Five Fashion Books: From Virgil Abloh's Nike Icons to Paul B. Preciado's Monster

A roundup of five books that approach fashion from diverse angles, ranging from visual monographs to critical theory. The selection includes Virgil Abloh's posthumous 'ICONS' (Taschen, 2020), a visual chronicle of his Nike collaboration featuring over 50 sneaker designs, with a foreword by Abloh describing the collection as 'one shoe, one story.' Taylor Viens' 'Donald. The book' (Assouline, 2017) is a heavy coffee-table tome by Donald Robertson, dubbed 'the Andy Warhol of Instagram,' now out of print and commanding high prices. Doug Stephens' 'Resurrecting Retail' (Figure 1 Publishing, 2021) offers a futurologist's perspective on post-pandemic retail, advising brands like IKEA, Walmart, and Google. Paul B. Preciado's 'Sono un mostro che vi parla' (Fandango, 2021) is a provocative lecture delivered to 3,500 psychoanalysts in Paris, challenging gender norms and linking technology to future sexuality. Byung-Chul Han's 'La salvezza del bello' (Nottetempo, 2019) reexposes Western aesthetics from Plato to Nietzsche and Adorno, arguing that beauty is tied to truth and pain. The article, published on Artribune, emphasizes that fashion is not just visual but a heavy industry involving design, production, and distribution.