On a recent sweltering afternoon in downtown Manhattan, a group of designer-clad women stood chatting on the sidewalk, all holding the It accessory of the season. It wasn’t a handbag, nor a piece of jewelry, but a novel. They had assembled in front of the beloved West Village store Casa Magazines, a mecca for fashion and design glossies and the location of Miu Miu’s Summer Reads, a pop-up where customers could indulge in popsicles, gossip, and of course, books. Voracious readers could choose between Forbidden Notebook and A Woman, two novels each “selected for its author’s brave and powerfully influential status as female creator,” according to the brand.
With the rise of social media, time spent reading books has sharply declined over the last decade—scrolling has cut into time previously reserved for nightly page-turning. But this summer, literature, and the act of carving out the time to read, has become the ultimate luxury. A respite from the all-consuming internet.
A group of influencers outside Miu Miu’s pop-up at Casa Magazines in New York City.
In addition to Miu Miu, Chanel tapped ambassador Charlotte Casiraghi to share her summer reading list. “I selected four books from female writers that explore with sensitivity and accuracy the stories of women, their loves, their doubts, their strengths and their weaknesses,” Casiraghi said via press release. Her picks: Dorothy Parker, Caroline O’Donoghue, Abigail Assor, and Tove Jansson.
Marc Jacobs is one of the latest designers who has taken to posting his current reads on Instagram (most recently, it’s Candy Dreamer: Darling Icon Superstar, about the Andy Warhol muse), and celebrities like Kaia Gerber, Dakota Johnson, and Dua Lipa are following in the steps of Oprah and Reese Witherspoon by launching their own book clubs, promoting first-time authors and seminal works of literature alike.
Literary references in the fashion world are by no means new. Just last fall saw fashion houses like Proenza Schouler and Valentino pulling quotes from high-minded novels to feature in their runway shows. But this summer, it’s about more than intellect—a premium is put on the sheer luxury and leisure of sitting down with a book and allowing yourself to get carried away. Non-fiction has been swapped for literary novels and beach reads. “Reading is an additive form of escapism,” says Sophia June, co-founder of the literary Substack Language Arts. “It’s one of the last places where you can fully separate yourself from society for a little bit.”
Lit girl summer offers a bucolic offline interlude, even if it’s just via the imagination. “We all burnt out from the Girlboss era,” says Lauren Neufeld, author of the Substack newsletter You’ve Got Lauren, where she recently penned an essay on the beauty of a “boring girl summer,” a stark contrast to the hot girl summer of yore. “This collective exhaustion is leading the pendulum to go the other way, where having time to read books is the new desired outcome, instead of having your own brand or being the CEO.” In direct opposition to hustle culture, engaging with a novel—which may take years or decades to go from an early draft to the edition sitting on your shelf—requires slow engagement, “the bond between the creator and the consumer is more intimate and more committed,” Neufeld adds.
Kaia Gerber is one celebrity that launched her own book club.
In the midst of turmoil on personal, local, and global scales, a book can also provide a welcome escape from reality. “I’m reading the most when I’m depressed,” June confesses. “It’s the most tried and true way for a lot of people to retreat from everything. There is something about that, especially in an election year.”
But, if you simply read a zeigeisty novel and don’t post about it, did it really happen? Though reading provides an escape from the pressures of Instagram, it can also serve as an online status symbol, a simple reminder of how you’re indulging in your own luxurious reading time this summer—from the subway, beach, or bed. On key platforms geared toward sharing, book selfies or reviews can convey just as much about the reader as it does the book itself.
For celebrities, especially women, reading a book can be both a form of luxuriating and a PR tool used to project insider knowledge or intellect. “There’s an impetus for celebrities, especially young, beautiful women celebrities to want to show that they’re literate,” June says. “That feels crass, but Emily Ratajkowski posting [selfies with her book]…she’s so absolutely stunning and unfortunately when women are so stunning people don’t think they know how to read or have taste when it comes to literature.”
Unfortunately, it’s a problem that’s existed for decades—Marilyn Monroe famously drew controversy for photographs of her reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. But to June, celebrities sharing their reads can only be seen as a positive. Kendall Jenner was spotted carrying around the work of indie novelists like Chelsea Hodson and Fariha Róisín, thanks in part to recommendations from her modeling agent Ashleah Gonzales. “These women are picking really good books; that’s really exciting.”
Neufeld’s summer reading list draws from the preferences of Dakota Johnson as well as buzzy internet picks like Miranda July’s new novel All Fours. She says, “If these big luxury brands and TikTok are actually getting people to sit down and read more, then all the power to them.” Lit girl summer, indeed.