How Fashion Embraced the Book Nerds (and why?)
Reading is cool. The fashion world can’t get enough. This is what GQ says, and the rag would like to know why. I admit I wanted to hate this article that was fed to me by way of Algorithm (this would be a good name for a print pub, btw), but it turned out to be pretty good! (It’s free to read here.) Sorry to come in so preemptively annoyed and jaded, but a lot of discourse around books is as trite as those “reading socks” that B&N sells. (I do have a pair. But I just call them…slippers.)
The reasons for “why,” per the piece, are myriad, and I liked the nice tie-in to cultural rejection of fast-fashion. (Wonder if Shein sells #ReadingSocks) But what I’d really like to talk about is how books’ place in the zeitgeist is newsworthy at all. Do we see stories wherein writers muse about people who keep watching movies? Are publications curious about why there are music tie-ins? On a general level, not really … because these are just considered normal ways that people find entertainment and relaxation. With music, maybe we’d be intrigued if there was a mad rush of teenagers listening to organ choral music. With film, maybe you’d have a story if Charlie Chaplin was trending or something. But “The Book” tends to fall into its own category in the mediasphere. Small example: The print version of NYT’s Sunday Book Review is its own separate entity partly by virtue of the fact that it is printed magazine-style and not broadsheet-style like (mostly) the rest of the newspaper.
Why?
One of my theories is that reading requires effort. If you have ears and eyes that work, you can “do” music and film. You may not give them a close listen/view, but literally all you need are those body parts to participate. Reading, however, has a barrier to entry. (Reminder: More adults than you might think have low literacy skills. And yes, I know I’m leaving out audiobooks …)
Can we extrapolate that things that require a bit of an effort are now in the “cool” category? (And does cool = exclusive?) Reading is fashionable because it lends gravitas, and it lends gravitas because it’s “hard.“ That feels very 2026 — and my socks and I are here for it. 📖🧦
originally published on instagram