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For a chic — and intellectual — summer kick-off, Miu Miu rallied the girls in cities around the globe, from New York to Seoul, using one promise: free books.
In early June, the brand hosted ‘Summer Reads’ pop-up newsstands to distribute feminist literature in eight countries. New York creators including Yan Yan Chan, Michelle Li and Romy Nassar posted in all-Miu Miu outfits to promote the pop-up. On the afternoon of 8 June, a line snaked around the block at the city’s Casa Magazines, as fans waited to get their hands on books marked with a Miu Miu rubber stamp and a popsicle to beat the heat.
Inside the books — Sibilla Aleramo’s A Woman, Alba De Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook and Jane Austen’s Persuasion — a note read: “Furthering Miu Miu’s commitment to contemporary thought and culture, books are the protagonists of Summer Reads.” The texts were selected by Mrs Prada herself.
In an age inundated with constant imagery, fashion is leaning on the written word to regain — or, at least, embrace — a sense of intellectualism. It also taps into consumers’ desires to slow down, says Francesca Granata, associate professor of fashion studies at New York’s Parsons School of Design.
“Literature has a slower rhythm as it takes time to read a book or sit through a book talk or a roundtable,” she says. “Perhaps that is also what fashion companies are tapping into: a desire for slower and more considerate rhythms in the midst of the frenetic pace of fashion and life more generally.”
Literature is a tried-and-true reference point for designers. Kim Jones’s first collection for Fendi (SS21) was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Writer Ottessa Moshfegh wrote a flash-fiction story for Proenza Schouler’s AW22 collection. Joseph Altuzarra is known to leave a book on seats for the guests at his shows; most recently it was Henrik Ibsen’s Four Great Plays. At Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli referenced A Little Life, with excerpts splashed across SS24 men’s pieces. Anna Sui, meanwhile, held her AW24 show at the Strand’s Rare Book Room in New York (it was inspired by Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and early editions of Virginia Woolf). And, in February, Thom Browne closed New York Fashion Week to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven.
But in aligning with books themselves, brands are able to tap consumers’ heightened interest in the act of reading. It functions as a “third-space retail concept”, transforming brands into cultural hubs that consumers want to spend time with, says Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at strategic foresight consultancy The Future Laboratory.
Fashion is leaning in. On Instagram, Marc Jacobs posts weekly selfies with high-brow novels, always captioned “the reading hour”. Loewe sells a $590 classics set, including Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Brands are also forging more concrete relationships with the literary world. In April, Valentino announced a partnership with the International Booker Prize. Also in April, Miu Miu hosted a literary club dubbed ‘Writing Life’, at Milan’s Salone art fair (the precursor to Summer Reads). Le Bon Marché opened a book-themed exhibition in late February, while the same month, Saint Laurent opened its bookstore Babylone in Paris.
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It’s a smart play at a time when print reading is on the rise — especially among younger consumers. Gen Z reads more books than any other US generation, with almost 70 per cent preferring print, versus 42 per cent who are e-book advocates, per Pew Research. Plus, in the UK, print accounted for 80 per cent of Gen Z’s book purchases from November 2021 to November 2022, according to research from Nielsen Bookdata.
Literary optics
There’s an air of luxury around the act of reading: it takes time to get through a book. So when brands promote literature, what they’re really demonstrating is the confidence to slow down, says David Owen, co-founder of publisher Idea Books, known for supplying literature to industry insiders (they’ve long had a corner at Dover Street Market).
“Fashion is fast and fast fashion is not a phrase that high-end brands want to be associated with. Books take time to read,” he says. “To read all of Miu Miu’s suggested works would likely take the reader past Paris Fashion Week in September. When a fashion brand aligns with literature, they are making an allusion to quality and permanence and, in many ways, delayed gratification.”
