Acclaimed writers have lately been collaborating with Valentino, Tory Burch, Gagosian and others, lending them their intellectual cachet and brand of cool.
When Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, her mention of a wealthy character being “all Valentino-ed up” en route to a museum gala sparked an idea: What if he had the Pulitzer-winning author write a story for the brand?
Such a request might have seemed a little outside of Tartt’s typical remit, but last May Valentino launched its first “The Narratives” campaign with her contribution as a headliner. Several writers, including Tartt, Ocean Vuong and Fatima Farheen Mirza, submitted stories or poems that mentioned Valentino. The fashion house printed these as text-only advertisements, which appeared in the pages of The New Yorker and as blown-up posters in the windows of independent bookstores including Los Angeles’s Book Soup. (Valentino paid participating authors a flat fee and made charitable contributions to the bookstores.)
Last month, Valentino launched “The Narratives II,” with 17 authors, including Michael Cunningham, David Sedaris and Brit Bennett. Only the concept of “love” needed to be addressed in their submission—and a Valentino logo was affixed to the bottom of the text. (Again, Valentino paid the writers a flat fee.) This month, Valentino will send pre-publication galleys of three forthcoming Penguin Random House titles, provided by PRH for free—C.J. Hauser’s The Crane Wife, Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility—to a small group of celebrities and influencers in elaborately designed boxes.
Sedaris was swayed to participate in The Narratives II by Tartt’s inclusion (“She’s got to be the best-dressed writer in America,” he says by phone, while eating orange Jell-O at home in New York), though he says he wouldn’t have done it had he been asked to include the word Valentino.
For Valentino, the projects help put the brand in a lifestyle category, says a spokesperson. “We’re bringing you everything. It’s not just the shoe that you can’t live without.” And though Penguin Random House’s decision to collaborate with a fashion house might seem unexpected, they hoped to reinforce the idea of books as entertainment and creative expression, says Carly Gorga, director of brand marketing at PRH.
Fashion houses and art galleries have lately been looking toward acclaimed writers for collaborations that burnish their brands. Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, wrote a brief story called “Where Will We Go Next?” that was given to the audience at Proenza Schouler’s moody February fashion show—lending the event the eccentricism and dark humor of her fiction. (A representative for the brand declined to comment on whether Moshfegh was compensated.) The designers, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, also featured her in a 2020 pre-spring photoshoot for Proenza Schouler White Label.
Dior Men’s recent fall 2022 show was inspired by Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, drawing from the author’s anti-establishment bona fides for its drapey blazers and oversize sweaters.
Fashion brands see particular value in using books to create hype and exclusivity. In November, Tory Burch hosted Lisa Taddeo, the author of Three Women, in conversation with Emily Ratajkowski as part of a party for Ratajkowski’s essay collection, My Body. The brand made a donation to PEN America on the occasion of the event.
And in December, Gagosian launched Picture Books, a publishing imprint conceived by author Emma Cline that juxtaposes short fiction with artists as part of the gallery’s efforts to enter the publishing and film worlds.
“High intellect is cool,” says Karah Preiss, who with actress Emma Roberts co-founded the popular book club Belletrist, which advised Valentino on its book and author selections. “Instagram and Tumblr and now TikTok have created an appetite for a more interdisciplinary approach to culture. I don’t think it’s enough to just care about fashion anymore. I don’t think it’s enough to just care about pop culture.”
The pandemic may have also acted as a turning point, pushing younger generations to focus more on literature. “People had a lot of time to read and are really interested in new ideas and are ready to think about things in a deep way,” says Rebecca Panovka, who with Kiara Barrow co-founded The Drift, a magazine started in 2020 whose New York parties have become a hot ticket among the literati. “I think they’re especially excited about writers who can help them do that.”
The rise of the author to the cafeteria’s cool-kid table has a long history. Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis had their run of Manhattan’s nightclubs and restaurants in the 1980s and early 1990s. F. Scott Fitzgerald was such a common patron at the Plaza Hotel and its bar that a suite is named after him. But for much of the 20th century, the most serious authors, like J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee, largely eschewed the public eye, just as Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy tend to do now.
Literature’s expansion to fashion and art is in part made possible by the fact that the notion of selling out for authors has faded. Perhaps the breaking point came in 2014 when the fast-casual restaurant Chipotle commissioned Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison and others to write original stories on their cups and takeout bags. Last year, Sally Rooney’s U.S. publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, released merchandise for her latest novel that included a branded bucket hat. Today, it’s a coup to have your book show up on the Instagrams of celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, who has become a kind of literary kingmaker, her selections often ending up on bestseller lists.
Because this is fashion, the trend may not last. “You know those oversize jackets that everybody’s making right now that makes it look like you’re wearing your dad’s coat as a child?” says Sedaris, whose new book, Happy-Go-Lucky, is out in May. “Now all of a sudden everybody’s making a jacket like that. Because it’s fashion, maybe it’s just another trend?”
This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.
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