In recent years, pop stars have started to influence not only music or fashion, but also how we discover books. With the Manifesto Library, Dua Lipa takes things a step further: turning her book club into a permanent space inside one of Europe’s most iconic bookshops.
For a few years now, Dua Lipa has shown she wants to be more than just a pop star. Alongside world tours and international charts, the British artist has built Service95, an editorial platform that brings together a newsletter, reportage, cultural recommendations, and above all a book club that has become one of the most followed on the international scene.
Today this project takes a new step forward with the launch of the Manifesto Library, a permanent space inside the historic Livraria Lello in Porto dedicated to books that have challenged power, resisted censorship, and given voice to those who have too often been silenced. More than just a selection of titles, the Manifesto Library presents itself as a statement of intent: a reminder that some books don’t just describe the world, but help change it.
What is Service95
Launched in 2022, Service95 began as Dua Lipa’s personal newsletter, but over time it has grown into a fully-fledged editorial platform. Every week it gathers travel recommendations, in-depth articles, interviews, and cultural suggestions, with particular attention to topics such as civil rights, feminism, identity, migration, and geopolitics. Over the years Dua Lipa has spoken with writers of the caliber of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, Khaled Hosseini, Patti Smith, Hernan Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Douglas Stuart, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, building conversations that dig into not only the books themselves but the social, political, and cultural themes running through their work.
Among the most followed sections is the Service95 Book Club, through which the singer recommends a book every month, accompanied by author interviews and additional material. Over the years the club has helped bring international attention to writers from very different backgrounds, favoring works that engage with social and political issues.
The collaboration with Livraria Lello
To give this reading experience a physical dimension, Service95 chose to team up with Livraria Lello, one of Europe’s most iconic bookshops. Located in the heart of Porto and famous for its spectacular wooden staircase and stained-glass windows, in recent years Livraria Lello has been working to redefine its role, moving from a simple tourist attraction to a place of cultural promotion. The Manifesto Library fits squarely into that direction: a permanent space curated together with the Service95 team, bringing together books capable of questioning power, telling marginalized stories, and opening up new perspectives on the present.
A library as a manifesto
The name is no accident: the Manifesto Library wasn’t created to celebrate the great classics, but to bring together works that, at different moments in history, had the courage to challenge political systems, social norms, and forms of censorship.
Among the first titles selected is also Olhos d’Água by Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo, a collection of stories that gives voice to the experiences of Black women in Brazil’s urban peripheries. The goal, its promoters explain, is to build a living library, meant to grow over time through new selections from the Service95 Book Club.
When stars become cultural mediators
The celebrity book club phenomenon began with Oprah Winfrey, who launched Oprah’s Book Club on her television show in 1996. Her picks had an enormous impact on the publishing market, in some cases selling millions of copies and turning little-known authors into international bestsellers. Since then, more and more figures from the entertainment world have launched similar projects: from Emma Roberts, who founded Belletrist together with Karah Preiss, to Reese Witherspoon, Florence Welch, and Kaia Gerber, each with their own community of readers and dedicated editorial selection.
In recent years more and more celebrities have started book clubs, but Dua Lipa’s stands out for its strongly editorial approach. Rather than simply putting her name on a bookshop, Dua Lipa is taking her editorial project off the screen. The Manifesto Library marks the shift from an online community of readers to a physical space dedicated to books that question power, resist censorship, and amplify voices that have often been left on the margins.
