Welcome to the latest edition of Looks from Books, which aims to prove that you can look smart, while still being book-smart, too. Fashion inspiration can be found between the pages of your favorite stories, on well-designed book covers, and in your favorite characters… if you read closely enough.

In the comments of our last post on The Outsiders fashion, we found many fans of the book’s setting, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inspired by the hometown spirit, I decided to look at the history of my own beloved Tacoma, Washington, and selected not only a fellow T-town dweller, but also a former student of the University of Washington: Frank Herbert, author of the sci-fi epicDune!

a vintage Dune book cover via Amazon

Table of Contents

A Fashionable Literacy

Dune has been adapted into one major motion picture, and one miniseries for the SyFy Channel.

The movie itself, produced in 1984, was a failure with fans – who critiqued the dissimilarities in plot – as well as with wider audiences, to whom the mythology of the novel proved nearly incomprehensible.

The miniseries, produced in 2000, fared better with critics, and was, up until 2004, one of the three highest-rated programs on the still-growing SyFy network.

Plans for another film adaptation were made in 2008; however, after numerous departures from those in head positions, the project was finally scrapped in 2011.

As with other science fiction works, the fashion present within the context and culture of the novel might prove difficult to translate into everyday looks. With the unique pseudo-historical context of Dune’s societal structures – a mix between the futuristic and the feudal – this difficulty is increased even further. However, that’s not to say that it’s impossible: plenty of hyper-futuristic looks have hit the runways in the past few years, from the liquid legging trend to the holographic trend, and the digital prints trend.