Aesop Queer Library returns for its sixth edition. Swapping beauty products for books, the Australian skincare brand transforms its Soho location into a literary hub between the 3-5 July. This year also welcomes a Reading Room, located in Aesop Spitalfields, and at its Brighton outpost. As always the Queer Library pop-up invites visitors to browse an array of titles by LGBTQIA+ authors and allies, no purchase required.
Step inside Aesop's Queer Library
The diverse array of books on offer spotlights authors from around the globe and provides a platform for underrepresented voices. This year, the library focuses on the queer body and how it can challenge assumptions, give greater visibility to stories too often obscured from view, and serve as an act of joyful resistance.
The 2026 edition titled ’Body of Work’, further champions this, and highlights charitable bodies including the national LGBTQIA+ support line, Switchboard. Since its founding in 1974, the volunteer-led helpline has supported 4 million people. Following last year’s feature title Marsha, by activist, artist and writer Tourmaline, this year explores The Log Books, a literary tribute which showcases a variety of the lives Switchboard has impacted.
‘Being included in the Aesop Queer Library for Pride is a real honour,’ says The Log Books authors Tash Walker and Adam Zmith. ‘At the heart of The Log Books is a simple but radical act: listening. We spent years listening to stories that were hidden from us when we were growing up – stories that should have been ours to know. This book is our attempt to build the world we should have grown up in. Knowing that someone can walk into an Aesop store this Pride, pick up a copy for free, and take it home – that access, that visibility – is exactly what queer stories deserve. Not just to be cherished, but to be known.’
Much like the Aesop shops filled with aromas, Walker and Zmith see their book as a ‘rich cacophony of LGBTQ+ life and history in Britain, full of highs and lows, progress and backlash, and the real stories of queer people across the generations’.
The authors continue, ‘The past fifty years or so have seen enormous change for members of the LGBTQ+ community – and our book documents this, through the questions and concerns raised on calls to Switchboard. There's the temptation to think of that as 'history', or something that we've gone through and it's done. But in fact, so many individual queer people today struggle, and trans people especially are being demonised in public life; in many ways, we've turned back the clock. We have the sense that history is repeating, but that's only because we know this history in the first place. So what we want readers to take away from the book is that the LGBTQ+ community is rich, complicated, messy—and our rights are fragile.’
Aesop Queer Library, Soho
Aesop Soho, 41 Lexington Street, London W1F 9AJ Friday 3 July – Sunday 5 July
Friday: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Saturday: 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Sunday: 12:00 – 6:00 PM
Aesop Queer Reading Room, Spitalfields
Aesop Spitalfields, 75-77 Brushfield Street, London E1 6AA Friday 3 July – Sunday 5 July Friday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Saturday: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Sunday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Aesop Queer Reading Room, Brighton
104-105 Gloucester Road, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 4AP Friday 31 July – Sunday 2 August
Friday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Saturday: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Sunday: 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM