Look Books

Last year, Ann Demeulemeester announced in a handwritten letter her departure from the eponymous label she had founded nearly three decades earlier. The poetically aloof Belgiandesigner has yet to reveal her Act Two, but she is releasing Ann Demeulemeester (Rizzoli), a 2,000-page book filled with images of her work and a foreword by her friend and kindred spirit Patti Smith. Since leaving the design stage in 2008, Valentino Garavani has kept himself busy building an online museum, partaking in worldwide retrospectives, and hosting exquisite feasts for his fabulous friends. Valentino: At the Emperor’s Table (Assouline) takes us behind these exclusiveaffairs, with images of meals enjoyed in each of his homes, like the risotto Milanese served among his collection of rare Meissen swans at Château de Wideville outside Paris. And although Guido Palau—the go-to hairstylist for Alexander Wang, Marc Jacobs, and Calvin Klein—has no intention of retiring soon, his monograph, Hair (Rizzoli), suggests that he’s already done it all.