Taste is not disputed — about matters of personal preference, there is no arguing. Each person's aesthetic and sensory preferences are their own business.
Milan's position as Italy's fashion and design capital gives this proverb a particular authority. The city where Armani decided that unstructured grey suits were the uniform of the 1980s executive, where Prada turned the mundane into the iconic, and where the furniture fair (Salone del Mobile) sets the aesthetic agenda for the world operates on a deep understanding that taste is both personal and culturally constructed. The Milanese know that the proverb cuts two ways: it is a defence of personal preference against criticism, and it is also an acknowledgment that one's own taste, however refined, is not universal law. For a city that sells taste to the world, this is a moment of democratic humility.
Milanese version of the universal De gustibus non est disputandum. Particularly resonant in a city that sells taste to the world but knows that taste is ultimately personal.
A Milan interior designer defending an unusual client choice
— Ha scelto il rosso per il salotto? Orribile. — El gust l'è no gust mia. Paga lei e ci vive lei.
— She chose red for the living room? Awful. — Taste is not disputed. She pays and she lives there.
Two Milanese friends disagreeing about a restaurant
— Come puoi preferire quella trattoria al Cracco? — El gust l'è no gust mia. Io preferisco dove si mangia con le mani.
— How can you prefer that trattoria to Cracco? — Taste is not disputed. I prefer places where you eat with your hands.
A Milanese grandmother on her grandson's tattoos
Non capisco tutti questi tatuaggi. Ma el gust l'è no gust mia — il suo corpo, le sue scelte.
I do not understand all these tattoos. But taste is not disputed — his body, his choices.
A fashion editor after a controversial collection
Metà critica ha odiato la collezione, l'altra metà la ama. El gust l'è no gust mia — ed è per questo che la moda è interessante.
Half the critics hated the collection, the other half love it. Taste is not disputed — and that is why fashion is interesting.