The rise of the intellectual influencer: Why the fashion industry is turning to writers and artists

White Nights, a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky first published in 1848, is the latest literary discovery of Generation Z. TikTok users seem to be talking about little else.

The lament of the novel’s narrator, a young man in St. Petersburg, appears in post after post: “My God, how could I have thought it? How could I have been so blind, when everything had been taken by another already, when nothing was mine.”

Readers, sincere and performative alike, use it to recount their first encounter with the Russian writer, who — at least this much is clear — is not a creation of artificial intelligence.

With the unlikely popularity of reels quoting the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, an entire generation has learned to distinguish between economic, social and cultural capital, and is now finding ways to bring the theory into all kinds of conversations.

Over the past two years, social media platforms have acquired new layers of conceptual complexity. Skincare routines coexist with structuralist quotations, and Zara hauls with stacks of books displayed spine-out to the camera, to be revealed one by one by a new authority figure making the rounds online: the intellectual influencer.

The new authority figure does not sell supplements, workout plans or, really, any product at all. If anything, they share recommendations and ideas without a hint of condescension. The only thing they inspire people to want is knowledge.

Everyone wants to think online these days. The appeal of this figure does not lie in aspiration or in a desire to shock. Their influence comes from distinctive, well-grounded ideas on difficult subjects: from philosophy and quantum physics to geopolitics and literary theory.

Instead of offering a product to consume, they offer followers a framework for thinking. And when they recommend a book, its longer shelf life sparks new conversations. Their content does not disappear once consumed; it accumulates. Followers, often left with the feeling that they know more than they did before, respond with heartfelt compliments: “Today, you unlocked something in my brain...”

Under the broad umbrella of intellectual content, social media platforms now host everything from academics with niche but loyal audiences on YouTube to writers with a newsletter more powerful than any book publisher’s marketing campaign.

Influencers who explain things may be the best way to sum up the state of the internet in 2026. Dazed magazine described the trend as an “epidemic of explainers,” also known as thinkfluencers.

“These days, there’s an explainer video for every topic you can imagine, and swarms of thinkfluencers — often armed with tiny mics — popping up left, right and center,” writes Laura Pitcher. “Much of it is highly researched, and much of it is not — such is the nature of algorithmic culture, which rewards volume. Almost all of it, however, follows a similar format and at least has the appearance of being informative. At the very least, its popularity suggests that many young people want their scrolling to feel educational.”

Victoria Ballester, 19, explains her generation’s sudden interest in highbrow topics as a response to “a certain unease about not doing anything with their lives or wasting time on the internet with insipid videos.” “In the end, people feel better if a post recommends eight books; they save the list and feel they have fulfilled an intellectual activity, whether they read them or not. Even if they’ve never read a philosopher, they can cite one to look good, or if someone throws out quotes in a reel from, I don’t know, The Bell Jar, they gain prestige, even if the content is easy and there was no work behind it.”

Those who study the trend argue that the followers flocking to these creators are largely the same people who once gravitated toward traditional influencers, but are more discerning and increasingly weary of content centered on aspiration and consumption. Rather than a rejection of the algorithm, they see it as evidence of an audience that is maturing. And it is no niche audience. According to BookTok data, 59% of users between 16 and 25 say an intellectual influencer helped spark their interest in reading. In 2025 alone, the hashtag #intellectualinfluencer generated more than 370 billion views across 52 million videos.

Violeta Dávila, founder of the cultural consultancy Be Cooltural, believes that an excess of superficiality has pushed people toward content that offers a “refuge” from the noise. “It’s an interest we see not only among users but also among brands, which now prefer to associate themselves with a different kind of profile,” she says.

This type of content talks about literature, art and philosophy, and creates safe, welcoming spaces that rarely descend into polarization or online spats.

The fashion company Bottega Veneta sensed the shift in 2025 when it hired Zadie Smith for its Craft Is Our Language campaign. Smith, who publishes a novel roughly once a decade and is famously wary of social media, embodied the “expensive” aura and distance from the internet the brand was looking for: “the desire for a simple, intellectual and thoughtful life.”

That same year, Prada enlisted novelist Ottessa Moshfegh (author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation) to write an original work of fiction for its spring-summer campaign, issuing it as a limited-edition volume with a luxury binding that was sold in the brand’s stores.

Miu Miu launched an exclusive feminist book club that drew large crowds during Milan Design Week, while Chanel hosted a writers’ retreat at La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel’s home in Provence.

Valentino sponsored the Booker Prize in 2024, and Saint Laurent opened a bookstore on Paris’s Left Bank.

Dávila notes that books have become fashionable at an aesthetic level, too. “Zara sells T-shirts with the message ‘Read More;’ Dua Lipa, Reese Witherspoon and Charlotte Casiraghi turn every book they touch in their book clubs into best sellers. There’s been an aesthetic shift; the ‘nerd’ and ‘bookworm’ archetypes are now seen as attractive,” she observes.

Ballester is reading The Brothers Karamazov. In her class, it has become fashionable to carry a copy of Dostoevsky’s novel, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in a transparent tote bag that leaves no doubt about the kind of literature one is reading.

In an age of endless scrolling and fragmented attention, a book, especially a physical one, says a great deal about the person carrying it. It has become a marker of distinction and good taste.

Reading, meanwhile, has come to be seen as a privilege. The latest PISA results show that many people struggle to understand a text of just 400 words. To read requires skills that are becoming increasingly scarce: sustained attention, depth, effort and time. It was perhaps inevitable that books, like anything that becomes difficult, would turn into objects of desire.

“Reading is a virtuous activity; those who practice it are presumed to have personality, and that is very attractive because nobody has it these days,” says Ballester.

If there were a way to tell the classic influencer apart from its intellectual counterpart at a glance, it would start with aesthetics. Their posts are filled with bookshelves, handwritten notes on loose sheets of paper and carefully highlighted passages from novels. There is usually a minimalist desk suggesting order and focus, and the scene is invariably bathed in warm light or illuminated by a candle.

The uniform tends to include a dark turtleneck sweater and perhaps a pair of oversized but tastefully designed reading glasses. Everything is meant to project elegance and intellectual authority. And despite all the visual clichés of that carefully curated stage set, audiences expect more substance than performance, assuming the algorithm, the ultimate gatekeeper, allows it.

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