Just know why you chose them.

Fractional CBO — Brand Direction: Think of me as your brand sherpa: I know where you're going, how to get there, and I make sure nothing goes out misaligned. Monthly strategy call, updated content plan, and a brand strategy document — all built on the Cult Brand Blueprint™ framework. Our next opening for this work is September.

The Content Studio Brand strategy from me. Content from my Studio team, created and delivered to you each month — ready to post. Photo-forward or video-forward, depending on where your brand lives and what we decide you need.

→ Let us know you're interested here, and we'll set up time to chat.

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