There’s no better gift than a good book. And for the fashion lovers on your list, this holiday season is brimming with delights that won’t just collect dust on a coffee table. Take, for instance, Annie Leibovitz’s Wonderland, compiling the legendary photographer’s most enchanting fashion imagery (with contributions from Anna Wintour), or Slim Aarons: Style by Shawn Waldron and Kate Betts, which teems with photographs of the chic subjects of Aarons’s fascination (C.Z. Guest, Nan Kempner, Marisa Berenson, and Oscar de la Renta among them). Iain R. Webb’s Rebel Stylist: Caroline Baker—The Woman Who Invented Street Fashion captures the lightning-in-a-bottle brilliance of a rule-breaking fashion editor, while The United States of Fashion: A New Atlas of American Style celebrates American designers of all stripes working in cities as various as Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, Nashville, and Flint, Michigan.
For those riveted by little-known lives, there’s Caroline Bongrand’s Louis Vuitton: L’audacieux, serving up a fictionalized account of the house’s namesake in 19th-century France, and Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, charting the triumphs and travails of Christian Dior’s heroic youngest sister, Catherine. The stylish men in your life are covered too: Tom Ford published a personally edited sequel to his debut book, film and fashion scholar Llewella Chapman has cast her critical eye on the costuming of James Bond, and Phaidon has created a guide to the 500 greatest names in men’s fashion.
