Well-Read or Well-Styled?—Books as a Fashion Accessory

As conversations about the “performative man” began to circulate online, quietly, the media began talking about the adjacent phenomenon of performative reading. In an age where identity is intensely and increasingly curated through aesthetics, even solitary activities like reading have become visible, stylized, and strategic. Books are no longer just read, but they are displayed like accessories. 

Aside from the performative man—iconized by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar—consider Bella Hadid, pictured below on a downtown sidewalk, a worn copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus clutched in her hand like a purse. The image shows less literary engagement than a carefully constructed one. 

Photo: The Washington Post

And Bella Hadid isn’t the only one. Dua Lipa poses on her Instagram, holding Patti Smith’s Just Kids like a fan, while Emma Roberts wears Coco Mellor’s Blue Sisters like a hat. It’s even speculated that Kendall Jenner even enlisted her modelling agent, Ashleah Gonzales, to curate the perfect reading list for her. Fashion designers and makeup artists are out—“book curators” are in.

Photos: @storylinebookshop / Instagram

I surmise that this trend of performative reading sprang from the “2022 downtown girl aesthetic,” largely inspired by the famous bookworm Rory Gilmore. At this time, all over TikTok, users dressed in the infamous Brandy Melville shared their reading recommendations from Donna Tartt to Ottessa Moshfegh to the Brontë sisters. Photos blew up all over Pinterest of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, next to cups of black coffee, and girls in cargo skirts candidly shuffling through bookshelves at the library. 

Photo: Etsy

But crucially, during the age of the downtown girl, books were used for their primary purpose: to be read. And to be read to understand yourself better. But as this trend has reached celebrities, books have taken on a new name—displayed to manipulate others’ perception of you, rather than used as a powerful tool for individual development.  

Reading is cool now. But for the literary world, that subtext is dangerous. Controlled by celebrities and influencers, as books become absorbed into aesthetic appeal, they risk losing the very thing that makes them meaningful, as this private act of reflection becomes a public performance. The danger lies not in the visibility of literature itself, but in stopping there. The challenge for the literary world is not to resist this attention, but use it to draw readers beyond the surface. 

XOXO, The Fashion Stock Market