Emily in Paris Assouline Fashion Photo Book: Shop Online

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Assouline is stepping into the “Emily in Paris” universe with the franchise’s first official style tome, “Emily in Paris: The Fashion Guide,” a lavish new volume curated and authored by the show’s costume designer Marylin Fitoussi. Out Dec. 9, the book arrives ahead of the Season 5 premiere on Dec. 18.

For Fitoussi, the Assouline project came as a total surprise — and a long-awaited piece of recognition following the show’s initial backlash among French viewers, who balked at her early use of what they considered Paris clichés. “It was like a trophy… finally,” Fitoussi tells Variety of the book.

The 200-plus page book charts the evolution of Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) and her orbit of friends, lovers and colleagues through the series’ signature wardrobe: riotous color clashing, prints-on-prints and sartorial maximalism that sparked viral debates after Season 1. The volume features original costume sketches, mood boards, behind-the-scenes images from the Paris atelier and Fitoussi’s handwritten margin notes — along with a foreword from creator Darren Star, who credits the designer with crafting a “style language of her own” that quickly migrated from TV screens to TikTok feeds and tourist photo ops across Paris.

“Style begins when fear disappears,” Fitoussi says. “You can use clothes as armor. You can decide not to care what anyone thinks. The message of the show is is freedom: break the rules, invent your own.”

She notes with delight that even as critics derided certain choices (including Emily’s much-maligned red beret), Paris quickly filled with tourists imitating her gingham coats and bold accessories. “I still see red berets now at the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. It moves me more than I can say,” she adds. “People understood it was not about fashion but about expressing who they are.”

Perhaps most exciting about the book is that it serves as a towering monument of Fitoussi’s process, a behind-the-scenes job that audiences often underestimate. Inside the show’s 500-square-meter costume showroom sit roughly 15,000 pieces; for a single outfit, her team may order 100 pairs of shoes just to land on the perfect shape and color. And that level of precision unfolds on an unforgiving timeline: “We only have six weeks to prepare the show,” she says. “It’s nonstop — 15, 17-hour days, scrolling through 450 lookbooks, messaging showrooms, sourcing vintage, custom-making pieces. People don’t realize that for one look, it’s 100 pairs of shoes.”

The book also coincides with a major visual shift for Season 5, including Collins’ new bob haircut, a change Fitoussi says unlocked a “blank page” for her creatively. “It’s funny because every time before starting a new season, I text Lily and say, ‘Okay, which haircut are you going to wear this time?” And when she said to me, ‘Marilyn for Season 5, Darren’s agreed to have me with my bob, my short hair,’ I was so excited. I texted Darren ‘Bisou, bisou, bisou!’” He probably thought that I was out of my mind.’”

The sleeker silhouette pushed Fitoussi towards stronger, more modern looks, sometimes neutral but still unmistakably Emily Cooper. “She’s stronger. She’s much more in power,” Fitoussi says.

Emily will also be in Rome for at least a portion of the new season, alongside her new Italian love interest, Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini) — another welcome change for Fitoussi, who despite being born in France, is also an admirer of Italian fashion. As a longtime fan of Italian cinema, she used as a reference black-and-white classics from the ’50s that spawned stars such as Anna Magnani and Sophia Loren. “I discovered that these actresses were wearing a lot of black and white polka dots,” she says. This monochromatic print became a signature in Season 5, a departure from many of the patterns and color palettes she used in Paris.

That said, Fitoussi assures viewers that the maximalist, joyful dressing that has been a signature of the show since its first season (and of her own personal style) isn’t going anywhere. For much of her career, that aesthetic was dismissed. “My first agent gave up on me because she said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing. I don’t like it. I don’t know how to sell you. You’re not commercial,’” Fitoussi recalls. “I thought, Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m stupid, maybe I’m crazy. But you have to follow your vision until you find the people who get it.”

So when she found those people in consulting costume designer Patricia Field and series creator Darren Star during Season 1, she knew not to take their shared sensibility for granted.

“Because,” she adds, “clothes are a message. It’s the way you show people, This is what I’m dreaming. This is who I am.“