Why does everything look the same?

Taste Is Being Replaced by Trends

Walk into any coffee shop in West London and you’ll find the same thing, large green plants, wooden chairs, off-white walls, and a shelf full of art magazines no one’s reading. Now take a flight to Barcelona, Madrid, or Copenhagen and guess what? You can walk into almost the same scene and order your morning oat flat white.

It’s not just cafés. Scroll through Instagram. Every other reel is cut from the same template, using the same serif fonts over trending audio that’s already been used 50K times. Even the industries that depend on originality; fashion, design, music, etc all seem to be caught in a loop of curated sameness. A high fashion campaign looks like a perfume ad. A meditation retreat looks like a music festival. And when did Burrata become the starter of every menu in every restaurant?

So here’s the question I’ve been thinking about since my recent trip to Spain. . . Why does everything look and feel the same? And more importantly, is this really what we want?

Living in Monoculture

The problem isn’t taste, it’s that the definition of taste has become one narrow aesthetic, shaped by the same influencers, mood boards, AI tools, and social media algorithms. A London townhouse aesthetic that once felt aspirational now feels algorithmic. “Good taste” is no longer developed, it’s downloaded.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve participated in it too. I’ve literally booked a hotel stay because I saw the idyllic ‘content’ in someone’s reel. We all have. That’s the problem. We’re all drawing from the same well, over and over again.

And that’s how we’ve ended up in a monoculture. It’s a bland buffet of beige, mushroom coffee, Stanley cups, and bag charms.. Each is fine in isolation, but together they start to blur into a feed of sameness. Annoyingly, even when I see it happening, I still get influenced. I’m still hitting save, still clicking the link to buy a pair of “must-have” Adidas Sambas. Damn it!

Is Anything Truly Unique?

To do something different right now takes intentionality. Choosing not to follow the default trend is a decision. A conscious one. If you’re a creator, a founder, a designer, or just trying to curate your own lifestyle, you need to ask yourself: Did I choose this? Or is it just what everyone else is choosing?

Because those are two different things.

And if we’re not careful, we stop choosing and simply start copying by default.

What Influences Us, Shapes Us

We’re being influenced all the time. Not just by who we follow online, but by the music we listen to, the Netflix series we watch, the brands we buy from, the people on the podcasts we play on autopilot. When everyone is referencing the same aesthetics, the same “what’s hot right now” (yes, it’s still quiet luxury), we all end up with ideas that sound the same. Products that look the same. Content that feels the same.

But the bigger issue is this: if we’re all being influenced by the same things, then we all start to think the same. Our ideas become more homogenous. Our opinions, interchangeable. And our experiences, the ones that are supposed to shape who we are, get filtered to become more content.

Essentially we stop creating anything new and become repeat curators of someone else’s taste.

So, How Do We Break Free?

I don’t have all the answers. But here’s where I’m starting:

Get inspired again. Listen to a new artist. Go to an exhibition. Spend time offline. Talk to people with different reference points. Get out of your routine and seek something that feels novel.

Try harder. We’re quick to reference the same sources over and over. We need to look a bit further. Who’s making incredible stuff that isn’t the top recommendation? What voices are being overlooked?

Create for depth, not virality. When the purpose is to write, film, or create for virality, you're aiming at a moving target and nothing sticks.

Be okay with being out of step. There’s a confidence and power in slowness, in experimentation, in doing something no one else is doing.

A Dilution of Culture

Every era has its aesthetic, but what we’re seeing now is more than just a trend. It’s a dilution of culture. When everything looks and sounds the same and nothing stands out.

If you’re in the business of creating, whether that’s content, products, experiences, or ideas, the most valuable thing you can offer is something that makes people feel something new. Something they’ll remember. Something that couldn’t be made by anyone else but you.

Final Thought.

I think most of us want to believe we’re choosing our own taste and that we’re creating something different. And yet, we keep settling for what’s familiar. But taste is personal. It should be eclectic, emotional, inconsistent, and evolving. Let it be all of that. Taste takes time and it takes practice. There’s something magnetic about those who are unapologetically in tune with their own personal taste. It’s a feeling, not just a look.

The world doesn’t need more trends. What we need is more texture, more tension, more contrast.

Not more of the same.

Thanks for reading,
Adrienne