I love the podcast Mess World, which is a collaboration between Emily Kirkpatrick, who writes I Heart Mess, a newsletter about the worst of celebrity fashion, and Jessica DeFino, who writes Flesh World, which is about the beauty industry. Both take very close and critical looks at fashion and beauty, two subjects that are typically dismissed as unimportant – similar to romance fiction, so you can see why their work is my jam, my coulis, etc.
In recent months, they’ve discussed how anxieties and fraught topics in culture appear in fashion and beauty spaces, often in hyperbolic fashion. One example: luxury brands creating accessories that looked like food, just as food prices began to climb.
Fashionphile wrote about “The Delicious Convergence of Food & Fashion” highlighting food-inspired couture from Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta.
Sydney Gore at Coveteur wrote about “The Great Foodification of Fashion & Decor,” highlighting how food trends during the pandemic led to food trends in high end fashion and home design.
Anna Haines covered this trend for Forbes in 2024’s “Behind the Latest Accessory Trend: Food Handbags,” examining the handbags that looked like hot dogs, pizzas, bags of chips.
Among her examples: Nik Bentel Studio had a purse that looks like a box of De Cecco or Barilla pasta, though it is listed on their website as “Ceased and Desisted.” The featued purse image from Forbes is on the right.
My suspicion is that the first design looked like Barilla, who sent them a C&D, and then a new design came out – as announced on the Bentel Instagram, though I may have my timeline incorrect.
I also want to share this $950+ Strawberry Cake Bag from Tal Maslavi, which is the entire “Is it Cake?” trend rendered in luxury leather:
And of course, where luxury couture brands go, trends and other retailers follow. Pasta jewelry anyone?
While the coverage highlighted the kitsch and the scarcity of some of the luxury bags, they didn’t really delve into the “why.” Why are food products – inexpensive ones at that – becoming luxury items?
Emily Kirkpatrick and Jess DeFino have explored this on and off in their show, but their theory, as I said, is that scarcity of necessities makes them into luxuries, and luxury brands are capitalizing on that scarcity through their designs.
Grace Snelling touched on this luxury motif for FastCompany in March 2025: “How Produce Became the Hot New Celebrity Status Symbol.” The article highlights the work of @KFesteryga whose tagline on TikTok is “Just a girl talking about food being positioned as a status symbol.”
High inflation, rising gas prices, and stagnant employment have only worsened a situation where food staples like produce, pasta, and cake are now indicators of wealth, and are being transformed into luxury accessories.
I think something similar is happening with books, and I don’t just mean special editions.
I think in order to get where I’m trying to go with this rumination (hop on board my train of thought! There are snacks in the cubbies and it’s a smooth-ish ride) I need to explain briefly something else I’ve been thinking about nonstop for probably two years now: the difference between reading as a hobby/activity, and reading as an aesthetic.
Reading as a hobby is pretty straightforward. You’re familiar with the concept here, I am sure! Acquire books, read them, maybe talk about them, maybe review them, but some time in the day or week is for reading. It’s a dedicated activity for many of us.
Reading as an aesthetic is slightly different: it’s the process of making visible the idea of “being a reader.” This aesthetic is most visible on Instagram and TikTok because it’s part of book influencing: artistically arranged shelves in the background, sometimes organized by color. Special editions, spredges, accessories that accentuate or support reading, showcases of print books with annotations and post its sticking out all over: these are all visual markers of Being a Reader.
This phenomenon is most visible on image-based social media because that’s kind of what image-based social media is for, I think: the performance of aesthetic as identity. It is the set dressing of performing Being a Reader.
None of this is bad, or shameful, to be clear. I don’t engage much with the aesthetic element because I’m not great at it, and also I’m at an age where I want less stuff, not more. That said, I look at countless versions of the reader aesthetic daily when I look at social media. It’s pervasive and it’s popular. It’s aspirational content that feels within reach of the average consumer.
Sort of.
One element that I can’t understate: the visual aesthetic of Being a Reader involves resources. Wealth. It’s as much about performing an identity for visual consumption as it is a display of books as commodities. Whether they’re expensive, rare, or just en masse a visual representation of a very healthy book budget, there is often an element of wealth in this aesthetic.
