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.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock throughout its extensive media campaign, star-studded premiere, and the ensuing polarizing reviews, you probably know that the latest film adaptation of The Great Gatsby blazed into theaters on May 10th, in a swirl of sequins and sparkling champagne.

We’ve done outfit posts inspired by the new movie (and the old one), the decade and the author’s wife… but until today, we had yet to tackle the iconic novel from which the glamorous legacy originated! So that’s what I’m here to do. Read on for CF’s take on this American classic.

The Great Gatsby’s iconic book cover, via Amazon

Table of Contents

Inside Cover: A Little Bit of Background

The Great Gatsby is a classic work of American fiction, originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925.

Written and set during the height of the Roaring ’20s, the novel explores themes of decadence, idealism, and social excess, as well as the demoralizing effects of the Jazz Age. The supposed death of the American Dream presented within the novel was a response to the revelry without limits that Fitzgerald observed during this time period. The novel has, in turn, become an iconic title associated with the decade.

Though a classic today, the book was not a best-seller when it was first published; in fact, none of Fitzgerald’s works were. He believed himself to be a failure, and when he died in 1940, he thought his work would be forgotten with him. However, that was certainly not the case: The Great Gatsby is one of the most popularly assigned high school novels, is consistently listed and ranked among literary masterpieces, and is considered an example of the “Great American Novel.”