Naomi Watts, Alexander Skarsgård Were Feeling Bookish at Valentino

by · WWD

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Celebrities were feeling bookish at Sunday’s Valentino show, as Alessandro Michele’s latest fashion week guest list arrived at the library.

For the show, which was held at the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, the designer asked guests to bring a favorite book. The halls of the centuries-old building — the first public library in France — brought back memories for Naomi Watts.

“I can’t remember the last time I went into a library,” she said, waxing nostalgic. “I remember this is what we used to do to study. We’d come and rifle through the shelves to find all the information that we needed, and you know it took hours of dedication. And now we just press a button, and it’s sad. So I feel emotional actually being here.”

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She brought a copy of “Jane Eyre,” which she called her “first love” and a classic she has never gotten over.

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“I remember walking through the streets with my nose buried in that book,” she said of her childhood reading habits. But she admitted to, unfortunately, being a bit more of a doomscroller than a reader these days.

Zoey Deutch brought Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction tome about the human role in our current climate crisis and leading to species disappearing around us.

“I love it, it’s a great book,” she said. She had just landed in Paris Sunday morning and plucked it from the bookshelf of her apartment before she changed for the show.

Deutch said she is still a big reader, marking a recent change. “I love to read, but I’ve recently adopted the Kindle life, which I’m enjoying.”

Childhood nostalgia threaded through the donations.

Joe Alwyn came with Roald Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach.”

“I feel like growing up, I read a lot of his books. They were favorites of mine,” he said. “They were kind of scary and twisted for childhood books, but they became adventurous and magical and special.”

Thai star Jeff Satur brought children’s bedtime story “Muddy Face” by Rachel McGrath, which he said he would read as a ritual every night before going to sleep when he was a kid. He hoped to pass on the special memory. “I want to bring this and just give it to another person,” he said.

Alexander Skarsgård went even further back, bringing “Isländska Sagor,” the tome of Swedish tales about the first settlers of Iceland akin to the Norse “Iliad,” he said. “It’s part of our mythology and learning about our past,” he said, adding how he grew up with the stories.

Skarsgård’s copy was in his native language, which is what he grew up reading. “It’s in Swedish, so for the few people who understand Swedish here — but it’s a fascinating book.…Those tales are very famous in Scandinavia.”

And unlike some of his fellow guests, Skarsgård had a firm position on the modern reading dilemma. “I try not to doomscroll. I prefer to read fiction.”

Forget handbags, carrying a book might be this season’s big trend.