Dashwood Books

A lot of what's cool visually right now can be traced back to the shelves of Dashwood Books. Bella Newman launched her book here in August. She has shot for Adéla and Addison Rae and regularly shoots for No Erotica, the zine from No Agency (the modeling agency that reps Alice McNally, Cannelle and Dasha Nekrasova). Sofía Alazraki, a photographer and set designer who has worked with Arca and Paloma Wool, made a book of erotic still lifes of shoes and blow-up dolls with the Mexican designer Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, published by Dashwood last year. Tyler Mitchell, who is now a regular name at Vogue, spent most of his afternoons here when he was studying at NYU.

David Strettell, a former assistant of Mario Testino, opened Dashwood in 2005 because he wanted a photobook shop like the ones in Tokyo. The manager, Miwa Susuda, is the de facto face of the store through her Instagram, where she posts her favorite photobook of the day, her favorite Dashwood friend of the day, and sometimes her favorite Dashwood muse of the day, which recently featured Addison Rae. She bought a copy of Nick Haymes' Dancing on the Fault Line on her last visit.

Dashwood has been publishing since 2008, starting with an Ari Marcopoulos hardcover of xeroxed portraits of skateboarders and graffiti. Last year, they printed a 20-page zine of Kevin Hatt's 1994 studio portraits of Chloë Sevigny and Harmony Korine, taken just before Kids. It was on GQ's list of the 30 best art books to gift. They also have a tote bag series of small drawings by artists who have worked with the store, like the German artist Stefan Marx's basketball drawing commemorating the Knicks' championship and Grace Coddington's "me and my pussy" doodle of her and her cats (2023).

In 2018, Gucci built a bookstore around Strettell's eye. A few blocks away, their gallery, Dashwood Projects, is where they host exhibits and signings.