What is style? Put simply, it is the way something–anything–is done. There are no limits to how something can be expressed, designed or presented, whether that thing is a story, a staircase or a stiletto shoe.
You can’t avoid style; it’s impossible to do something without doing it in a certain way. Even the ingredients on a ketchup bottle are typed in a certain font and size, placed in one location and not another, perhaps with some euphemisms to disguise unsavory ingredients.
Every style expresses or amplifies an outlook on life, even if this outlook can’t quite be put into words. To understand a style, you have to understand something of the mood, philosophy or aesthetic tendency behind it.