These fashion books, all released in 2025, are the perfect gift for style fans

Thames & Hudson’s ‘Catwalk’ series provides encyclopedic catalogues of a designer or fashion house’s runway oeuvre, with each edition featuring over 1,100 looks (as such, they provide physical troves of inspiration for those done with scrolling and screens). The latest addition to the family is Jean Paul Gaultier: spanning the French couturier’s debut in the 1970s to his final show in 2020 (the house is now in the hands of Dutch designer Duran Lantink), it is a rip-roaring journey through the enfant terrible’s boundary-dissolving collections and all their hallmarks, from tattoo prints and pneumatic conical bras, to his signature sailor stripes. The last are also wrapped around the cover of the book, which serves as a testament to the French designer’s wit, irreverence and pin-sharp eye for silhouette. You’ll also notice just how many times his work has been referenced by designers since.

Cindy Sherman’s beguiling, shapeshifting self-portraiture is the subject of Anti-Fashion, which was released by Hannibal Books earlier this year to coincide with an exhibition at FOMU Antwerp. The perfect gift for those whose interests straddle both art and fashion, the colourful tome collates the American artist’s work within the fashion world through both her own vivacious use of clothing in her images – a longtime tool for transformation and provocation since the beginnings of her career – to her collaborative projects with the likes of Comme des Garçons, Stella McCartney and Harper’s Bazaar. ‘It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world,’ she says.

The hefty Assouline-published tome, promising an immersion into the Louis Vuitton ‘universe’, is one for lovers of luxury: recalling the house’s signature trunks, it is sheathed in a damier-check display case which, when removed, reveals an image of a locked clasp. As such, it is as much an adornment for your home as reading material, though there is plenty to be gleaned about Louis Vuitton’s history across its visually rich 400-odd pages, arranged by 54 thematic words (‘Monogram’, ‘Trains’, ‘Architecture’ and ’Leather’ are a few; the number is a nod to the year of founding, 1954). As with all Assouline books, the binding is superlative, individually made by the publisher’s expert artisans.

‘I’m completely surprised that I got this far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* earlier this year as he opened ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Galliera which took you from his grungy Hollywood Boulevard bedroom in the 1990s (literally, it was recreated in this space) to his blockbuster runway shows at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo. This accompanying book provides a deep dive into the Dark Prince of Fashion’s oeuvre (a nickname he told Wallpaper* he approves of), capturing his singular eye for silhouette, spectacle and form. Rizzoli, the publisher, calls it the ‘essential’ compendium of his work, while an arresting cover – featuring his wife, muse, and closest collaborator, Michèle Lamy – makes for a striking addition to any bookshelf.

Another aesthetically pleasing monograph comes courtesy of Loewe, which, earlier this year, released a ‘visual retrospective’ of Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson’s acclaimed and transformative tenure at the Spanish house. Now the creative director of Dior – he left Loewe after a decade in March 2025, succeeded by Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez – the book catalogues the multidisciplinary ‘world’ Anderson created during this time, comprising not only striking imagery of his collections (some never before seen), but also his collaborations and initiatives, including the annual Loewe Craft Prize. Spread over a vast 636 pages, its cover features one of artist and longtime collaborator Anthea Hamilton’s pumpkin sculptures – a visual leitmotif of his tenure.

The annual Costume Institute exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of fashion’s most anticipated moments – in large part because of the annual Met Gala which heralds its opening, a starry red-carpet event which has long transcended the world of fashion. This year, the exhibition honed in on the figure of the ‘Black Dandy’, inspired by Monica Miller’s Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, with the academic also serving as co-curator. Featuring a lush photographic series by American image-maker Tyler Mitchell, alongside works from the show itself, there are also contributions from Miller and The Met’s Andrew Bolton, William DeGregorio and Amanda Garfinkel.

For those seeking a respite from the hubbub of the festive season, this deeply thought book from academic Adam Murray provides an intriguing exploration of fashion’s relationship with the idea of home – taking you with him to living rooms and kitchen tables the world over, from Beverly Hills to north London. Featuring 23 artists in total and divided into three sections, it is a loose sequel to two 1990s exhibitions, ‘Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort’ at MoMA and The Barbican’s ‘Who’s Looking at the Family?’ (as such, works span the 1990s to the present day). ‘The basic start [of this book] was my interest in fashion image, and how that is often not dealt with in an interesting way,’ says Murray. ‘So it's arguing that fashion doesn't exist in isolation, that it's just another part of visual culture.’

Twenty years in fashion, particularly for an independent label, is some achievement – a landmark which London-based Canadian designer Erdem Moralıoğlu reached this year with his eponymous brand, Erdem. This celebratory book, which traverses these two decades, is for those who favour this whimsical and the romantic – most of Moralıoğlu’s collections draw inspiration from notable (but oftentimes less celebrated) women from history. ‘The stories I’m interested in have always been about capturing a moment in time,’ he says, and this book – with its vast catalogue of transporting archival imagery – does just that.