The Stylish History of Pets

Assouline’s Chic Dogs and Chic Cats look at pets not only as companions, but as part of a wider visual culture shaped by fashion, art, interiors and social life.

Written by Paris-based luxury editor Robert Williams, Chic Dogs follows the dog’s place across aristocracy, style and public life. The book moves through archival photography and fashion imagery, with figures such as Coco Chanel, Maria Callas and Winston Churchill appearing through the close relationships they had with their dogs.

Published in April 2026, Chic Cats continues the series with a quieter kind of presence. Written by award-winning author Brett Martin, it traces the cat’s place in art, photography, fashion and popular culture, from the work of Andy Warhol and David Hockney to visual archives shaped by style and image-making.

Together, the books include nearly 500 images. But their interest is not only nostalgic. They place animals within a larger history of taste, character and daily life, showing how dogs and cats have long belonged to the way people dress, live, collect and remember.

For Magelier, the appeal is in that shift: pets seen not as decoration, but as part of an aesthetic world with its own gestures, attitudes and quiet codes.