35 Times People Had Awful Taste But Executed Their Ideas Flawlessly

Surprisingly, quite a few displays of quality craftsmanship are made in the least elegant, thoroughly lousy design. Inspired by the subreddit Awful Taste But Great Execution, A&D has collected a list of gaudy, tacky, and overdone. Otherwise, the tasteless design fails yet is done so well that you won’t know whether to love or hate these funny things. From dog slippers made to look precisely (and I mean exactly) like the client’s pet to a car with a full chrome bodywork, scroll down to check out the worst fails of aesthetics and upvote your faves!

01. I Thought This Might Fit Here

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“Since most people cannot say much about why they like something, it seems as though the good taste is just the ability to identify a shared preference, nothing more,” Dwight Furrow wrote on 3 Quarks Daily. “But this answer is inadequate from the perspective of artists, musicians, designers, architects, chefs, winemakers, etc. It doesn’t explain why creative people strive to do better even when they achieve some success. Suppose people find pleasure in what you do, and good taste is nothing more than an ability to identify what other people in your social group enjoy. In that case, there is little point in artists trying to improve since “better” doesn’t refer to any standard aside from “what people like.” So there must be more to good taste than that.”

02. But Why

And that’s not all. Good taste can’t be solely a matter of having a sense of prevailing social conventions because artists and critics often produce unconventional judgments about what is good and what is a bad idea. Instead, having good taste usually involves knowing what is genuinely excellent or of genuine value, which may have little to do with social conventions.

03. I Saw This Car Filling Up At A Gas Station In Illinois And Did A Double-Take. The Top Tires Spin Too!

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Even philosophers have tackled good taste. “David Hume, the 18th Century British philosopher, argued that good taste involves “delicacy of sentiment,” by which he meant the ability to detect what makes something pleasing or not. In his famous example of the two wine critics, one argued that a wine is good but for a taste of leather he detected; the other argued that the wine is good but for a slight taste of metal. Both were proven right when emptied the container was, and a key with a leather thong attached was found at the bottom.”

04. Staff Kitchen

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Thus, according to Hume, good taste was roughly what excellent blind tasters have—the ability, acquired through practice and comparison, to taste subtle components of a wine that most non-experts would miss and pass summary judgment on them. “The same could be said of the ability to detect subtle, good-making features of a painting or piece of music. The virtue of such analytic tasting of wines is that the detection of sensitive components can, at least in theory, be verified by science and thus aspires to a degree of objectivity. Detectable chemical compounds explain flavor notes such as “apricot” or “vanilla” in the wine. The causal theory lends itself to this acuity test since causal properties can often be independently verified.”

So, someone who practiced discerning elements that ordinary perceivers would miss could be said to have good taste.

05. This Handbag

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But, for example, a wine taster can identify a whole bowl of various fruit aromas wafting from a wine, pronounce the acidity to be bracing, and the tannins fine-grained but firm and still have said little about wine quality. “Wine quality is a function of structure, balance, complexity, and intensity supplemented by even less concrete features such as deliciousness, power, elegance, gracefulness, or refreshment. None of these features can be detected analytically breaking down a wine because they are inherently relational, just as describing a painted surface as a garnish or a piece of music as lyrical would involve relations. No single component can account for them; it is a matter of how the components are related. In wine, even a prominent feature like acidity is not merely a function of Ph; perceived acidity differs substantially from objective acidity measures and is influenced by the prominence of other components such as sugar and tannin levels. None of these relational properties seem amenable to scientific analysis. I doubt that gas chromatography can identify elegance; a wine’s balance cannot be appreciated by measuring PH and sugar levels.”

06. Are Any Van Gogh Fans Around?

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So, Furrow argues that identifying these aesthetic features involves a holistic judgment, not an analytic one. “The wine as a whole must be evaluated just as evaluating painting or music involves judgments about the work as a whole. But although these holistic features in a wine are a product of fruit, acidity, and tannic structure, no list of wine components will add up to a wine being balanced, elegant, or delicious.”

07. Impressed By The Skill, Horrified By The Look

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He points to Kant, another 18th Century philosopher, for a better answer. “When I judge something to be beautiful, I do so because I like it. But what about it do I like? For Kant, the pleasure I get from a genuinely beautiful object does not lie in whether I find it agreeable or pretty. Rather, I enjoy how it makes me think. It stimulates contemplation of a particular kind. Kant called this the free play of understanding and imagination.”

08. I Saw This Today

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“Of course, some objects won’t repay that much attention. We explore them for a while, get bored because we’ve come to identify and articulate everything important about them, and move on. But according to Kant, an object is beautiful if it sustains our interest in reflecting on it indefinitely because all attempts to understand it fails fully. The object’s order constantly opens new ways of understanding it because no particular principle is ever adequate. Beautiful objects are intriguing, mysterious, not fully understood, yet simultaneously balanced, harmonious, and well put together.”

“Thus, in Kant’s view, taste must refer to our ability to determine whether an object is worth reflecting on, whether it will repay our attention and produce endless fascination. A person of good taste discovers new patterns to explore, finds unexpected avenues of meaning, and responds with feelings and insights that generate new ways of describing something.”

09. “I Need People To Think I’m A Bond Villain.”

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10. I Was Next To A Car That Was “Painted” With Duct Tape!

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11. Actually Very Well Made, But Still

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12. Dog Slippers Made To Look Exactly Like Your Dog

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13. These Gloves

14. His And Hers Wedding Cake

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15. One Of The Coolest And Also Worst Things I’ve Ever Seen

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16. Grasshopper-Shaped Locomotives Stacked On Top Of Each To Create A Diner In South Korean

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17. This Car Is Entirely Colored With Highlighters

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18. Pimped Out Level: Amish

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19. Beaded Hair Portrait

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20. These Campbell’s Tomato Soup Shoes I Received For Christmas Years Ago

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21. Conor McGregor’s Suit Of “F*ck You.”

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22. This Silica Gel Bag

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23. Brain Winter Hat

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24. Pigeon Heels

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25. This Titanic Blow-Up Slide

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26. Finger-Ring

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27. This Sweater

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28. Lenny And Carl Yin Yang’s Tattoo

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29. This Cockroach Cappuccino

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30. Hot Rod Casket

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31. Steampunk Wheels

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32. When You Like Your Trunk So Much You Get A Second One

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33. Wallet Chain Ankle Crocs – Thank You Small Town Malls

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34. Can You Dig It?

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35. This Nice Bedsheet

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