Which brings me to my entire point (only 800 words in! Go me!):
Books are becoming luxury items, which I believe reveals a cultural anxiety about reading.
(Justifiably so.)
Let’s take a look at some of the visuals I found that support this theory.
Dior has an entire Book Cover line, featuring images of Ulysses, In Cold Blood, Dracula, and others. There are $3600 bags, $1000 tshirts, and $2000 sweatshirts.
A Dior Dracula blanket: $10,500.
Embroidered Hooded Sweatshirt? That’ll be $2000.00.
The Dior book bag is a rather popular luxury item if reproduction communities online are any indication, and the 2026 Fall collection includes:
Medium Dior Book Tote, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, $3600.00
The newest Dior Book Totes include book themed editions such as A Clockwork Orange ($3900) or Madame Bovary ($3300), amid the other embroidered floral patterns. The Book Cover collection includes jackets, tshirts, scarves, totes, cropped tees, and short sleeved sweaters ranging in price from $250-$11,000.
Children’s books are also part of this collection: Macaulay Culkin was recently photographed wearing the Dior The Very Hungry Caterpillar sweatshirt, all part of the Fall 2026 collection designed by Jonathan Anderson. (I’m pretty sure the image is licensed so I don’t think I can use it, but that’s a Reddit link with multiple shots – his nail polish is terrific.)
Anderson also posted a picture of the Caterpillar bag on his Instagram, which quickly made its way to r/handbags:
This is not the first children’s nostalgia collab for a fashion brand and will definitely not be the last. Nostalgia sells.
Gucci has collaborated with Disney; Fendi has a Pokemon collection, with some items priced at $2800 on Poshmark. A collaboration between Nostalgia and Luxury is like printing money at this point.
But the book aspect is what I’m thinking about nonstop.
In 2025, Prada partnered with author Ottessa Moshvegh to create unique characters for a luxury fashion campaign starring Carey Mulligan, and a bound limited edition of new stories by Moshvegh were sold in stores.
MiuMiu staged a Summer Reads popup in cities such as London, Paris, and Seoul in 2025, where shoppers could receive a free copy of one of three books, including Persuasion by Jane Austen, A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo, and Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes.
Petra Viekkola wrote about this phenomenon in July 2025 in “Books Are the New Luxury – And Everyone Wants a Taste.”
The latest: Coach book charms, produced in partnership with Penguin Random House.
The book charm titles I’ve seen mentioned online include:
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Friday I’m in Love by Camryn Garrett
- I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- The Book of Answers by Carol Bolt
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (in Japanese)
- The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita (in Japanese)
- Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum (Korean)
- Honmono by Sung Haena
- Honeybees and Distant Thunder by Riku Onda
- The Try Everything Life By Yan Xiaoyu
They’re small, too: they measure 4.25″ by 3″ (10.8cm x 7.5cm) and weigh about 4 ounces (113g).
And, yes, they’re readable. They’re full copies of books, meant to dangle from a purse.
Aside: the book charms are also an example of a luxury brand following an Etsy/small business success: miniaturizing books into accessories has been a product line for a long time. Earrings, tree ornaments, miniature bookshelves – you’ve probably seen them.
The difference now is the branding and price point. The Coach book charms retail for about $100, but they’re sold out*, available on secondhand retailers like Mercari and Poshmark for $200-400.
*Small correction: they were sold out, then I went to look at all the titles to be sure I had them listed correctly and some were available. When I refreshed the page, they were sold out again.
The Coach book charms got quite a bit of coverage. NBC News framed it as “Reading is so trendy now that Coach is making book charms.” (And in a related article, NBC News covered the ‘performative reading’ trend.)
This is another commodification of books into accessories while also rendering them mostly unfit for either purpose. Yes, they’re actual books, but they’re rather small. And yes, they’re accessories for a purse, but they’re also delicate – because they’re paper. God forbid it rains on a book charm. Books as designer trinkets are not necessarily made for reading: though they’re books, they’re awfully impractical for an analog reading experience.
