To ask how do you know which things are 'tacky/common'?

[TheHydrangeas]

On here I sometimes see certain items, behaviours, homeware, fashion, makeup, etc classed as "tacky" or "common". Sometimes I can understand it, but other times it is things that seem pretty innocuous. Despite this you see this kind of unanimous belief that those things are "common". However I can't really find an underlying pattern to what is deemed to be tacky/common and what is not. Is there any kind of theme or pattern to this? One example is I remember reading a thread where a pretty popular brand of scented candles were classed as tacky.

I also want to say that I am not trying to portray other users negatively as judgemental or anything, we are all entitled to our opinions. I am just interested from a broader point of view - how do certain things become tacky or common?

Gosh I am trying to withhold judgement but is monochrome the new beige?

Or is it the new black and white?

There's neutral and there is this current new neutral I suppose!

May look fine with a splash of colour to add contrast. Art work, fresh cut flowers etc.

Each to their own and diversity is great and all the jazz.

I could balance it by showing you my flamingo bedsheets but I'd probably get kicked off the thread!

"Common" labels are used to sneer at folk who have ideas above their station, who have access to items that "should" have been the preserve of the middle+ classes.

Its then used to smear particular brands that these "common" people favour.

So Yankee Candles used to be fine, until they caught on a bit and nonposh folk started to access and enjoy them. Now, they're common.

Same with Range Rovers. They were fine for the MC set. Then nouveaux riches started to delight in them, putting personalized plates on them, you know just having fun with it. So Range Rovers are tacky now, unless you manage to keep them ever so austere and plain, to show that you AREN'T enjoying them TOO much because they are really quite normal in my family, we've always driven them, how gauche to celebrate something as pedestrian as a CAR, etc.

Ideas about being "common" often get mixed up with ideas about how in order to appear "posh" you must also conceal your wealth, not enjoy yourself too much, etc.

It's all a complicated way of maintaining the class system and signaling where you are in the pecking order.

Common" labels are used to sneer at folk who have ideas above their station, who have access to items that "should" have been the preserve of the middle+ classes. Its then used to smear particular brands that these "common" people favour.

This is exactly it and people fall for it hook line and sinker by perpetuating this snobbiness, whilst thinking they themselves are not common just everybody else. The one that makes me snigger the most on MN is when someone pipes up with, ‘Talking about money is common!’. ‘The upper classes will never talk of such things’.Of course they won’t, they’ve got it in abundance.

Perhaps when we all start banking with Coutts, suddenly that will become common. For now, the upper classes are safe.

The markers of social class are so random. My bookcase is bigger than my telly but I'm still working class because my bookshelves hold a mix of 'proper' books and chick lit mills and boon , along with MILs ashes which I've had to put out the reach of the cat!
On the strength of this thread, I bought myself a lime, basil and mandarin candle from Aldi and have placed it next to the fairy light twigs in a vase
But I do say napkin and not serviette, so that's alright

Iirc, the Queen mother died owing Courts money and the Queen had to settle her debt. Now if that's true, it makes the royals as tacky as the rest of us pkrbs who live in our overdrafts

www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/03/10/list-things-society-designer-nicky-haslam-finds-common-funny-and-utterly-random/

Excuse typos. Phone hates me. Should say Coutts and plebs.

@allaglow

Yankee candles were very useful when the dear old dog-in-law came for a week Not a common Alsatian, I hope

Pit bull

Never knew whether we're supposed to say serviette or napkin. Edge of the tablecloth always worked for me, it's going in the wash anyway. Presumably I'm beyond common and well into feral territory!

Tbf, she wasn't skint. Her estate was c. £70m!

The queen mother was a classic example of a toff who meets all the requirements to be considered 'common' by many people, but somehow escapes that judgement. (I say 'somehow', but we all know why - it's the wealth.)

She smoked heavily, ran up huge gambling debts, drank excessively and is on record as having made racist comments. Yet she was a member of the class who supposedly have poise, manners, and courtesy drummed into them from birth! That exclusive group who are so superior to the likes of us.

It just goes to show what nonsense it is. If you took the queen mum and placed her on a council estate, she'd be looked down upon.

I reckon I'm posh as I use kitchen roll as a serviette. If I was common I'd use bog roll.

And feral is just using sleeves, the corner of your bathrobe. Or should that be house coat?

I also own both Yankee Candles and Jo Malone, because I contain multitudes.

Ah yes, dear old Uncle Walt. I use him a lot to explain all the things people find contradictory about others/me.

I'm partial to both quiet-toned, simple linen T-shirts from Hush and Moomin T-shirts with Snufkin on from Uniqlo.
And I like plain white beautifully designed tableware, but also love a memento mug from a museum and even have an I Heart New York one.
I like (and own) glittery twigs as a household ornament too.

Who cares?!

Anything I don't like is both tacky and common. Synthetic underwear, brown plates, pot chrysanthemums, monochrome photographs, blond wood, large tellies, decking, guinea pigs, Tiffany jools . . .

There you are. All tacky, all common, IMO, cos I don't like them.

OP: it's a matter of personal opinion. There is no God of Good Taste.

@Averyyounggrandmaofsix If you were posh, you'd say 'napkin' not 'serviette'.

Interesting. I’m from the US originally, and grew up with Yankee Candles everywhere. Then I move here and can’t find them hardly anywhere. Now they’re everywhere. When it comes to candles, I just go for the ones I think smell good, regardless of brand. John Lewis has some really, really good Scandi-style ones that I really enjoy at the moment.

Saying ‘napkin’ instead of ‘serviette’ makes one posh? Next time my in-laws are around and speaking of serviettes, I’ll pipe up and supply my stack of napkins.

Some people just use napkin for the cloth version and serviette for the paper type

People know fine well what you're referring to even if they feel compelled to do a fake shudder at your hideous lack of breeding, so it doesn't really matter.

My friends think it is dreadfully common for me to read Mumsnet but I don't care! I love the posts and find the wealth of info fascinating!

But sleeves means you've dressed for dinner in actual clothes instead of eating in your pants and so can't be the nadir of ferality. (No, I don't host many dinner parties...)

On the other hand I've admitted to an actual tablecloth instead of a sheet of plastic masquerading as one; that's got to bump me up a bit, right?

Saying things are common is common. That's right.

No Jammy because it's paper you see. If I was using a rag it would be a napkin. Told you I was posh.

On the other hand I've admitted to an actual tablecloth instead of a sheet of plastic masquerading as one

What does no table cloth count as?

Not sure if this thread is essentially a discussion about cheap common or popular mass market fleeting trends and taste in contrast to discrete classical stealth wealth et cetera.

But if so and and to put one's money where one's mouth is - where would one hypothetically place one's dwindling trust fund? Are the likes of Kleinwort Hambros, Child & Co and C Hoare & Co/Cazenove Capital Management still society approved to be perfectly acceptable or can one Brexit Covid downgrade to Handelsbanken these days et cetera.

Oh the indignity of not having one's own private banking help on speed dial...

And would MumsNet qualify as uncouth "reading" material as with all social media?