Same colors.
Different price tag.

Put gold trim on red velvet and it’s regal. Put it on a tracksuit and suddenly everyone has concerns about your upbringing.

Some judgments about “good taste” are remarkably interested in who can afford the object. The explanation comes afterward.

The chair has jewelry.

The usual complaints are familiar. Too loud. Too much. No restraint.

Look at the throne. The fucking chair has jewelry. Someone kept adding gold curls until there was barely anywhere left to sit.

You’re allowed to think the throne and the tracksuit both look ridiculous. That’s a consistent position. The interesting case is the person who admires one object’s excess and treats the other’s as evidence of bad character.

Of course materials and workmanship matter. Gold leaf isn’t yellow plastic. A beautifully made chair deserves credit for being beautifully made. That still doesn’t explain why enjoying one kind of excess makes you cultured and enjoying another apparently makes you an idiot.

History can explain why a throne matters. It cannot make the thing understated.

What is the design supposed to do?

A red-and-gold football scarf has a job. It announces a team. It belongs in a crowd of people who want to recognize each other from the other side of the stand. Nobody needs their scarf to whisper.

The fries have a simpler arrangement. Golden food. Red carton. You notice them, eat them, and throw the packaging away. They’ve managed all of this without a paragraph about timeless elegance.

Those are useful things to judge: the material, the proportions, whether the design suits its purpose. Price might tell you something about how an object was made. It doesn’t get to do the looking for you.

Try looking at a piece of clothing before checking the label. Decide what you like and what you don’t. Then check who made it.

If the exact same shirt suddenly becomes tasteful when you recognize the designer, what improved?

The stitching didn’t move. The colors didn’t change. You found out who gave you permission to like it.