The one component of your personal brand that nobody talks about
Plus, the two tools you think are helping your taste are actually ruining it.
There is one element I think is missing from the conversation about building your personal brand. First, a distinction: sharing on social media is not your personal brand. That is the channel through which you express it. Your personal brand is the entirety of your person, and I like to think of it as four core components.
Your mindset. All the thoughts, all the ideas, including the limiting beliefs. I include those deliberately, because they are often the barrier that keeps people from showing up, online or offline, in the first place.
Your image. How you present yourself, your style, how you show up, even the energy you arrive with.
Your expertise. Every experience you’ve lived that positions you in a particular industry or niche. What you talk about, what you care about, what you know.
And the one nobody really talks about: your taste. I look at taste as the filter through which you make decisions daily. Where you spend your time, who you spend it with, how you dress, your house, even your job. All of it is an output of your taste. And taste is built from a young age, through every experience, often shaping its direction without you realizing it.
Consider this a seed: reflect on how you are building taste. Because taste, in the end, is what shapes the output, and the output is the personal brand you’re putting into the world.
What's Worth Your Attention
Valentino x MyTheresa Soiree, Source: Magazinec.com
Worth Sitting With
Where does your taste actually come from? Not your moodboards. Your inputs.
Worth Filtering
On the two sources everyone is using, and why that’s the problem.
Stop treating Pinterest and AI as your main sources of inspiration. What differentiates you from everyone else is taste, and taste is built through what you consume.
When you type in keywords, the chances that you and another person get the same results are high. That’s what you may be using as inspiration for your outfit, your home, a creative project. It creates a sense of sameness, and we’ve been seeing it everywhere: on social, in campaigns, across creative work.
The same goes for AI, and I say this as a fan of AI when it’s making you efficient. Using it to generate creative output is the opposite of what you want when it comes to building and elevating your taste. It stops pushing you from an ideation perspective. It just delivers things to you.
There’s a time and place, and these are great tools. But if everyone is relying on the same sources for input, the output will look the same too. If you want to differentiate yourself, the input is where it starts.
Worth Curating
Sources that actually build taste.
Taste is a foundation. You keep building on it from childhood to the day you die, and everything you consume feeds into it. That’s why I like to compare taste with confidence: you have to practise it.
Museums. You may walk in expecting nothing and leave with ideas you didn’t know you were looking for. A tip: take the guided tour. The guide often offers a reading you hadn’t considered, and it opens questions worth exploring afterwards.
Magazines. The impact is visual, but go beyond the images. Every photo tells a story, and we rarely look long enough at the details: why they used certain elements, what the styling is saying. Treat it as a case study and it will give you more than a scroll ever could.
Architecture. Whenever I travel, architecture is what inspires me most. The shapes, the details, the sculptures, sometimes the murals. So much of what we build now is simplified. The older details reward attention.
Posters. In the subway, on the street, the ads you pass on your commute. They have the power to show a different story, a different take, if you’re looking.
Events and experiences. Brands are creating curated dinners and experiences, and more of them are open to everyone now. Attending, connecting with people, taking in the decor and the mood of the room: all of it feeds the foundation. The people do too.
One thing I’m working on: a notebook where I collect images, posters, even sketches that inspire me. Going back through it is how I shape my own visual identity. If you’re building yours, start collecting. Your taste needs a place to accumulate.
From the salon,
— Sabina