CULTURE

Shelf Life

Fall’s stylish books cover iconic designers and a fashionable feline.


Lanvin: I Love You

Over the years, Rachel Zoe, Sarah Jessica Parker, and countless designers have tried to revive the Halston brand, with little success. The late American designer lives on, however, in Halston (Rizzoli, October 28), a new monograph on Roy Halston, by his niece Lesley Frowick. Another inside glimpse at a legendary talent comes courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent: A Moroccan Passion (Abrams, September 9), a photo album of the years the designer spent at his beloved Marrakech abode. Lanvin: I Love You (Rizzoli, September 30) serves up a more contemporary visual feast: a compilation of the spectacular mise-en-scènes Alber Elbaz has staged over the years in shop windows and elsewhere. The performance-art band Fischerspooner, which had its heyday in the late ’90s and early aughts, also knows how to put on a show; Fischerspooner: New Truth (Damiani, October) recalls its moment in the spotlight. Another star of the downtown–New York music scene was the designer Stephen Sprouse, whose drawings and ephemera, Stephen Sprouse: Xerox/Rock/Art (Damiani, October), make for a fascinating record of his ideas. W magazine is also looking back, with W: Stories, a compilation of some of its best fashion shoots (Abrams, October 21), accompanied by behind-the-scenes accounts of what it takes to make fantastical visions a reality. Meanwhile, the photographer Claiborne Swanson Frank’s Young Hollywood (Assouline, September 1) features actresses on the cusp of stardom, like Dakota Johnson and Imogen Poots. (There is a foreword by the designer Michael Kors, who has collaborated with Frank in the past.) But it’s doubtful that any of these starlets enjoys an existence quite as divine as that of Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s famous feline. Choupette: The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat (Flammarion, September 23) combines two of social media’s favorite memes—Karl, kitten—and offers a complete guide to living like the world’s chicest chat.

Photos: Shelf Life

Lanvin: I Love You. Courtesy of Rizzoli.

Halston. Courtesy of Rizzoli.

W: Stories. Courtesy of Abrams.

Stephen Sprouse: Xerox/Rock/Art. Courtesy of Damiani.

Young Hollywood. Courtesy of Claiborne Swanson Frank.

Choupette: The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat. Courtesy of Rizzoli.

Fischerspooner: New Truth. Courtesy of Damiani.

Yves Saint Laurent: A Moroccan Passion. Photograph by Biel Parklee.

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