While Coach isn’t a luxury brand on par with Dior or Fendi, it’s typically described as “accessible” or “affordable luxury.” So I think the book charms are also a signal of wealth as much as five shelves of special edition books: I can spend money to hang a miniature Coach book off my bag. It proclaims “Being a Reader” with a single object.
Deploying books as wealth indicators is not a new practice, to be clear. Buying matched sets of leather bound books which will never be read solely to decorate a room was and is a common practice. In previous eras, it was a signal of wealth just to have books, and part of the set dressing of affluence that of course you could read them. If you wanted.
I’m reading (har har) this situation very differently: the act of reading itself is becoming a luxury.
It is a vast privilege to say “I can read.”
I have time to read and not focus on anything else.
I have the time and the money to read for pleasure.
I don’t have to wait for limited access to a copy from a library whose budget is stretched to the breaking point. I own this book.
All of that is akin to luxury right now.
As Viekkola wrote on her Substank post,
Reading now signals sophistication, introspection, and cultural capital. It represents attention in an age of distraction. Focus, taste, time: these qualities have become aspirational. And brands have noticed. For them, books aren’t just content. They’re a positioning tool, a way to express values without a noisy and worn-out slogan.
So in that context, Luxury Book Products like $2000 sweatshirts and $100 limited edition book trinkets make perfect sense. Terrible, perfect sense. But I maintain: it’s more than just branding and content. There’s a narrative within the item itself.
Book Luxury signals exclusivity, wealth, and leisure, and, more importantly in my perspective, highlights the tension and anxiety about literacy and book access.
Who can read?
Who has access to books?
Who has time and money – and who does not? (Who can focus on a book through the current era?!)
If reading is a powerful aesthetic (which it is) it follows that books become trinkets, pieces of clothing, and personal emblems of that aesthetic, and in doing so, highlights the tension over reading itself.
Reading was and is a powerful equalizer: one obvious example was that it was illegal to teach enslaved people to read. Now, we have multiple legislative and marketplace attacks that are reducing equal access to books.
We have declining literacy rates per the National Literacy Institute (TW for Dr. Phil on their website, ew), and we have less media literacy while I’m on the subject.
We have book banning bills in Congress. We have nonstop challenges to books in libraries and to libraries themselves, and political and physical threats made against librarians. Tennessee Library Director Luanne James was fired for refusing to comply with an order demanding LGBTQIA+ books be moved from the children’s section to the adult stacks. Libraries are closing, or reducing their hours – my local libraries are now closed on Sundays, which SUCKS.
And, of course, the mass market paperback, one of the most successful technologies to boost literacy, is mostly dead in part because it’s too expensive to produce, ship, and sell them. Without the lower price point of mass market, books are collectively more expensive. Publishers are laying off people; lines for middle grade and children such as Dial Books for Young Readers are being shuttered. We have more AI slop and AI-written books masquerading as human art.
It ain’t great in book land.
The act of reading is under attack and books as expensive accessories are an emblem of that. Just as the rising prices of basic staple foods led to expensive food couture, the union of luxury brands and books are a representation of social anxiety about reading. The use of children’s book titles like The Very Hungry Caterpillar underscore that access to books for young people is in danger.
Which is why all the luxury book accessories unsettle me: books being co-opted into luxury accessories not only point to scarcity and wealth (hoarding) but, to me, reveal the dangers facing literacy and book access in the US.
If food couture is a wealth signal that reveals anxiety about access to food, I read these new book accessories similarly: they’re a wealth signal that reveals the increasing fragility of literacy and book access for children and adults.
So while they’re cute, and colorful, and extremely adorable, the reveal of the Coach book charms and the Dior book line had me sitting back in my chair, thinking, “That’s not good.”
And listen, if you wanted one, or you bought one, I don’t blame you. They’re beautiful!
Alas, I can’t stop my brain from thinking, “Ok, but why?” And the answer I’ve come up with feels ominous and chilling.
What do you think? Have you noticed books or reading positioned as a luxury or luxury aesthetic?
I’ve been thinking that ebooks are the new mass market paperback. While it’s true that you need a device to read them and devices are themselves expensive, any smart phone will do. But perhaps access to smart phones is not as ubiquitous as I think it is.
