Robert Stilin: New Work
December 7, 2025Unfussy, chic and full of surprises, the interiors by the New York-based Stilin get a stellar showcase in this Vendome offering, coming six years after his first book. The projects include two of his own homes, a large loft in Brooklyn (Stilin is even pictured in his bathtub there) and a Hamptons retreat.
The rest range from Seattle to Florida and Kentucky, many of them employing a range of subtle blue tones. The appreciative text by Architectural Digest’s global features director, Sam Cochran, breaks down the decorating wizardry in discussions of specifics like rhythmic furniture arranging, but in a way that doesn’t ruin the magic trick.
From Louis to Vuitton
Brands come and go, especially these days, but Louis Vuitton seems to be eternal. This new Assouline volume, with a text by writer and filmmaker Arthur Dreyfus, takes readers on a heavily illustrated journey beginning in the Asnières, France workshop of the original Vuitton himself, back in the 1850s. The book’s design—a vibrant and hefty yellow tome with a slim slipcase—is meant to make it a collectible objet in and of itself. No wonder that creatives as diverse as Jeff Koons, Catherine Deneuve and former LV designer Marc Jacobs are on hand to explain why the name means something special. The charming old drawings and advertisements included look just as punchy as the contemporary Vogue photos of more recent campaigns.
Making Space: Interior Design by Women
In this new Phaidon release, the British architect and academic Jane Hall provides an encyclopedic look at a topic truly hiding in plain sight: Decor by women through the ages. Each designer is allotted one project with a photograph and short text as Hall moves from the profession’s earliest days—decorating wasn’t even considered a serious pursuit at first—of Edith Wharton, Elsie de Wolfe and Sister Parish, through the 20th century and into our current one.
By keeping an orderly timeline, we see the design roots of current stars like Rose Uniacke, Kelly Wearstler, Pamela Shamshiri, Muriel Brandolini and Nicole Hollis. Hall writes that a feminist history of design “is shaped by those who create and occupy it, expanding the possibilities for reimagining the self and Making Space.”
Tom Wesselmann: The Great American Nude
Coffee table books can have heft beyond their literal weight. This Rizzoli monograph is a deep dive into an important dozen-year series of the 1960s and early 1970s by Wesselmann (1931–2004), a top Pop artist. Anyone who saw the show of his work at Paris’s Vuitton Foundation last year knows that he took the age-old subject of the nude and made it thoroughly modern, with a collage-like style and the surprisingly textural use of materials other than paint (silk, wallpaper and even linoleum). Contributors Susan Davidson, Rachel Middleman and Lauren Mahony take us through not only the results, but the process and the thinking that went into the complex works.
The Jewelry Book
Taking on the whole world of jewelry is a challenge, so author Melanie Grant wisely opts for the encyclopedic approach in this large and handsome Phaidon book, a no-brainer gift option for a variety of recipients, given its breadth. Grant, a luxury-focused journalist based in London, covers the waterfront from Adler (the Swiss jeweler) to Zendaya (the actress and face of Bulgari), giving a page to each with a small essay and one compelling image. Some of the entries are about the designers and makers of sparkling creations; in other cases it’s the wearers and appreciators. Even if you aren’t ready to contemplate whether jewelry is, in Grant’s words, “the most enduring expression of freedom that exists in material culture,” your eye will be dazzled and satisfied.
Massimo Listri. Italian Palaces
Fans of frescoes and fluted columns will sink into this Taschen tome like a warm bath, given the sumptuous images by veteran lensman Listri. As ornate as the palazzos are, the book’s arrangement is simple, dividing the country into northern, central and southern thirds, finding room for fairly famous examples (Rome’s legendary Farnese Palace) to one that should perhaps be better known (the hidden gems of Palermo, Sicily). Readers can just enjoy the transporting pictures and accompanying captains, but they can also learn about the scholarly details in the essay by architectural historian Robert Stalla, which details changes in the form from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
Patrick Demarchelier: Fashion Photographs Seen and Unseen
With plates chosen by acclaimed art director Fabien Baron and a thoughtful essay by biographer Brad Gooch, this Rizzoli book does justice to the legendary Demarchelier (1943–2022), who ranks in the top tiny handful of the best fashion lensmen of all time. Part of the last generation to shoot exclusively on film, Demarchelier chronicled seemingly all of fame and fashion for 45 years in the pages of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and more; his Princess Diana images in particular will remain iconic forever, and they are included, but so are pictures no one has seen before (including the contact sheets from shoots featuring famed models like Linda Evangelista). At the end, his son, Victor, interviews top collaborators like Grace Coddington, Kate Moss and Renée Zellweger. As frequent subject and supermodel Cindy Crawford recounts, Demarchelier simply “captured women at their best.”
