Harper's BAZAAR wants readers to believe personal style is a riddle that needs solving. It isn't. With so many sources of information available now, from AI to fashion social media, it has never been simpler to develop a point of view about what you wear.
As Harper's BAZAAR reported in its October fashion issue package, this season's runways have gone big, weird and "more forgiving of risk." Cummerbunds in daylight. Bras worn as shirts. The magazine frames this expansiveness as a crisis of choice, asking whether people need a uniform, how a life change should alter a closet, and how to make a white shirt feel like a personal statement rather than a hand-me-down rule.
Those are real questions. But BAZAAR's own reporting undercuts the idea that they're hard to answer. The piece points to TikTok's "tastemaxxing" trend, where people build content around hunting for an aesthetic point of view that isn't just whatever the algorithm feeds them. That's not evidence of a crisis. That's evidence of a generation with more tools for self-definition than any before it, using them.
BAZAAR calls this "a little bleak if you're used to the idea that taste is a lifelong pursuit." Maybe it's bleak for magazines that built a business model on being the one source that explained taste to you. It's not bleak for a reader who can scroll a dozen different aesthetic subcultures before lunch, run a few questions past an AI tool to sort out what she's drawn to, and arrive somewhere specific without an editor's permission slip.
The magazine's own survey of its writers makes the case better than it means to. One editor admits she writes about fashion for a living and still couldn't get dressed after becoming a mother. Another argues nobody needs a uniform at all, and switching styles on a whim is fine. A third makes the case that heels are more fun now that nobody is required to wear them. Read together, these aren't five experts cracking a hard problem. They're five different people who each figured out their own answer, which was always the actual assignment.
The old model of taste ran through a handful of gatekeepers who decided what counted as chic and handed it down. That model is gone, and nobody should mourn it. A cummerbund at noon is not a dilemma requiring expert interpretation. It's a choice, made easier by the fact that anyone curious about it can now go find a hundred examples, a style breakdown, and an AI tool to help sort through what actually fits, before deciding whether to try it.
The next place to watch isn't another essay asking if taste is a lifelong pursuit. It's which outlets stop gatekeeping and start helping people use the tools they already have.