Thank you for this very thoughtful discussion. As I was reading it, my first thought was of “book haul” posts, especially from bookstores but also from libraries. There seems to be a difference between those of us who post books from excitement about sharing with fellow readers, about new books to read, rather than flaunting – or am I just justifying myself to myself?
I wasn’t allowed to watch tv growing up, and as a result I have always been clueless about popular culture but have read more and faster than most. When I was younger it was seen as pitiable and isolating, but more and more people are I think jealous but also …impressed, maybe? Idk, in recent years it definitely seems to me that widespread reading and extreme library usage has gone from being perceived as a weird harmless quirk of mine that I ought to be a little embarrassed about, to being something admirable, like it means something Important about me that I consume media in this format, it maybe even has cache. And it’s so wild to me I was sure I was imagining it, but it makes sense in the context of reading as luxury.
And as you point out, food has always had a luxury element or at least potential in the same way that reading has. We can and do make everything exclusive, and perpetually reward scarcity. But yeah, the more we push into that -care is the responsibility of the self not the community (what community?), information is a luxury, food is a performance not a necessity, etc etc- the more it seems to me that it’s important to remember that robot means slave, and we’re building a real dystopia here. The future is terrifying.
I definitely am someone who is into reading books and also deeply into the aesthetic of books. (I am also a fashion snob.) (Who deeply wants that pink dior bag.)
It is very similar to the lipstick rule, I believe. I have more thoughts but they are escaping me right now.
book_reader, I think you might be right. Lots of people are happy reading on their phones. I read the bulk of my books borrowed from the library in my laptop browser. No added cost.
I truly miss the mass markets, though. It was so great to be able to pick up a book just because it looked interesting, then slowly get everything by that author. Or read when traveling then leave it for someone else to enjoy. If it’s $20 for a paperback, I’m thinking twice about buying it and I’m not discarding it readily.
Thank you for a thought provoking article, @SB Sarah.
@book_reader_ea01sj71r4 ~ You said, “But perhaps access to smart phones is not as ubiquitous as I think it is.” I have an older model flip phone. The assumption these days though seems to be that people have smart phones. I ran afoul of this recently when trying to sign up for Medicare online and needed to verify information by phone; my phone was deemed unacceptable. I ultimately had to go to the Social Security office in person. (And let’s not talk about being on hold for seventy minutes to get the next available appointment in three weeks time.)
Adding my two cents, I was thinking about this topic a while ago when I saw that Ali Hazelwood and others were doing a Kickstarter project, and then recently I saw Julia Quinn’s endeavor following similar parameters (in terms of aesthetic, the books so far have all been published before). In both cases, it is about joining an “exclusive club” and showing off something truly beautiful, special, and unique. I have nothing against it, but I agree with you that the industry is changing, and it seems we’re moving toward a direction where books are more valued as objects (since what they contain can be read on a phone). In the Middle Ages, books were coveted, precious objects, so from a historical standpoint, perhaps the paper book has enjoyed centuries of fame, and now it’s slowly being phased out. Slower than some thought when the e-book came out, but still happening. But people are still reading, right? so perhaps is not all doom and gloom, sigh.
The high number of smartphones does make digital reading easier for many, but I don’t necessarily think they’re consistently cheaper, which was one of the main features of mass market paperbacks, so they’re not quite a 1:1 replacement.
The price of ebooks has risen because mass market is gone. I remember lots of arguing on Twitter (note: I will never deadname anyone except Twitter) when the ebook was more expensive than the mass market, and how incensed people were (justifiably so: ebooks are an important accessibility tool and should be more widely and easily available)
If the price of an ebook is related to the price of the print volume, and the print is a trade-sized book at $18+, for example, the ebook will be higher in price, too. BookRiot covered this recently in “We’re in a Book Affordability Crisis”, and Kelly Jenson, who is InCredIBle with her work on the endangerment of libraries, wrote in September 2023 about how books overall are more expensive.
