Fashion designer, Olympia Le-Tan, has designed a series of 21 handbags (limited to 16 a piece) that feature impeccable embroidered recreations of book covers from first-edition novels like Moby Dick (shown above), The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and For Whom The Bell Tolls. The collection is appropriately titled, “You Can’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover,” and is inspired by Le-Tan’s affection for collecting old books. [Link via We Love You So].

Click through for a bunch more photos of the book bags and an artist quote.

Each clutch is handmade out of “Liberty print lining, felt appliqué and silk thread for the embroideries, and colorful canvas for the base.” They will be available to purchase in January 2010 from French boutique, Collette.

“I was thinking there were all these beautiful books around and they were being forgotten with everybody on the Internet, so I made it so that you can carry them around,” said Le-Tan at her Paris fashion week presentation at the Galerie Véro-Dodat.

There’s a great photo gallery from the event that you can find here.