Culture Club Greatest Moments

[Liora Putcha]

Itend to approach taste on a systematic level, and my dad is a big car guy, and cars are naturally systematic; you have a lot of parts and pieces that come together for a purpose; some people pay more attention to the engines, some people pay more attention to the wheels, but it all works together. My dad had a Mustang that he worked on, and I watched him gather his influences and make his decisions based on things that he saw, like car shows, or things he's recovering from his memory like the '67 or '68 Mustang Fastback from Gone in 60 Seconds.

I've always been a shy person; I'm not super outgoing, so I look for things that can act as a shortcut to human interaction. For instance, even as far back as middle school, I remember I was really into punk because a lot of the kids I gravitated towards were into that. I was asking questions like, "What's punk?" "What are people doing?" "How are people dressing?" I was reading articles and trying to venture out to a show every now and again, trying to absorb it and make it a part of myself. Then I remember going to high school, and all the punk kids went to a different school, so I was on my own again. I thought, "Okay, the people that I'm drifting towards are a lot of graffiti kids and sneaker kids and skater kids." Again, I was asking, "How are they bringing this stuff into their world? How can I bring it into my world so that I can have something to talk about?" Then I just picked things up. Nike did a De La Soul collab, so I started listening to De La Soul, and then just branched off from there.

I read a lot about fashion, and many times the things that I read end up becoming things that I try to bring into my life. I read The House of Gucci, and there was a section about Dawn Mello. She used to be a big deal at Bergdorf Goodman, and then Gucci hired her to run the business on the creative side. She's the one who brought in Tom Ford. There was a section in there about how she was looking through the archives and brought back this leather tote bag that had a bamboo handle. So I thought, "Let me go see if there are any out there that I can get for not out-of-this-world prices." I got one, and now it's my everyday bag.

The hardest thing about taste is that there are so many beautiful things in the world, and there are so many ways for things to be beautiful, and the hardest part is editing it down and figuring it out. Some people say, actually, no, I don't have it edited down, I'll just bring in every beautiful thing I see and it works for them. But I need to have a focus. I'm very drawn to things that are simple and where the construction of the thing, the purpose of the thing, and the appearance of the thing all work together.

There's this Marcel Breuer chair that I got really hyper-focused on. There are lots of different kinds of chairs that you can get in the world. You can get a Togo or you can get a big stuffed teddy bear cigar chair. But this one I latched onto because there's nothing there; what you see is what you get. It's like you need a chair, you need somewhere to sit, you need an angle to sit at, and it's like boom, you have a couple of straps, you have some bent metal things that are pretty to look at, but it's like, that's it. That's probably the biggest personal driver of beauty.

It's too simple to say, but desire is something that you want and a lot of it comes down to a person and their life and then the want is what, I'm not saying this in a derogatory way, but sometimes there's something that is here and you are there and you want it to trickle down to you. The other day I was on the train and I saw this guy who had the most perfect jeans. There wasn't anything super special looking about them, but the fade was really good, the color was really good. It had a patch on it and the patch was really well done. The jeans that I have, they're fine, but there's just that imbalance. Those jeans were doing all the things that I want my jeans to do. And so I want those jeans, which is probably the simplest way that I can put it.

That's such a mechanical way of thinking about it, but I feel like the difference is sometimes just an emotional thing. I can't explain it, but I want it. It's going from taking those feelings and transmuting them into the sharpness of desire. And to me, desire is like the recognition that you can bring that thing into yourself and all of the extra feelings that come from trying to figure out what your next step is going to be. It's like, I can have this, should I have this? I can have this. Will I have this? I can have this. What am I going to do next? Desire is where appreciation and attainability meet.

What's the last thing you disliked?

I saw a tweet about the British Vogue cover, the last one that Edward Enninful did, that was about how it wasn't serving, and I just found myself very annoyed by it. I feel like sometimes people can be very uncharitable in the way that they assess things, and sometimes people use assessment as a way of establishing their own status instead of in pursuit of a deeper understanding and appreciation. And I hate that. So I did not like that tweet.

I would say Hot Rod. We had that at the house growing up, and I loved the way that car guys are so insistent on doing their various folk ways, their various histories, their various approaches and appreciations, and their partisanship. All of that made me.

What do you smell like?

I got this Native deodorant because aluminum deodorants were ruining all my shirts. My daughter's name is Juniper, so I'm always drawn towards things that have her name and there was a juniper Native scent that I was using for a little bit. I went to the store and they didn't have any, so I got a lavender and rose scent, and that's what I smell like right now.

What do you think it means to have taste?

To know what you want to know, why you want it, and to be able to bring it into your life in an organic and purposeful and beautiful way.

These interviews make me feel so warm. You can tell how much love these people carry in their hearts for beauty and details, and it really spills out. This is such a great publication and I always am thrilled when I see a new post !!!

The RLT Interview explores all the things, people, and places that have informed a person's taste and, more importantly, sense of self.

This week, I chat with New York City-based writer Melvin Backman, who\u2019s worked for Complex, Vulture, and The New Yorker and has written some of my favorite fashion stories. He also writes a fashion newsletter, If You Pleats, subscribe!

I had a pretty chill middle-class upbringing. I\u2019m not going to say my family was broke or anything, because we weren't, but it wasn't crazy rich either. There wasn't a lot of instructional taste in terms of \\\"do this\\\" or \\\"do that.\\\" It was more about noticing the things that my parents paid attention to, and then I started paying attention to those things too. I get a lot of it from my dad; he's always had different appreciations. He likes elephants, and I remember he had this really cool gold elephant pendant that he used to wear a lot. He would sometimes get it cleaned, and I'd be like, \u201CThis is a nice thing that my dad likes and cares about, and maybe I could care about stuff too.\u201D

My parents aren't really into a lot of the things that I'm into, but nobody arrives at their cultivation of taste as a blank slate. You are always pulling something from somewhere. And even if it's not the physical thing, the approach is what I got from my parents. My mom, she\u2019s a big planner, and she\u2019s always making sure things are taken care of. If I get my thinking around information from my dad, then a lot of my decisions around the things that I acquire are informed by my mom. It'll be like, fI need some boots, so I'm going to figure out what is the need for my boots, and I'm going to try and find the boots that best suit that need. That's the core of my approach to taste.

I've always been a shy person; I'm not super outgoing, so I look for things that can act as a shortcut to human interaction. For instance, even as far back as middle school, I remember I was really into punk because a lot of the kids I gravitated towards were into that. I was asking questions like, \\\"What's punk?\\\" \\\"What are people doing?\\\" \\\"How are people dressing?\\\" I was reading articles and trying to venture out to a show every now and again, trying to absorb it and make it a part of myself. Then I remember going to high school, and all the punk kids went to a different school, so I was on my own again. I thought, \\\"Okay, the people that I'm drifting towards are a lot of graffiti kids and sneaker kids and skater kids.\\\" Again, I was asking, \\\"How are they bringing this stuff into their world? How can I bring it into my world so that I can have something to talk about?\\\" Then I just picked things up. Nike did a De La Soul collab, so I started listening to De La Soul, and then just branched off from there.

I read a lot about fashion, and many times the things that I read end up becoming things that I try to bring into my life. I read The House of Gucci, and there was a section about Dawn Mello. She used to be a big deal at Bergdorf Goodman, and then Gucci hired her to run the business on the creative side. She's the one who brought in Tom Ford. There was a section in there about how she was looking through the archives and brought back this leather tote bag that had a bamboo handle. So I thought, \\\"Let me go see if there are any out there that I can get for not out-of-this-world prices.\\\" I got one, and now it's my everyday bag.

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