J.Crew is going literary. The American label, whose profile exploded this year with the attentions of Michelle Obama and the first family, hosted a reading at its SoHo men's store Monday night which attracted a smattering of Hollywood royalty along with New York bookish types.

Handsome author Tom Folsom introduced his book "The Mad Ones," a non-fiction account of "Crazy Joe" Gallo, a hipster mobster who became a minor celebrity (and later, the subject of a Bob Dylan song) in the '60s for his blending of Mafia thuggery with Greenwich Village counterculture. He was "whacked" in a hail of bullets in 1972, just two blocks from J.Crew's Broome Street store, at the still-open Umberto's Clam House. ("Maybe they were aiming for the chef," is the standard joke among those familiar with Umberto's menu.)

Matthew Modine and Steve Buscemi read from the book, and Harvey Weinstein, who bought the film rights (and who came without his Marchesa-designer wife, Georgina Chapman), added a little movie mogul gravitas to the evening.

This third iteration of the J.Crew men's store sells books along with shirts and ties; it is also the first one to offer custom-fitted suits. Company CEO Millard Drexler is a personal supporter of the Accompanied Literary Society, a floating band of NYC literati who organized the event.

"Without great writing, there wouldn't be great stores," the Society's founder, Brooke Geahan, told the crowd, in a game attempt to link the two concepts. "Because if nobody's writing about them, you'd never hear of them."

I'm going to have to think about that.