The fashion set wants you to notice what they’re reading

With a pre-release buzz that saw AJLT star Sarah Jessica Parker papped reading an advance copy and a glamorous launch party hosted by actor Emma Roberts, the must-have item this autumn is not a handbag, but a hardback. Specifically, Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo.

You don’t have to be a bookworm to know this. In fact, you don’t even really need to like books at all – you simply need to be on social media. For who hasn’t seen a copy of Rooney’s latest artfully arranged on a cafe table, or judiciously positioned beside a cocktail on a beach?

We can’t move for book content these days — a movement initially spearheaded by women and girls on socials, and now turbo-charged by female celebrities too. From Kendall Jenner’s Instagram Stories of her current read, to Dua Lipa launching her own book club, the rise in celebrities promoting literature goes hand-in-hand with giving a middle finger to those who stereotype women who meet conventional beauty standards – and any of us who enjoy fashion and beauty trends — as ‘superficial’ or ‘unintelligent’.

Case and point? Initially, the ‘hot girls reading’ boom was met with cynicism from some camps — with one article even arguing that “looking how to be [well] read is now a visual pursuit” adding that Kaia Gerber in particular, who also runs a book club, really “knows how to milk it”. Advertising readership of a book is quite literally shorthand for saying ‘I have depth! Quit judging me by my cover!’ and can seem a beautifully rebellious use of social media; expanding on the idea that (gasp!) women are multifaceted beings with varying interests.

But, actually, the trend of celebrities and literary it girls (lit girls?) endorsing books is far from new, say those in the know. “There have been celebrity book clubs for decades, if not longer,” explains Magnus Rena, bookseller at leading independent London bookshop, John Sandoe. “All we’re seeing now is that dynamic shift to a younger, sexier generation. If you can accept that reading can be done [and enjoyed] by anyone — fashion girlies included — then it suddenly becomes a bit less surprising. I’m sure the trend is capitalising on that surprise.”

The phenomenon of the trend is “literally due to the fact people are surprised that hot people can read,” Rena adds. Celebs asserting their love of literature is “selling the promise of intellectual identity” and also “the lifestyle implied by all of this… Slowing down, me time, not socialising.”

The British book industry saw a 3% increase in revenue last year, with print books accounting for £3.9 billion in sales – and Gen Z making up 80% of physical book purchases in 2022. Are celebrity endorsements to thank for this? After all, it’s far more aesthetically pleasing to snap a paperback with your latte than it is your Kindle… and this idea of the books we read bolstering our personal brand likely goes hand-in-hand with the uptick in sales.

In fact, says Liv Reid, a bookseller at the London Review Bookshop, which has hosted Dua Lipa’s literary events in the past, the Instagram-ification of book covers alone is firmly being felt in the industry. “Alternative and changing covers are now a big thing,” Reid says. For example, “the new Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, is being marketed with various cover options,” and “Waterstones limited editions of Butter by Asako Yuzuki have sold really well.” Publishers are now giving us the choice of whichever cover best fits our personal aesthetic.

And of course, the title you’re picturing — or pictured with — in the case of celebrities, is just as crucial as the colourway. It’s no coincidence that European philosophers, 20th century coming-of-age classics, and celebrated contemporary fiction are the most posted. See: Gigi Hadid being papped clutching a copy of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, not Colleen Hoover’s latest.

“It’s something we speak about in the office,” a campaigns member at a Big 5 publishing house told me. “If I’m working on a book by a well-connected author, I might try and send books to their celeb contacts via them. Depending on the book and the contacts, celeb outreach can be a strategy.” Even literature, with all its connotations of highbrow culture and intellectual pursuit, is not hugely dissimilar to any other influencer trend.

But In a world in which almost everything we do, from our branded tote bags to our Spotify public playlists, reflects upon how we want to be perceived, it would be naïve to think books would be any different; moreover, that it’s so alien a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to be seen as clever and appreciative of high culture. Because tbh, this form of self-branding is by no means exclusive to the fashionable and famous. One of my girlfriends reads Virginia Woolf in paperback, but A Court of Thorns and Roses on her Kindle. When trying to impress, I rave about my love for Nancy Mitford, but after a few glasses of wine, my desire to argue the poetic merits of Twilight can very much take over.

As many people on X have asserted, it’s a bit bait holding a book cover like a designer bag when the paparazzi are out — yet is it any surprise that supermodels and pop singers, careers that render women in particular as being seen as vapid and vacuous, are asserting not only that they read, but that what they read has serious substance?

Beautiful women being viewed as intellectually inferior is an archaic trope, embedded in sexist stereotyping to the most boring degree. Yet sadly, we all know that if Kendall Jenner were caught reading a book deemed to be low brow, it would become a meme overnight.

There’s a relatable vulnerability in celebrities — who are often championed for little more than their bodies, wardrobes and/or beauty — using books to express themselves beyond what their careers have pigeon-holed them into and to push back against sexist stereotyping. Whether they, like so many of us, genuinely find solace in literary worlds or are simply pursuing a tactical rebrand as a bibliophile, should it really matter? Should the type of book they choose matter either? Let’s take this trend as a reminder to stop judging women — and books — by their covers.