BRINGING SEXY BACK: Book publisher Assouline is a darling of the fashion world with its tomes on style, design and art and its chicly minimal stores. Now its admirers can hire it — and not for vanity projects. The company has set up Agency Assouline for luxury advertising and so far has worked with Harry Winston, Chanel, Nicole Miller and Cole Haan. As much as it might be a cliché, Prosper Assouline, creative director and founder, is focused on trying to make something different and new. "I know everybody says that, but that is what we will do," he said. For example, the Cole Haan ad chosen for most March magazines shows an X-ray image of a high-heel shoe — the shoe has air cushioning and was a collaboration with Cole Haan's parent, Nike. Assouline wasn't able to find a doctor in the U.S. willing to x-ray the shoe, so he had to go to Paris to get it done. — Amy Wicks

STARRING ROLE: Starworks, a six-year-old casting agency with offices in New York, London, Los Angeles and Munich, has booked celebrities for fashion ad campaigns and magazine shoots for Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Burberry, Temperley, Botkier, Best Life, L'Uomo Vogue, V and V Man, among others. Now the company is aiming to turn itself into a full-service firm for its high-profile clients through a new public relations department that opened for business on Thursday. Jennifer Meyer, formerly Club Monaco's director of p.r., will head the division, working with Adam Drawas, who joined Starworks from International Trade Agency.Meyer will be based in New York and Drawas will work out of Los Angeles. Agent Provocateur is Starwork's first p.r. client — the agency will host a private dinner for the U.K. lingerie brand in March to launch its new collection. No word on how the new agency will handle questions over the marital split between Agent Provocateur co-founders Serena Rees and Joe Corre. — Stephanie D. Smith

TYLER, TWO: Monocle, the comeback title for Tyler Brûlé, has been launched on both sides of the Atlantic and is most likely the only magazine out there with a Japanese naval helicopter pilot on the front cover and a Gucci men's wear ad on the back. In between — and on four types of paper stock — the magazine tackles the "semiotics" of Iranian president's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's wardrobe and sits down for a Q&A with Chile's finance minister Andres Velasco, "the most handsome finance minister out there," joked Brûlé, editor in chief, chairman and founder. The magazine — which has a cover price of $10 and looks more like a literary or foreign affairs review — also features stories ranging from second-generation Italian hip-hop to Düsseldorf's vending machine trade fair and the quirky English bookshop Barter Books in Northumberland. On the product front, Monocle zeroes in on a humble Wisconsin moccasin maker and a Japanese company that's segued from samurai swords to golf clubs to Roger Vivier's python sandals. There's even a Manga-style comic book with product placement from Prada and Audi stuffed into the back of the magazine.