Reading Through Fashion Month, Pt. 2

Hello and welcome back to Reliable Narrator! Last edition, I said I would keep tabs on books appearing throughout Fashion Month. Not even 24 hours later, Coach’s Spring 2026 runway came accessorized with dangly book earrings and leather-bound volumes for bag charms. Is it too self-congratulatory to say I feel like I’m on to something here?

Zooming in, it appears these little books have Coach-branded copy in place of an actual author and title. I would have liked to see them reference a specific book for a more focused POV instead. Nevertheless, I found the bag charms cute. You’ll never catch me with a Labubu clipped to my bag. But a gold-embossed book? Put it in my cart.

Later in the week, Vogue also ran a story cataloging a few of the titles inspiring the runways during NYFW. Their writer caught Joseph Altuzarra’s book of the season (mentioned here last week), plus a feminist theory reading list in Rachel Scott’s Proenza Schouler show notes and a remix of a pivotal scene in The Bell Jar—when clothes are thrown off a roof in a moment of [plot spoiler] despair—interpreted into an entire collection by emerging designer Colleen Allen.

Now, it’s London Fashion Week, and designers are still stacking up the book references. Simone Rocha, one of my all-time favorite designers, partially based her collection on a coffee table book called Girl Pictures. In it, photographer Justine Kirland assembled photos of young women in the American wilderness from roughly 1997 to 2002, casting them as renegades with zero effs given for a world run by men.

I could feel the influence of these images in Rocha’s lighter-than-air tiered skirts, brocade coats tied with satin ribbons, and artful flourishes of sheer tulle and chiffon. Rocha’s collections are always unabashedly feminine. She finds power in details that people might write off as childish or dated or not serious, like a carefully-placed pearl flower or a big ‘ol hair bow. Her source material reads like a doubling-down on her ethos, for a world that seems increasingly hostile toward her brand of unfettered self expression. I say: Let us wear it all! I, specifically, would like the following look shipped to me:

I’m traveling and need a beat to comb through more show notes, but I suspect designers’ Spring 2026 syllabus will keep growing in Milan and Paris. Explicit literary references are a way to share what moves you and what shapes your thinking perhaps more explicitly than a color or a silhouette.

I love asking people at Fashion Month what they’re reading. With so little free time—we’re going to shows and events during the day, and writing late into the night—books that can earn someone’s attention between September and early October stand out. This season, five very well-dressed, well-read women told me I should bump The Compound—a satirical thriller set on a fake reality show—to the top of my list.

I also got a recommendation direct from Dua Lipa, live from her recording of the Service95 podcast at the New York Public Library. I was supposed to take away a copy of her book club pick of the month, Flesh. Instead, I ended up ordering Patti Smith’s Just Kids. Dua said the singer-songwriter’s memoir sparks her creativity and captures a very specific slice of life in New York City. I’ve grown to trust her taste and enjoy her interviews for Service95, so I’m excited to check this out.

Meanwhile, I’m en route to Milan Fashion Week by way of Barcelona, Spain (where a dear college friend got married). I packed two books to read in my spare time on the beach before the ceremony and in between shows later this week.

First, I’m preparing for Hot Shakespeare Fall with Hamlet. It’s the first time I’ve picked it up since college, when I took a transformative class with Marjorie Garber. Her course “Shakespeare: The Early Plays” placed Hamlet last on the syllabus after the likes of the Henriad (excellent) and Much Ado About Nothing (my absolute favorite). In this framework, it marked the culmination of a shift in style, tone, and subject matter for the Bard’s overall oeuvre.

I grew up in a military family and moved around a lot. I always showed up at a new school before or after something Important to the Canon™ was on the syllabus. As such, I enrolled in my undergrad English major feeling very behind on a lot of table-stakes classics. Professor Garber, however, made these works feel accessible to catch up on while also enhancing my appreciation of the language and historical context. Revisiting the play really makes me miss her class.1

Personal history aside, I’m re-reading Hamlet because he’s back in pop culture2 in a big way this fall. Two Shakespeare-inspired projects on the horizon, listed in order of importance to me, are:

• Taylor Swift’s new album, where the track “The Fate of Ophelia” will 100% invert or rewrite that character’s arc to map onto her own life. (She already did this with “Love Story,” giving Juliet a happier ending after a few-odd centuries of doom.) You may have seen that Swift’s releasing a documentary on October 3 including the new song’s music video and album behind-the-scenes footage. You can already guess that I bought my tickets for opening day. I will unpack the costuming choices and relation to depictions of Ophelia throughout pop culture history later that week!

• Hamnet, the page-to-screen adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel exploring the real-life circumstances that mayhaps inspired Hamlet. It stars Paul Mescal as Shakespeare (!!!) and Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes. Early reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival say it is both “devastating” and “radically feminine.” Of particular interest to *this* newsletter are the costuming and makeup—which, refreshingly, don’t appear over-romanticized in service of the family saga/form of love story Hamnet tells. The trailer alone gives me chills.

I’m also reading Erika Veurink’s Exit Lane, the latest release from the romance publisher 831 Stories. In a world full of Nora Ephron homages, this one tips its hat to the original rom-com master while feeling entirely like its own, highly original love story. (Having read a LOT of Ephron-inspired books, I feel qualified to say this isn’t easy to pull off.) I’m about halfway through and adoring it so far. Erika’s Substack Long Live is also one of my favorites, and she very kindly wrote a guide to dressing like her characters. Trust that this is an exercise you’ll want to try.

I’ll leave you all with this: My best-dressed writer of August, Coco Mellors, just wrote an essay for Elle UK on why she refuses to dress like a “serious writer.” I left it feeling moved by what style can do…and affirmed in my own taste.

Thanks for reading! Today’s digressions were brought to you by jet lag and pre-Milan Fashion Week jitters. I’ll see you back here next weekend, if not sooner!

Xx, Halie