Drake's Diary

Sixteen Stylish Maxims for the New Year

Style and taste are a particular sort of intelligence, and vice versa.

Aesthetic judgments rarely transcend the culture of the judge.

The style of studied nonchalance is the psychological triumph of grace over order. 

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. Which is why Fashion is shallow, but taste is deep. 

There’s no right or wrong about style. Like a poem, it simply is what it is. 

Real luxury is understanding quality, and having the time to enjoy it. 

In the end, aesthetic judgments are perhaps merely enthusiasms. 

In matters of taste, if you can see the trees well enough, you don’t have to see the forest. 

To consciously avoid fashion is in itself a fashion. 

Today tradition is commercially merely another commodity. As is History. 

In a world of plentiful choices, taste is the hallmark of restraint. 

Luxury may be, as Balzac says, less expensive than elegance. But both are less expensive than fashion. 

Uniforms both include and exclude. 

Taste is one of those human concerns in which a lack of experience is no hindrance to opinion. 

Precision in dress is the neurotic refuge of the perpetually insecure. 

Deliberate nonchalance is intended to imply a strength held in reserve.