By Katie Deighton

Fashion brands that long made bedfellows with art and music have lately been flirting with a nerdier muse: literature.

J.Crew this month hosted a ticketed "literary salon" with the trans-Atlantic book club Buffy's and introduced a preppy collaboration with the New Yorker. Tiffany & Co. erected billboards filled with quotes on love from writers including Diane Ackerman and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. And a recent ad campaign for Saint Laurent starred Chloë Sevigny, Charlotte Gainsbourg...and Marcel Proust.

The strategy has even spawned an actual book, "Ten Protagonists," a 54-page collection of short stories written by Ottessa Moshfegh and commissioned by Prada as part of its spring/summer 2025 marketing campaign. Moshfegh, author of novels including "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" and "Eileen," took inspiration for the book's characters from photos of actor Carey Mulligan wearing Prada's latest designs, according to the Italian fashion house.

"Stories of women, invented by a woman, literature here is a tool, to add depth and meaning, to enrich experience," Prada said in a press release.

But unlike most books, Prada's offer was designed to be owned and read by a select few, presented only to guests at events in New York, Tokyo, Milan, Paris and London. In fact, the elevation of paper, ink and intellect among fashion advertisers in general is partly an attempt to project luxury, marketing experts say.

"It's about demonstrating intelligence, demonstrating discernment and demonstrating the value of time, because to have your own time is one of the greatest luxuries in the world," said James Denman, a brand consultant specializing in luxury and fashion. "Reading -- not being always online, not always being connected, not having the phone constantly next to you -- has come to imply that you are just operating at a different level."

Brands are also using books to keep up with elusive younger consumers.

Physical book sales in the U.S. have generally trended downward since a pandemic-era surge, according to market-research firm Circana. Last year marked the first year of growth for the physical book market since 2021, with unit sales increasing just 1%, Circana said.

But Gen Z readers are loud about their love of books, with social-media literary subcultures #BookTok and #Bookstagram comprising tens of millions of posts and influencing the merchandising strategies of booksellers, who were once thought to be a dying breed. Millennial celebrities including singer Dua Lipa and actor Dakota Johnson have also founded book clubs that reach fans through channels such as Instagram, email and YouTube.

"You always want to find relevance," said Trey Laird, a creative director who works with the fashion brand DKNY. "I try not to over intellectualize it, but this movement is growing -- in this age that we live in, where everything's like a second of content, instantly consumed -- to find things that last and things that have integrity and a true idea and story and craft to them."

DKNY's most recent fall campaign starred 23-year-old Kaia Gerber, the model, actor and co-founder of Library Science, an online book club followed by 78,000 Instagram users that last year also partnered with fashion label Dôen. DKNY's ads featured Gerber clutching books in front of the Manhattan skyline and posing on the floor of the trendy bookstore McNally Jackson.

The wider campaign included quotes from books set in New York City, including "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney and "Just Kids" by Patti Smith. The fashion line also erected "mini libraries" -- cubby holes similar to newspaper-vending machines painted taxicab yellow where people can take and leave free books in London, Milan and New York.

Some brands have spent years building literature into their core identities. Yves Saint Laurent himself was inspired by Proust his entire career, long before last year's ad campaign hit YouTube. Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was known to have rubbed shoulders with Jean Cocteau and Colette. Her eventual creative successor at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, founded the bookshop and library 7L in Paris, which was acquired by the brand in 2021, two years after his death. The fashion house since then has held events dubbed "literary rendezvous" at the space.

Women's workwear label M.M.LaFleur has for most of its 12-year history run interviews with authors and book excerpts in its magazine, The M Dash. In 2020, it began hosting virtual book clubs that eventually morphed into in-store female author events.

Conversation at these meetups gravitates more toward the working lives of the invited writers and the nitty-gritty of their process than the literature they create. The idea isn't to put the authors on a pedestal, but to hold them up as both relatable and inspirational working women, said Maria Costa, M.M.LaFleur's director of brand and integrated marketing.

"When we think of our customer, she's intelligent, but not snooty -- it's not her entire personality that she is bookish," Costa said. "I think she's probably a bit too busy for that."

Write to Katie Deighton at katie.deighton@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 22, 2025 08:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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