From Miu Miu to Dior: Why luxury brands are turning to ‘intellectual influencers’

As younger consumers grow more sceptical of traditional influencers and AI-generated content, brands are turning to writers, thinkers and literary culture for a different kind of authority.

Simone de Beauvoir was many things: existentialist philosopher, writer and feminist among them. Four decades after her death, the French intellectual can add another: brand influencer.

De Beauvoir’s writing is among the topics discussed at Miu Miu’s literary club in Shanghai late last year. The brand, part of Italy’s Prada, holds similar salons in Milan. The aim: to cultivate a cultural depth that goes beyond frocks and fripperies.

Prada is not the only luxury brand deploying intellect to stimulate sales. J Crew tapped New Yorker writer and author Patrick Radden Keefe; Dior has gone for Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Other brands take a more literal approach to burnish their bookish credentials. Valentino sponsored the 2024 international Booker Prize Ceremony while Coach went so far as to partner with publisher Penguin Random House to produce miniature books bag charms.

While not new — The Future Laboratory predicted the era of the expert influencer three years ago, and well before that American writer Joan Didion was sporting Celine sunglasses — several trends are accelerating the desire for intellectual authority.

Among them, the fact that Gen Z are growing older, wiser and more cynical about common or garden influencers, a breed turned formulaic after a decade-plus run on social media. The new kid on the block, AI, similarly lacks authority and is even more homogenous. Gen Z, like their parents, want more than entertainment from social media; TikTok and Instagram also serve as search engine and fact finder.

The rise of the intellectual influencer points to the rebounding value of expertise, and highlights wider opportunities to monetise it. Think, for instance, of the popularity of events like Pints of Knowledge pub talks, where expert speakers attract large crowds. Or BookTok and Bookstagram, thriving corners of platforms TikTok and Instagram respectively, which have boosted sales of once-niche genres in the publishing industry. The more serious Substack has hatched a few mini stars itself, mainly in health and wellness. One influencer, one-time monk Jay Shetty, billed as “making wisdom go viral”, has even co-founded his own talent and brand agency. The newsletter platform hit 5 million paid subscriptions in 2025.

Intellectual influencers still command a tiny slice of the market compared with their more traditional counterparts: internet librarian Jack Edwards, for instance, has 1.3 million followers, compared with Kim Kardashian’s 344 million. Still, at a time when artificial intelligence is grabbing the headlines, it is reassuring to see the human version is still in play too.