I know where you're coming from and to a great extent, I'm coming from the same place - but I think there's some irony/contradiction in your stance that you're frustrated having choices dictated by fashion-driven constructs [of marketing dickheads] but you are putting your own aesthetic and technical restrictions into play in an exercise to find ultimate functionality.
Personally I like modern welded steel frames without lugs, I like sloping top tubes, I'm not appreciating any particular functional superiority of 650b wheels. I also like the look of a traditional frame and polished alloy - but I also like a modern sloping top-tube and black components.
Gear ratios that are useful, mudguards, racks, wide tyres, comfortable non-competitive frame geometry, components that aren't fussy with what they're grouped with - these are all things that I like.
For many years I was, forced by circumstances, a one-bike rider. I started out cycle-camping and day riding when I left school several decades ago but my cycling lapsed and most of the time, I was primarily a utility rider. A lot of those years, I rode second-hand or cheap but decent bikes (no BSO).
Over the last ten years or more, I have got back into cycling earnestly and bought myself a touring bike - this was the bike to do it all for me. Then I bought a folder, with the idea of taking it on public transport as part of my commute - but this didn't work out (primarily because the bike is still big folded up and not practical on crowded buses or trains) and the bike has been largely unused. Recently I got a new job and the best commute is a bike ride to the railway station followed by a train journey. I didn't want to leave my (relatively) expensive touring bike at the station so I bought a second hand 25 year old hybrid. This bike is now my utility bike. My touring bike is steel, 3x9 with friction bar-ends and cantilever brakes.
Then last year (last month actually), I bought another bike - my fourth - because I wanted something that would be more capable of off-road riding than my 32mm tyred touring bike. It's a non-drop bar bike with sloping top tube and black components. I was originally looking at the Spa Wayfarer with all polished alloy components but with the progress of components, I decided to go for something with more "cutting edge" technology.
This isn't a nod to the fashion-driven constructs of marketing dickheads but an honest and serious response to technological advancements, endeavouring to look beyond fashion and to long-term practicality (after all, an 8 or 9 speed drivetrain was once cutting edge and dismissed by some as marketing excesses).
So now I am a four-bike rider (but only three of them in proper use) even though I have been primarily a one-bike rider for many decades. I still consider myself to have the ethos of a
"one-bike-to rule-them-all" rider, and I still have practicality in both purpose and mechanics foremost in my criteria.
But I no longer feel that, aesthetically or functionally, that restricts me to the likes of Rivendall and Velo Orange (even though I do find those sort of bikes to be "gorgeous"). However, it could be construed that my current idea of
one bike to rule them all is a product of modern fashion over traditional non-commercial values.
And if you're wondering - this is my new "one bike" (even though I still want a cheap utility bike and there's better bikes for unladen road rides):
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