The Fashion Industry’s Librarians of Luxury

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The Assoulines are librarians of luxury, and their publishing house, which turned 25 last year, is both a rhapsodist of, and a mouthpiece for, the international fashion industry. MatthewSchneier writes

Prosper, Alex, and Martine Assouline in their New York apartment. Photo: Jason Schmidt Up the stairs, behind the balustrade, a modern cabinet de curiosités hangs above Fifth Avenue. It is a library guarded by a pair of statuary sheep and scattered here and there with fair-trade woven masks from Africa and vintage Louis Vuitton trunks.

Assouline isn’t the only publisher to work this territory. Plenty of rival houses specialize in lavish photography and illustrated books and compete with Assouline for clients and their reliable orders — august Rizzoli, intellectual Taschen, tony Phaidon — all of which are involved in one way or another with brand-fluffing publishing. But Assouline, more than any other, fashions itself as a peer of the brands it services, so much so that Prosper scoffs at comparisons to other presses.

Their first retail space, opened in 2003, was housed on the seventh floor of Bergdorf Goodman. The family hatched the idea over dinner with Frasch, the department store’s CEO in the early aughts, when Assouline was working on the design of the Bergdorf catalogue mailer. “There’s other presses that do interesting books,” says Frasch. “But they’ve really found the niche in the marketplace.

And yet partner and editorial books sit spine by spine in Assouline’s stores and their clients’ libraries. “It’s interesting to see the interest in the library,” Martine says. “It was not the case ten years ago. The library was something boring. ‘You want a bibliothèque at home? Oh my God.’ ” Now the company offers curation services to interior designers.

Book publishing is a difficult business, especially for more expensive, illustrated books, whose costs can be driven sky high by photo rights and permissions, and some of Assouline’s rival companies have sought refuge in larger companies or patrons. Assouline has maintained its independence, but the conglomerate LVMH — which owns Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, and Marc Jacobs — acquired a minority stake in the business in 2013.

 

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MatthewSchneier Assouline’s books are on subjects as various as cocktail-party chatter. Decorators and real-estate developers, two of the company’s most important and quickly growing client bases, now order full rooms’ worth more or less by the pound

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