Books - an accessory or a necessity?
On book clubs, celebrities and Miu Miu's Summer Reads.
As an avid reader and having a (mini) book club with my best friends (called Read Between the Wines, shamelessly inserting a plug here), I’m absolutely the target audience to anything book-related. That said, it seems like more and more fashion houses are launching book-focused marketing initiatives. But I wonder - how many of fashion’s biggest brands’ fans actually read and how many will take a picture with a book just for the aesthetics?
Let’s discuss.
The first celebrity book club was Oprah Winfrey’s, started in 1996. While she still continues to share her monthly picks with her 22.7M followers, many a book club has been created since. Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman, Dua Lipa, Emma Roberts, Emma Watson, Dakota Johnson, Kaia Gerber - to name just a few - have started their own book club journeys. I really like this article by Emily Gould, Why does every famous woman have a book club now?. It seems like book clubs are everywhere, from A-list celebrities to more niche influencers, to people like you and me.
I suppose that was the first pillar suggesting that audiences are hungry for book content. The second could be the BookTok hashtag, which has more than 200 billion views to date, where people will share what they’ve read and what’s on their TBR lists. You might notice that most book stores have a separate table called ‘BookTok picks’. So it was only natural for influencers to start talking about books and posting pictures on their holidays with a book in hand, preceded only by models, actors, and singers who are often photographed with a book under their arm.
There’s a conversation going around the Internet about whether or not book stylists exist. People who’ll curate a background library of celebrities’ Zoom interviews and pick books for when they’re walking around or vacationing, near paparazzi.
Do I think everyone who poses with a book actually reads? No. Do I think it’s good influence for audiences to see more books around their favourite celebrities? Absolutely. I think it creates a subconscious desire that will manifest, if not now, then eventually. Apparently, it was reported that Gen Z reads more than any other generation. Is it possible that all this screen time and fast information have instilled the want of slowing down, savouring time?
When you see that interest, you know why brands want to join the conversation and add their bit to book content. It’s becoming harder and harder for companies to capture people’s attention and preserve it for a long time only with clothes. They now need to be a ‘lifestyle’ brand and create community around them. From a personal point of view, if an influencer is only showing their daily outfits I would simply not follow them, I need something more - another layer, something to learn from them, and it seems more people think like that.
A few years ago, Valentino launched their “Valentino Narratives” series in collaboration with Belletrist (Emma Roberts’ book club), aiming to support independent book stores and more recently, in 2024, Valentino have sponsored The Booker Prize Foundation. The fashion maison started including books into their campaigns when their former creative director, Pierpaolo Piccoli, joined the business.
One of the editions of “The Narratives” featured 17 authors who wrote short stories on the theme of love. The texts were turned to posters and then sold by independent book sellers across the US. Valentino have also tapped into the YouTube universe, sponsoring one of the most beloved booktubers, Jack Edwards. He says “Valentino is to fashion what a great novel is to literature” and his video has 236K views. You can read the short stories HERE.
Valentino have also collaborated with the publishing house Penguin, and curated a hot pink box with 3 unpublished books to send to influencers, celebrities and journalists. The aim is for these books to be shared on social media channels and do for authors what they’re doing for designers - up the sales. In one of her podcast episodes, Dua Lipa has a conversation with Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life and To Paradise. Yanagihara says affectionately what a great impact this has on authors:
“…your support, your passion and your advocacy.. when you picks books like this and you advocate for them it makes a huge difference for the writer and, you now, not a lot of people read books actually.I think that the numbers would shock you, the typical standard in the US is that you’ll sell about 4000 copies of a novel. And anything else you have to really, really work for. So, to have you really embrace A Little Life and the characters made such a huge difference to me and I think to writers everywhere and I’m so grateful to you it really was a huge, unexpected gift.”
Kaia Gerber, model and actress, started having Instagram Live conversations with friends and authors during the pandemic to discuss books. Recently, she expanded these conversation, creating her own book club - Library Science. They champion new writers and novels, some of which are still unpublished when the conversations are happening. For example about a month ago, Kaia Gerber and Library Science’s co-founder, Alyssa Reeder, came to London for a live chat with Gabriel Smith to discuss his debut novel, Brat. The event was hosted in Reference Point where people could buy an early copy of the book. Getting like-minded people in the same room and chatting with peers about books over Negronis is how you create a community. And add another layer to your brand.
What Library Science are doing is incredible in my opinion - championing new writers and celebrating literature, getting the younger generation interested and invested. They partnered with Palm Heights hotel & Library Fetish to curate “…a classic for each guest room, favorite poetry collections for the spa, featured ~ banned books ~ in the speakeasy on the property… and curated a little stack of short (bedtime) stories for the nightstands. Magic, all of it.”
Most recently, Miu Miu have launched their Summer Reads initiative in several cities around the world. Luckily, one of them was London, so I was able to visit. For two days, people were queueing to get a free copy of one of three books - A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo, Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes, and Persuasion by Jane Austen - all female centred, and an ice cream from these Miu Miu stands. The one in London was in Covent Garden and the queue snaked around the market with people constantly coming and going. The books were apparently selected by Miuccia Prada herself, so it’s no wonder why it got such interest.
I guess we’ll never know how many people actually read but I’m surprised to see that books are considered cool. I’m surprised to see that the book publishing industry is overall steady and growing in some countries. I’m happy to see many people on my commute reading. Books help us discover realities different than ours and take us places we’ve never been.
It’s amazing to see that despite the countless photos, videos and information online, we still seek the written word. We still seek to expand our imaginations.
Anna x
loved every bit of this piece 💕