Is fashion design considered visual art?

What is considered the very best publisher of high-end illustrated books? Must focus on architecture, art, photography, design, fashion...

• What is the most prestigious publishing house focused on this areas? Steidl, Taschen, Rizzoli, Phaidon, Assouline or Thames & Hudson? How would you rank them? Are some of these publishing houses more focused on being commercial rather than publishing high-quality books?

• Answer:

  I think well of Abrams Publishing and Dorling Kindersley. While DK may be more "low end" than you are thinking, their visual design is often extremely innovative and effective, especially bearing in mind that publishing is a business, where repeatable templates that establish lucrative niches are a good thing.  Taschen publishes way too many trashy books to rank high in my list.  Rights holders often publish beautiful works focused on their own holdings and can be very large publishing enterprises (think National Geographic, Pirelli, great museums).