Zadie Smith hats, Fellini tops: the rise of litcore

The hottest baseball caps in New York don’t sport the names of its sports franchises or even its streetwear brands. ZADIE SMITH, JOYCE CAROL OATES, ALICE MUNRO – these are the names emblazoned across caps made by the Montreal-based Minor Canon which, the New York Times reported, is a small “fan project” that sells merchandise related to reading and publishing. Also included in the range of $27 caps “celebrating” female authors are Deborah Levy, Chris Kraus and Mary Gaitskill. Or at least they were, until the shop’s founder, Saelan Twerdy, pulled the collection. He had not asked the authors for permission to use their names, which angered fans, who called the venture exploitative.

Exploitative, perhaps, of a larger trend: consuming culture as a performative act. People have always worn slogan T-shirts to look cool, but never has apparel been quite so focused on highbrow arts attire: indie films and literary fiction rather than buzz bands or streetwear labels. It’s the rise of the bookishnista, who wears their literary, cinematic, or intellectual pretensions literally on their sleeve (or, as the case may be for Minor Canon, on their head). These tenurecore, literary-fairy kids identify as people who appreciate culture in an elevated, non-basic way.

We can partly blame TikTok’s “dark academia” trend, which fetishizes higher arts and literature, for this social media flexing. But all this arts apparel can be traced back to 2014, when the New Yorker released its first tote bag. It quickly became a ubiquitous, commute-friendly item, one hashtagged and shown off in liberal cities. The bag comes for free with a $50 yearly subscription to the magazine – or one can purchase a resold version on Etsy for much more.

Since then, the Drift, a scrappy startup lit mag, has taken over as the official tote bag for Gen Z’s thinking person. (A Drift T-shirt featuring the 19th- and 20th-century socialist Eugene Debs made it to the New York Times style section last year.)

Now you can almost build an outfit exclusively out of literary merch. An A-line dress with a pop-art print of the late cultural critic Mark Fisher goes for $52 on Redbubble. A $37 off-white sweatshirt from Etsy lets everyone know “I’m in my reading era”. Or try the $33 Bonfire T-shirt stamped with the words “book whore”.

This summer, the Brooklyn Public Library dropped cards featuring artwork from Jay-Z albums, which drew thousands of new patrons to the institution. The New York Times reported that 11,000 new accounts were created because of the cards, and branches that offered them saw a 1,000 percent increase in registrations year-over-year.

Cinephiles have their own swag. Girls on Tops white t-shirts tote the names of female actors and directors. (In 2017, Tracy Letts wore a “Greta Gerwig” version to the premiere of Ladybird.) Janus Films, the stories distribution company that brought international arthouse films such as The 400 Blows and 8 1/2 to the US, have black tops from Criterion’s e-commerce shop.

But no production company can sell, sell, sell quite like A24. The company, known for its buzzy psychological dramas and “elevated horror” films, churns out tons of merch, such as a $34 First Reformed hat, which promotes Paul Schrader’s 2017 eco-drama. Just want to rep A24 itself? Try at half-snap fleece or Paul Mescal-length micro-gym shorts that flex the company’s logo.

This weekend, paparazzi captured Chris Pine decked in his latest look: thoughtfully disheveled hair, rainbow-striped cardigan, and, crucially, a PBS T-shirt to let us all know he’s got a thing for donor-funded media. Tweets compared the outfit to something you might see on an artsy south-western aunt or Big Little Lies supporting character. The top may have been a bit of a virtue-signaling, sort of what you’d expect from the type of man who puts “progressive” in his dating app bio.

But not all book-lovers skew intellectual, or want to make a political statement à la Pine for PBS. Romance novels have become increasingly popular with younger audiences, and those readers have to show off, too. The Ripped Bodice is a store in Los Angeles and New York that exclusively sells romance – well, romance and its own branded merch, which includes a rather stylish, tie-dye bucket hat. Just imagine what it would look like on Chris Pine.