When I studied English literature at university, it wasn’t the most stylish pursuit. I remember earnest conversations about the symbolism of train journeys in Henry James novels, and trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to understand what Roland Barthes was talking about. Fast forward to 2026, though, and these literature-adjacent conversations are happening in far more fashionable environs than a lecture hall. With supermodels sharing reading lists and fashion brands setting up book clubs, we’re in an era when anything related to reading has enjoyed a significant glow-up. The most recent evidence is right there on our screens: a slew of syllabus-friendly novels are being adapted this autumn.
On Netflix, there’s Miles Franklin’s early feminist novel My Brilliant Career, John Steinbeck’s 1952 saga East of Eden, starring Florence Pugh and set to air in October, and Dolly Alderton’s much-anticipated Pride & Prejudice this December. Also on the Austen reading list, there’s the current adaptation of Sense & Sensibility in cinemas with Daisy Edgar-Jones. For a more mid-century offering, consider the upcoming take on Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar, starring none other than Billie Eilish. All of which is great news for the season of cosy nights in, but there’s another positive side effect: the sight of all these literary heroines does wonders for the wardrobe.
As someone whose idea of a good time still centres around a good novel and a free afternoon, I have always been interested in what characters wear. Some of my favourite writers use clothes to tell all about their protagonists. See the “bland ugliness” of a skirt and blouse worn for work by Mary Gaitskill’s Debby in Secretary. F Scott Fitzgerald’s introduction of the flighty Daisy Buchanan wearing a “rippling and fluttering dress” in The Great Gatsby. Dressed-up Tish—“black, long-legged me, in a blue dress”—going to church in James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, under “the weight of the crinoline”. Sally Rooney’s Marianne Sheridan, uncomfortable and scrutinised at a party in her “filmy black dress”.
When these characters are brought to screen—as all of these have been—the wardrobe inspiration is more direct, because you can think of, say, Maggie Gyllenhaal as said secretary, or Kiki Layne as Tish. Olivia Petter, whose debut novel Gold Rush was published in 2024, says that screen adaptations of classics give heroines’ style a shorthand. “It can be one of the most memorable elements of an adaptation,” she argues. “Like Marge’s holiday outfits in The Talented Mr Ripley, or Keira Knightley’s slinky emerald-green dress from Atonement, which I think about almost weekly.”
There’s no reason these new adaptations couldn’t have the same effect. The trailer for East of Eden finds Pugh in 19th-century frills and patterns just asking to be updated for an era in which women can vote (we also enjoyed her off-screen Chloé moment while promoting the project), while photographs of an almost unrecognisable Eilish from the set of The Bell Jar—with the waved hair and wide skirts and short-sleeved sweaters of the ’50s—suggest the film could well be destined for fashion moodboards. The Austen industrial complex, meanwhile, will no doubt mean empire lines and reticules will be big for 2027.
Emma Firth, who curates the Rejection is Romantic literary salon, is on board with this idea: she cites Pride & Prejudice, Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save the Waltz and A Room With a View as style inspiration, the latter particularly after the 1985 Merchant Ivory adaptation, with a young Helena Bonham Carter as heroine Lucy Honeychurch. “I was 19 when I read it for the first time,” she remembers. “There’s something so elegant and whimsical about her wardrobe in the adaptation which really captures her character.”