And while ebooks are often the cheaper alternative, they have digital rights management (DRM) that limits what you can do with the book file. Amazon has started adding a disclaimer to ebook purchases that you’re purchasing a license to read the book, which is why there are so many guides for stripping the DRM from purchased files. It’s very hard to loan, trade, or sell ebooks secondhand, too.
Alison Stine wrote in the Non Profit Quarterly journal that “The End of Mass-Market Paperbacks is an Issue of Justice.” I will keep saying this until I can manifest it into being, but I would love a documentary series about the technological miracle of mass market paperbacks in terms of increasing literacy, encouraging reading as a leisure activity, and making a wide number of books available on a much larger scale.
We can definitely see books as status symbols – they wouldn’t be printing all those fancy, sprayed edges, deluxe/collector’s edition hardcovers of books that first came out in paperback otherwise. Heck, even “new” editions of paperbacks that are the same except for adding those sprayed edges. There wouldn’t be so many book subscription boxes, charged per month, either.
I have no beef with someone liking the “reading aesthetic” over being a reader – the authors of the books they buy will benefit regardless of whether they actually read the books or not. I am always down for supporting authors (unless they’re terrible people who harm others, which is a whole ‘nother tangent).
Yes, libraries exist, but not everyone has access – the ability to get to a library, the library having things they’d want to read, and there are still the issues of book challenges, late fines (which disproportionately impact those who are financially strapped already), budget cuts leading to fewer open days/staff/branches closing due to structural degradation from lack of maintenance, etc. Libraries absolutely have an impact on literacy rates, but they can’t be everything to everyone or have as much of whatever’s popular at the moment for every person that wants it.
@book_reader_ea01sj71r4: I’m a librarian at a public library, and I see people all the time who don’t have computer skills or smart phones. Older people, in particular, who get angry or frustrated because technology has made everything they know harder – they can’t call phone numbers and talk to a person, they have to get on a computer and put in a verification code that they get from an email, etc, when they aren’t even sure how to move a mouse or click an icon.
Some patrons get angry at even the suggestion of using Libby for audiobooks – they only want CDs, but some publishers have already phased out the CD format and are only doing downloadable audiobooks now, which means they don’t get those new books. I have a daily front row seat to the inequities of technology – people who are both able and willing to use it, and those who aren’t, and everyone in between. The struggle is absolutely real.
I am absolutely with you on this one. I would simply add one thing to consider: I am an immigrant, and all my books (I had many) remained in my home country; I could not bring them with me. I’ve bought more over the years, but I have also turned to PDFs and e-books more than I like to admit, because wherever I go, they come with me. This is also another aspect of accessibility.
Too many things that would seem to be basic things are feeling like indulgences or a splurge.
But, haven’t we had book versions of clothes and accessories for awhile, though?
Like Litographs, Storiarts and Outofprint?
In talking about ebooks, I’m also thinking about the price difference. It used to be an ebook was slightly cheaper than the mass market. A $6.99 ebook was a splurge because the mm paperback was $7.99-9.99. Now I’m seeing ebooks at $11.99, even on traditionally cheaper publishers like Harlequin’s Carina Press imprint – yes, sales can happen, but they can also raise the prices of books with a click. (And don’t get me started on how they price gouge libraries on the same titles, where purchasing a single limited-use license for an ebook is $60+.)
@Amy E.: I think the difference is that luxury brands are in on it now; it’s not a $30 t-shirt or $15 tote bag from Out of Print, it’s a $1,000 t-shirt and $2,500 bag.
Posts like this always serve as a reminder of why I love this site so much. Sarah, you are the Smart B.
This is the shop where I have splurged in the past. https://www.etsy.com/shop/BagsyMeFirst?ref=own_favorite_shops_page
She’ll do any book, for example, I told Jennifer Niven about the book purses, and Jennifer’s husband had one made with one of Jennifer’s books.
This maker is in England, so there could be tariffs, but she is the nicest person.
@Denise: Is the English seller still able to ship to the US? I recently wanted to buy something from the London Transport Museum, but its website says “Delivery to the United States is currently paused while we work to understand new rules around tariffs and imports from 1 September 2025.”
