Diane Von Famous Seamus

On the left, a Faber & Faber paperback of Seamus Heaney's second book of poetry, Door into the Dark, published in 1969. On the right, a look from Diane Von Furstenberg's Fall 2010 RTW collection. Detail of the hat, which is like an anvil but made of flowers and netting.

Last April 13 marked the 70th birthday of Ireland's fourth poet laureate, Famous Seamus. Listen to his birthday address before RTE here (skip to minute mark 2:45 to get past the intro). If you can't get enough of his malty Irish voice, stop here to order a boxed set of 15 CDs of the poet reciting almost all of his ouevre—enough to fill the hours on an airplane spent traveling from Washington to Dublin and back to Washington again.

Tam in Hand

Warning: That orange-winged thing peeking from that sandy purse is not a book. It is the champagne of netbooks—excuse me, "Digital Clutches."

Or at least that is what designer Vivienne Tam calls these $600 HP netbooks she designed, for the second year in a row, to match her Spring runway collection debuted a few weeks ago at Bryant Park.

Tam hopes the netbooks will make its users/wearers feel "independent and free, like butterflies"—and happy. Apparently, that's why the return key is stamped with the double-happiness character.

I suppose this is the accessory a Lambist with money to spare would use when reading a book on Google books or Project Gutenberg. Anyway, here's an extensive photo gallery for your entertainment—and double-happiness.

h/t to my friend Emily Schultheis, a Lambist who spied the Digital Clutches in 'In Style.'

A Feather for Fitzgerald

On the left, the first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel This Side of Paradise, published by Scribner's in 1920. On the right, an ensemble from Oscar de la Renta's Fall Collection 2010 RTW.

As you might have guessed, the first edition and the outfit are astronomically expensive. So, instead of possessing either, we might as well ponder the book.

Here is a little something Fitzgerald wrote in 1937, on what it felt like to have his first novel meet ink and plate:

"Then the postman rang, and that day I quit work and ran along the streets, stopping automobiles to tell friends and acquaintances about it—my novel This Side of Paraise was accepted for publication. That week the postman rang and rang, and I paid off my terrible small debts, bought a suit, and woke up every morning with a world of ineffable toploftiness and promise.

-"Early Success" American Cavalcade (October 1937)

He had personal reasons to feel toplofty, too, for he's written the novel in great part to dazzle and win back the favor—and the hand—of Zelda Sayre, who said she would accept an engagement ring only once a publisher had accepted his manuscript. When Scribner's did just that in 1920, she agreed to marry him.

Welcome to LAMB!

Books, of course, are objects to be read. But they are also objects to be worn. We carry them by our sides, let them peek from full purses and briefcases, tuck them under sprays of newspaper in our arms, and read them, quite conspicuously, in Metro cars, parks, and coffee shops. When thinking of books in this way, it then makes thorough sense to consider the look of your book in concert with your outfit before popping out the door. After all, one of the Latin terms for book is vade mecum—meaning "come with me."

I started pairing books with my outfits in high school. The first book was a bright goldenrod-colored copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot. It was my father's when he was about my age, and I soon found, after I had discovered the poetry inside, that the bright yellow not only cheered me up on my way to geometry class but tended to complement many of the items in my wardrobe. Nodding to that little book, I've made the exclamation mark in LAMB's logo the same hue as that book.

The main reason I don't want a Kindle is because it makes every book look the same. James Walcott expounds on this point in the August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair:

Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices. As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects—digitize and dematerialize—we approach a Star Trek future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles. Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, with its coffee bar and authors’ readings, could go the way of Blockbuster as an iconic institution, depriving readers of the opportunity to mingle with their own kind and paw through magazines for free. Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

On this site, I'll be pairing people and their outfits with books. I will mostly do so in terms of design. I will also post pictures of people with books, such as this one:









If you want to tip me to a particular photograph of a person or book cover, please write a comment on the latest post or send me an email.