It also marks a shift from fashion’s traditional tie-ups with visual arts, Granata says. “The literary world still has a more authentic cultural cachet insofar that it is less connected exclusively to a market,” she says. “As the ‘art world’ increasingly becomes the ‘art market’, there is less of a reason for fashion companies to associate themselves with it — as, historically, fashion brands aligned themselves with other arts for their cultural aura and to move away from fashion’s association with consumption.”
In this, there’s something democratising about Miu Miu’s literary endeavours. By offering books for free in public spaces (so long as you’re willing to wait in line), the brand takes the grunt work out of searching for a book — the research, the choice and the payment is removed from the equation.
It was a hit. The activation generated $852,000 in media impact value (MIV) in the first two days post-launch, of which $712,000 came from social media and $140,000 from online articles, according to Launchmetrics. Of course, this impact is measured by social posts, such as photos and videos of the hyper-curated Miu Miu book stands and branded bookmarks. To read and engage with the works themselves will take much longer than a quick Instagram story or TikTok video.
At the end of the day, Owen says, fashion is first and foremost an aesthetic pursuit. It may tap into literature, but it will always be a degree separated. “The fashion world, and certainly Idea [Book]’s customers within that world, are most easily described as being highly visually literate,” he says. “There is far less of a literary input or output than in other creative industries.”
Many of Idea’s books aren’t text heavy. But it does sell lots of Joan Didion first editions. “We are sure they are well read, but note that Joan Didion also represents something as a woman and as an image,” Owen says. “The back cover portrait of The White Album will likely have inspired more fashion than the essays inside.”
Next-gen readers and wearers
This question of reading as an aesthetic versus an intellectual pursuit has characterised much of the debate around the efficacy of BookTok (TikTok’s sub-community focused on books and literature). Yet consumers of fashion may well be consumers of literature, too — not just for online optics and social media standing, but as a leisure activity.
Because of this, leaning into the literary offers brands not just intellectual, but cultural clout. A tenet of the yearly internet phenomenon that is ‘hot girl summer’ is having a good book (or several) to read while embracing this period of life. “Literature is a tipping point for reimagining traditional stores as cultural hotspots and will help luxury brands connect with Gen Z high-net-worth individuals who value creativity and community,” Harkin says.
In April, Kaia Gerber launched her literary hub ‘Library Science’ (after hosting book club Instagram lives during the pandemic), joining the ranks of fashionable reading circles like Dua Lipa’s Service 95 and Dakota Johnson’s Tea Time. Library Science spotlights young, new voices and contemporary classics. “You won’t be seeing the typical bestseller list here,” it promises. At launch, Gerber told British Vogue: “Books have always been the great love of my life. Reading is so sexy.” The Library Science Instagram has 43,000 followers and counting.
Brands offering their own curation of book works against TikTok’s mass-recommendation engine, is another critique often levelled against BookTok.
Earlier in June, fashion-favourite hotel Palm Heights Grand Cayman enlisted Library Science to curate books for the hotel: in the rooms, the spa and its bars. To celebrate, Gerber and her fashionable friends, including actor Camila Morrone, descended on the Cayman Islands to curate the selection for the hotel’s Library Fetish bookshop. Palm Heights guests don’t need to bring a book to the hotel – there’s a curated selection, ready and waiting.
For all the human curation and emphasis on the physical, these activations do feed back into the infamous social media loop. Palm Heights visitors’ Library Fetish trip crowded Instagram feeds. Miu Miu’s Summer Reads event, even more so; content from the pop-ups did the rounds on TikTok many times over (lots of the clips were tagged #BookTok).
But the trend of reading as a connection tool is a net positive, says Harkin. Plus, brands are doubling down at a moment when BookTok momentum is making its way offline. “What’s new is that Gen Z are turning to reading as a vessel for quiet community-building,” she says. “From reading parties to live performances and book clubs, young people are turning the once-solo experience of reading into communal wellness. For those young readers, going to a reading party is not only a new reason to leave the house, learn something and meet their peers, it is also a new status symbol.”
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