The Fashionable Intellectual: When Books Become Spectacle
In a moment of overwhelmed madness this February, I logged out of my public Instagram and created a whole new one—one that followed only high-fashion-related accounts. Intellectual ones, if I may say so. The goal? To control my algorithm before it enslaved me. What this did to my Explore page was fascinating. After a while, it wasn’t just fashion; a good chunk of it became books. Book posts in all shapes and forms—intellectual books, elite books, books laid on the ground in an aesthetic arrangement, books to be read if you are a "fashion girly." That’s when I realized: books have become an essential accessory to the fashionista of today.
Books have somehow become the star of fashion this season. Prada’s campaign with Ottessa Moshfegh had every cool Prada girl in a chokehold. Valentino drenched its Valentine’s Day campaign in poetry. Joseph Altuzarra continued his tradition of gifting books as fashion show favors. It’s as if brands want to provide us with an endless stream of words, ensuring we never run out of things to say about them. After all, all brands need now is "content," and what better medium than books to generate endless discussion? I’ve even caught myself dedicating two paragraphs to the book that inspired a collection rather than the collection itself. Alessandro Michele handed us 200 pages of words so that the "talk" about his Valentino debut would never end. Fashion has shifted from an art form open to interpretation to one that insists on over-explaining itself.
But over-articulation isn’t just a designer problem—the fashionista is just as obsessed with displays of intellect. Take a look at your favorite indie or alt-fashion influencer, and you’ll see books, essays, and literature deeply embedded in their branding. Wearing Margiela alone no longer signifies intellect or "edginess"—you need Joan Didion or Judith Butler in hand to feel superior. You need a bag that "displays" your book rather than carries it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I, too, go out with my Joan Didion, wear my OFR tote, and sit in the hip coffee shop of my small town to perform the act of reading. And this, naturally, brings us to The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (have I impressed you enough now?). In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord argues that in capitalist societies, reality is no longer directly lived—it is mediated through images. Commodities are no longer valued for their function but for what they signify. A book, once a vehicle for ideas, now operates within this system. It is no longer a tool for knowledge but a fashion object, a marker of taste.
Take OFR, for instance, or any hip bookstore that stocks fashion books and magazines. Do we go to OFR to buy books or to be seen buying books? More often than not, we leave these stores happier with the branded tote bag than with the book itself. The aestheticized world of fashion now demands that every detail be curated—your book, your coffee, your favorite bookstore. To be accepted by fashion’s intellectual snobs, you must perform. And in the end, no one is actually enjoying the life they are living—only crafting the most meticulously planned "effortless" persona.
The book as a fashion object represents a broader shift: the transition from substance to performance. The spectacle thrives not on reality but on its reproduction. To be intellectual is no longer to think critically but to appear as one who thinks critically. The book is held, not read. The tote bag is carried, not used. The reading list is posted, not followed.
So we must ask: in fashion’s theater of spectacle, does the reading ever happen—or is it just another prop in our carefully curated personas?
