Style: if you’ve got it, flaunt it. For example, by displaying a selection of ravishing coffee table books oozing fabulous taste. We’ve selected the most amazing fashion tomes from our favourite publishing houses.
By Fiona Brutscher
ACC started out as the publishing arm of the Antique Collectors’ Club, so naturally their books cover particularly collectible fashion classics, appealing to our inner magpies. For glossy publications on British style, especially vintage rarities, look no further. Some of the titles pay homage to classics like Bellville Sassoon, known only to the initiated.
Swinging London fixtures Foale and Tuffin, BIBA and Zandra Rhodes also feature heavily throughout the catalogue – and yes, there’s a book on David Bowie’s unique style for your viewing pleasure! antiquecollectorsclub.com
Thames & Hudson is an art book publisher at heart, but its Fashion & Textiles backlist is as impressive as the rest of its catalogue is expansive. You can find opulent hardbacks (like Dior: New Looks), as well as affordable paperbacks on all the big names in fashion there.
The real gems are highly informative monographs on fabrics, patterns and even specific items of clothing. The Age of Pochoir: The Golden Age of Illustration in Paris brings the art of fashion illustration to life – returning to the place where art and fashion meet. thamesandhudson.com
Rizzoli is a marquee name in fashion publishing, and no self-respecting coffee table should be without one of their chic volumes.
The eponymous bookstore (by its own estimation the most beautiful of its kind in the world), which for decades rubbed shoulders with fashion’s biggest names on Fifth Avenue, now resides on Broadway. Obviously, the likes of Diana Vreeland and Kate Moss, just two of the fashion icons celebrated by Rizzoli, feel right at home there. rizzoliusa.com
Laurence King fashion books encourage us to look at fashion (in beautiful titles like 100 Years of Fashion, The History of Modern Fashion and Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women) and admire it from afar.
The catalogue is also brimming with books inspiring us to make fashion (with inspiring publications like Print, Make, Wear and DIY Couture) and instructing us how to wear it (with capsule wardrobe guides like Icons of Women’s Style or The Details: Iconic Men’s Accessories). laurenceking.com
Yale University Press, as the name would indicate, is affiliated with the Ivy League university, and their books prove there is nothing stuffy about fashion as academic subject. After all, the catalogue includes eclectic titles like Fashion Underground, exploring world of New York nightlife icon Susanne Bartsch. [Photo: Robin Souma]
The imaginative Fairy Tale Fashion serves as a catalogue for a current exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, but we’re particularly looking forward to Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, which will accompany the Met Museum’s Costume Institute spring 2016 exhibition. yalebooks.co.uk [Photo: Jason Akira Somma]
TASCHEN not only publish some of the most interesting fashion books available, they also present them in unique and original ways befitting the subject. After all, what better way to dress up a book on Naomi Campbell than with a book-shaped torso – breasts and all – encased in a shiny corset?
Equally collectible: Fashion Designers A–Z, documenting the permanent collection of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, available in limited designer editions, and bound in fabric designed by the likes of Etro, Missoni and Prada. taschen.com
teNeues publications focus squarely on the visual; from calendars and stationary, right through to books, everything that comes out of its presses is oh so pretty and covetable. Fashionistas come – to quote one of the most popular titles – For the Love of Style… and stay for the excellent fashion photography by the likes of Tim Walker, Rankin and Karl Lagerfeld.
Bruce Weber’s Blood Sweat and Tears is a fantastic mix of the kitsch dramatic supermodel shots we remember him for, and his other elaborate photography from the golden age of fashion publishing. teneues.com
Steidl‘s fashion books are as lofty as they come – don’t go looking for fluffy fashion feel-good picture books here. Instead, the glossy tomes exist at the intersection of contemporary art and artful design, making them works of art in their own right.
Publisher Gerhard Steidl is famously fastidious, priding himself on the excellent and unique smell of his products. He shares his attention to detail with his compatriot Karl Lagerfeld, with whom he has founded fashion imprint Lagerfeld, Steidl, Druckerei Verlag (shortened L.S.D.). steidl.de
Phaidon started out in Vienna as a publisher of literature, philosophy and history. Almost 100 years and a hop across the pond later, it is known for its overwhelming selection of books on the creative arts. Right now, the most sought-after fashion title in its catalogue is Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue, an impressive tome that genuflects before the inimitable Grace Coddington, stylist extraordinaire.
While we wait for the sold-out Grace to be reissued (or followed up by a sequel) in the wake of Coddington’s semi-retirement, we can brush up on our fashion history with The Fashion Book, which is being released in a new and expanded edition. phaidon.com
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