We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool

At the very moment Trump’s rambling speeches and meme–fied inanity threaten to overwhelm us, fashion, music and film are moving in the opposite direction

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ut down your negroni, hang up your Prada handbag and pick up a paperback. Next time someone whips out their phone to take your picture, grab your reading specs, not your lipstick. Smart is the new hot.

Pop stars are launching book clubs – the 1970s had Studio 54, this decade has Dua Lipa’s online literary salon Service95 – or joining Substack, where Charli xcx recently published a 1,800-word essay interrogating why it is that as a pop star “you cannot avoid the fact that some people are simply determined to prove that you are stupid”. The supermodel Kaia Gerber (who is fashion royalty – her mum is Cindy Crawford) passes the time backstage at fashion week reading Didion, Duras and Camus, not Vogue.

Three years ago, we dressed in pink to go to the cinema to watch Barbie; in 2026, the mind-bendingly structured, early-Victorian masterpiece Wuthering Heights is the talk of Hollywood, and Netflix is betting big on Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet in Dolly Alderton’s forthcoming adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Intellect and glamour – which have always sat at separate tables in the high-school canteen of pop culture (you can’t sit with the cool kids if you are a teacher’s pet, everyone knows that) – are flirting hard.