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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jess Cartner-Morley

We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool

Photograph of a model in a green-satin, sleeveless dress lying on a pale-pink satin sheet, reading a book entitled Virginia Woolf by Julia Briggs, with a sparkly silver mobile phone and a gold lipstick next to her
Portraits: Ilka & Franz. Photographer’s assistant: Jenna Hinton. Model: Nathalie Zebrowski/The Squad Management. Hair and makeup: Patrizia Lio/The Squad Management Photograph: Ilka & Franz/The Guardian

Put down your negroni, hang up your Prada handbag and pick up a paperback. Next time someone whips out their phone to take your picture, grab your reading specs, not your lipstick. Smart is the new hot.

Pop stars are launching book clubs – the 1970s had Studio 54, this decade has Dua Lipa’s online literary salon Service95 – or joining Substack, where Charli xcx recently published a 1,800-word essay interrogating why it is that as a pop star “you cannot avoid the fact that some people are simply determined to prove that you are stupid”. The supermodel Kaia Gerber (who is fashion royalty – her mum is Cindy Crawford) passes the time backstage at fashion week reading Didion, Duras and Camus, not Vogue.

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