The Line of Beauty: Alex Assouline Wisdom

Assouline, the publishers of books so ravishing they are interior design pieces in their own right, turned 30 in 2024. THE RAKE celebrates with the founders’ son and dauphin, Alexandre.

The Line of Beauty: Alex Assouline Wisdom

There used to be a magazine called Finch’s Quarterly Review. Before I go on I must declare an interest: I used to be the Managing Editor of FQR under the direction of the great Nick Foulkes. It was a masterpiece of kinds, and its design, by Tristram Fetherstonhaugh, was witty, tasteful and irresistible to look at. It was a template for high publishing, a level above the competition, and a constant source of inspiration for magazines like The Rake

The sense of excitement at seeing such an elevated and carefully curated magazine was similar to the feeling I had when Nick gave me an early copy of Swans, his book by Assouline. The term ‘coffee-table book’ seems a bit pusillanimous with regards to Assouline, but if you’re not familiar, consider it the gateway vernacular — large-scale books that become the centrepiece of a living room or study; books with the kind of high GSM that makes paper enthusiasts blush like car lovers swooning over a Bugatti’s horsepower. 

The house’s concept was simple: Prosper and Martine Assouline, a husband and wife team, split their roles, with one contributing photography and the other writing. It led to their debut opus, La Colombe d’Or, in 1994. This publishing pas de deux is, therefore, 30 years old this year, and it is still run by the eponyms — with the addition of their son and dauphin, Alex, a handsome bugger and the Chief Operations Officer of the business, having graduated from Columbia Business School. Alex talked to The Rake about Assouline’s history, and what lies in store. 

The Assouline brand started as a passion, two storytellers who wanted to make books on things and places they loved. 

The Assouline brand started as a passion not as a business, two storytellers who wanted to make books on things and places they loved. It went very well, so they started doing it for friends. But still there was no real plan, it was much more a thing they enjoyed doing, creating beauty with culture. While these were the nascent years of the brand, the brand had no real business plan. 

When it was decided to turn Assouline into a business, they would go around the world to fairs, but fast-forward to 2005, when we opened our first store in Paris in Saint-Germain — this was the first stage of defining the brand. The second was in 2014, when we opened the Maison [in London], which was a 360 showcase of the Assouline world, includng food and beverage component.

We have a clear vision of where we want the business to go, how we want to differentiate ourselves from other publishers, and how to create a luxury lifestyle brand. We don’t consider ourselves just a publisher; the lifestyle we are developing will have different product categories. We have product initiatives and touchpoints we are launching, content we are launching. 

We will always stay physical as far as our products go, but digital is very important. We want to be able to give our audience more touchpoints, and as luxury storytellers we work with interior designers, chefs, brands, governments — we are here to take their stories and package them in the right way, then communicate them properly. 

The digital space does not need to fight against in-person retail. We are creating a podcast and digital magazine not as a new direction for Assouline but as a way of elevating the books and the brand around it. The podcast will be interesting, as we will get two people each podcast — with me hosting — from a certain background or profession and have conversations around culture and what their impact on culture is. Indeed, we are naming it the ‘Culture Lounge’. 

The Assouline store on Piccadilly in London.
The interior of the store, featuring a bar as well as the library.
The famed travel series.
The Assouline archive room in the office in New York.
Three of their watch books, a thriving category.

An idea for a book can come from sitting next to someone at dinner who says somthing fascinating about a subject.

A book takes from nine to 12 months from first discussion to when we put it into stores, which is still a long time to work on and put content together, so we wouldn’t put the time into it, and put our name on it, if it is not [something] that interests us in particular. 

Sometimes an idea for a book can come from sitting next to someone at dinner who says something fascinating about a particular subject; it could be a watch calibre, anything, and we decide we want to tell that story. Individuals approach us, too, and commission us. 

The travel series was launched in 2017. It started with Ibiza, and the concept was to do something that was not a usual travel guide. My mother, Martine, wanted to create a style component — so style rather than travel at these locations — and my father wanted to make a colourful cover. I had so much fun launching it, I was managing the marketing at that time. We kept going, with Mykonos, and authors would come and say, “I want to do Aspen for you, I want to do Tulum for you”. That collection started to pick up in an important manner. 

Covid was great for the travel series, as people were working from home and not able to travel at that complicated time. The marketing  campaign was positioned around everyone working from home but, in this case, ‘travel from home’, with friends sending pictures of themselves reading these books with them covering their faces. It was the right time, and now we have 50 of these and make 10 new ones every year. 

We do not outsource at Assouline. We have outside authors sometimes, but we have a full-time team of editors and designers in New York. They all work together, trained in the Assouline manner — this is our strength. This is proof that the publishing side, with 100 books that we publish every year, will always be the core of the business. 

Thirty years is a milestone, and though there are plans for the future that include candles and antiques, the quiet way we are celebrating is by releasing a book, of course. This will not be for sale, we are gifting it to our partners and people who have helped us along the way. 

Assouline’s first standalone boutique in Saint- Germain-des-Prés, Paris.
Alex with his mother, Martine, and father, Prosper.