Are books the It accessories of 2026?
You can’t wear them (yet), but you can carry them, and two brands have already turned the classics into arm candy. The $3,600 Dior Book Tote comes in styles featuring Madame Bovary, Dracula, Les Fleurs du Mal, Bonjour Tristesse, and Les Liasons Dangereuses. Taking it a step further, Coach is now making $95 charms that are basically just small (readable!) books on key rings and will be available to the public next month. In her new Calvin Klein campaign, Dakota Johnson poses with a billiards stick…and a novel. Last year Prada commissioned a short story collection from Ottessa Moshfegh.
Coach’s readable book charms include titles like Sense and Sensibility, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Little Fires Everywhere.
Courtesy of Coach; Photo: Elaine Constantine
Fashion’s literary obsession coincides with the viral analog bag, a toolkit for spending the day off of your phone. You need something to do while sitting on the subway or waiting for your latte. Why not read?
But the book-carrying trend isn’t exactly new. Celebrities have long leveraged the power of being seen holding just the right tome. Remember when Grimes broke up with Elon Musk and took a stroll reading Marx? Or Addison Rae perusing Britney Spears’s memoir while out and about? Dua Lipa and Kaia Gerber are less stunt-y about it, but they both have book clubs that feel as curated as any trend, riding the “hot-girl books” wave for all its worth. For a moment, book promoter swag became the season’s must-have. And it works for men too: Chris Pine shopping for books during the pandemic became a Thing because we’d all like to think of our faves as readers with a capital R. We won’t even get into the politics of the stylized bookshelf Zoom background.
Dakota Johnson for Calvin Klein
Gordon von Steiner
At its core, reading a physical book, particularly a novel, connotes more than just taste, intellect, or even a desire to pass your time in a more productive way than doomscrolling. It represents the ultimate luxury: taking yourself completely offline. You are not answering a work email, you are not seeking validation on social media, you are not even catching up on the news from a paper or magazine. You have your real life so together that you can escape into a fictional world, conspicuously blocking out the noise and muck the rest of us are drowning in.
Vogue has called “unplugging” the ultimate luxury. What’s more unplugged than the classics? Of course fashion houses want to be in or adjacent to the book business. Especially when they can sell what is essentially literary merch for $3,600 more than it costs to get a library card.