Le Corbusier: Le Grand
Known for designing breathtakingly spare modernist structures like the Villa Savoye outside Paris, and for co-designing the United Nations Secretariat Building, Le Corbusier inspired a jam-packed, scrapbook-style treatment in this oversized volume, which Phaidon is re-releasing after nearly 20 years. The late Jean-Louis Cohen laid out a concise introduction to the subject, whom he memorably calls “a man of geometry,” and who was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in France’s Jura region.
Then the rest of the story, with chapter introductions by Tim Benton, is told through photographs of the architect (including an endearing image of a bespectacled Corbu with a cat) and his buildings; plans and drawings; letters, posters and pages from books and magazines; and some beautiful watercolors by his own hand.
Inside Palm Springs
There’s something satisfying about a book meeting expectations so thoroughly, as this Vendome volume does—you know there will be interiors replete with warm midcentury modernism and images of shimmering swimming pools, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of the 22 interiors on display. These sun-baked gems are not uniform by any means, given that the book includes contemporary work and even a Spanish revival house. The veteran design chroniclers Don Flood (photographer), Peter Haldeman (text) and Stephen Drucker (editor of Vendome’s Inside series) are fluent in Palm Springs appreciation. Most charming of all is that each chapter is essentially a love story about how the owners fell for the desert lifestyle.
Design Reimagined: A Fresh and Colorful Take on Timeless Rooms
Dense wallpapers, elaborately decorated ceilings and vibrant jewel tones aplenty are some of the maximalist hallmarks of the designer Corey Damen Jenkins, as seen in this Rizzoli book, his second. The Michigan native presents 10 projects—detailed with the help of Kyle Hoepner and dazzling photographs by Andrew Frasz—of homes ranging from the Hamptons to the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Monterey, California.
Although they are uniformly exuberant, his “Applied Expertise” sidebars provide a useful how-to element that looks at the science underlying the fun. That’s why Architectural Digest global editorial director Amy Astley uses her introduction to praise Jenkins’s vision as “both inspirational and practical.”
The Inn Crowd
What could be cozier than checking into a beautiful inn located somewhere in the Northeast? This Phaidon book, written and photographed by Jackie Cardono, has a feel for the telling details in beautifully designed lodgings (dating to the 18th century as well as modern A-frames) across New England, the seaside and upstate New York. Take, for instance, the vibrant green of a Murano chandelier against elaborate oak paneling in the Eastlake style at the Norumbega Inn in Camden, Maine. The text features an introduction by makeup icon Bobbi Brown and her developer husband, Steven Plopker, owners of The George, a strikingly composed, 31-room Montclair, New Jersey inn. Before you check in anywhere, check out this book.
Foundations
Despite the camera-ready final results, interior design can be a messy business — all inspiration and perspiration; art and science; whimsy, wisdom, wit and wonder. As such, it’s a challenge to actually describe the complicated process of creating a memorable and inviting room. That’s what makes Nate Berkus’s latest book, Foundations (published by Simon Element), such a treat to read. It’s also stunning to flip through, filled as it is with photographs of the interior designer and television personality’s prodigious recent output, among other inspiring images.
But it’s the words — written with Heather Summerville — that are the foundation, so to speak, of this volume, laying out clearly and methodically the ways in which we all can create spaces that are both beautiful and characterful (ie. reflective of our own characters). Follow Berkus’s “Four Tenets of Good Design” as presented here, and internalize such declarations as “A room does not feel special unless it has old things in it,” and you, too, can create a home that is, according to Berkus, not just timeless, but also “honest, emotional, something you see with your eyes but feel with your heart.”
New York 2020: Architecture and Urbanism at the Beginning of a New Century
The great metropolis of New York is getting what it deserves: Monacelli’s 745-page final installment in Robert A.M. Stern’s seminal look at the city’s architecture and built environment. The epic journey started with New York 1930 (published in 1987) and also stopped for visits in 1880, 1960 and 2000. Writing with co-authors Jacob Tilove and Daivd Fishman, Stern frames the recent cityscape as formed between two catastrophic events, 9/1l and the Covid pandemic, but finds innovation and resilience everywhere.
The long and dense introduction sets up what’s to come in the neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown that comprises the bulk of the book. The 86-year-old Stern—who has contributed mightily to the skyline himself through the work of his eponymous firm—does justice to a project that will long outlast him, and us.
