The ideal of suitability preceded and foreshadowed modern authenticity ideals

Evidence

A precursor to authenticity was the past emphasis on suitability—i.e., making the choices that best match our particular lifestyle and sensibility. Elsie de Wolfe, perhaps the most famous arbiter of taste for home decor in the early twentieth century, was not subtle: “My business,” she wrote, “is to preach to you the beauty of suitability. Suitability! Suitability! SUITABILITY!!” Before debuting as a novelist, Edith Wharton published a volume on home design in which she recommended Americans avoid the “superficial application of ornament totally independent of structure” and instead choose design where “the architecture of the room became its decoration.” … Suitability means conformity to certain standards, and here we get a hint of how authenticity can become a prison. For all the infinite choices in life, we are “allowed” to associate publicly only with ones “suitable” to our immutable characteristics and background. Tastes should be the product of long-held habits. This makes time an important factor in gauging authenticity, and tastes look more “natural” when their origins lie far in the past. When Coco Chanel put No. 5 perfume on the market, she dishonestly claimed to have stumbled upon the scent at some forgotten place long ago rather than admitting that it was made from scratch. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader argument about taste and cultural capital frameworks; also echo of Wharton’s design writing dovetails with the reader’s interest in decor/domesticity as signaling. — connects to: Calculated authenticity as promotion emerged in early twentieth-century America — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 319; Sincerity aims at an ideal mode of being human nature prevents attaining — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 312; The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28

Broader Connections

• Sincerity aims at an ideal mode of being human nature prevents attaining #expands (0.74) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 312
• Calculated authenticity as promotion emerged in early twentieth-century America #exemplifies (0.72) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 319
• The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers #qualifies (0.71) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28