And it’s not just the UK. I was in Malta in March and couldn’t even mail a letter to the US; when I then went to Portugal they said they’d mail letters but not packages.
@Susan/DC, I messaged Kate and she said she’s shipping to the USA. She does have to add the tariffs but it hasn’t stopped some from ordering.
Loved this article Sarah!
I think another issue that relates tangentially here is that increasingly in the US, consumer spending is no longer being driven by the working & middle classes and their needs. A greater and greater percentage of spending is being driven by the rich. The upper 10% now account for 50% of all consumer spending.
So companies are turning away from less expensive mass-marketed products to more limited, expensive, high profit products. Ditto for services. In the early 20th century, Henry Ford deliberately created the model T, a car his own workers could afford to buy. The profit margin per car was low, but the volume of sales was high. In the 21st century Ford has killed off its smaller, lower marginal profit auto lines and put their energy into producing higher marginal profit, large SUVs and trucks with all sorts of expensive add-ons. They can make more money on selling rich households their second or third car or truck then they can selling first cars to middle class families.
And I think that that the publishing industry is essentially doing this on a more modest scale. No longer are they interested in producing mass-market pbs. There’s just higher profit margins on ebooks, trade paperbacks, and hardbacks. They are also much more interested in producing sprayed edge, limited editions with beautiful covers that are marketed through influencers based on aesthetic and the FOMO. These are where the highest profit margins exist.
One of the things that has interested me about this is how many book purchasers are both avid readers and avid collectors interested often in acquiring multiple editions (e.g., the original hardcover, the even fancier, limited edition from a subscription service, the audiobook, the graphic audio edition, and an ebook edition as their “reading” copy). It’s like Taylor Swift fans purchasing different colour vinyl releases of the same album. They love the music on the album and the albums themselves as aesthetic objects.
@KathrynT: This is such a good point. When we were looking for a car, there were hardly any smaller “starter cars” to be found and it was so frustrating and baffling. I can’t think that the high-margin-only market is sustainable at all, either. And that’s an excellent comparison of multiple edition collectors and Swift fans. You’ve given me a lot to think about- thank you!
@Sarah
The NYT has done a series of articles and op-eds on how the shift in who has the most purchasing power in America has had a big impact on what goods and services are available. The two pieces that have stayed with me the most are two op-eds: one on how the working and middle classes are being priced out of Disney parks and the other a recent one on cars (which is why I mentioned them). I’ve put in the gift link for the disney op-ed, but for some reason NYT is refusing to let me gift link the one on cars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/opinion/disney-world-economy-middle-class-rich.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bFA.ogBs.Z_ztNMH-ZRmh&smid=url-share
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/13/opinion/affordable-car-cost.html?searchResultPosition=2
THANK YOU!
A very thoughtful piece, thank you. And you and Kathryn T are definitely on to something! And I may get this as a tattoo:
“I will never deadname anyone except Twitter.”
I love books both to read and as symbols of my pleasure and education from reading. (I like how they smell, and enjoy the indentations made by type in rag-based paper in my older volumes.) But I find the current trend for fancy editions, especially for sprayed edges, to be missing the point. Spines creased or cracked and/or covers rubbed by many readings show the value I place on the books wedged together on my shelves. Book tchotchkes are a waste of money for me. Spending thousands on bags or clothes that refer to books seems to me like going to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace (and eat ice cream) but not going to the theatre.
It just so happens that I read this essay a couple of days into reading “The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home” by Abigail Williams.
It’s a scholarly book but I’m finding it extremely readable (as an ebook) and utterly fascinating. One thing that I learned immediately: performative reading (and performative interaction with books) was a thing as soon as there were books in print.
Everything old is new again.
While I think the endless pursuit of the next trend is stupid, boring, and wasteful, when it comes right down to it, I’d rather people with too much money spent some of it on book-related things than on just about anything else.
I mean, obviously, and sadly, the rich people we have today in the US mostly aren’t the kind who build and stock and fund libraries.
But there are undoubtedly people who never knew that ‘Dracula’ was a book, and possibly seeing a vintage book cover reproduced on someone’s overpriced sweatshirt might provoke interest in the book. Stranger things have happened.
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