Profile: Marc Jacobs
A designer with bags of talent
On the eve of his new collection, the rehabilitation of the former enfant terrible of fashion is complete. Lionised by fashion editors and cherished by his customers, he is now widely praised as the new king of classic design
In 2001, Winona Ryder stole $5,560.40 worth of fashion from Saks Fifth Avenue, but was arrested when she left the tags on a blue Marc Jacobs bag. A year later, flattered when she wore one of his monochrome frocks in court, Jacobs invited Ryder to model for him. She accepted, of course, appearing in a campaign shot by Juergen Teller, snipping labels off cashmere sweaters. Responding to the stir the campaign caused, Jacobs sniggered: 'It would be stupid for me to say I didn't expect any reaction.'
'What I love more than anything,' he said recently, 'is attention.' He'll be ecstatic today then, as excitement builds for his show in New York fashion week, which starts on Friday. His is the ticket to flash, the designer who revived Louis Vuitton, who drives the $5bn business, who embraces celebrity, blogging and hype, who, when he speaks, which he does, loudly and often, says things such as: 'I do find myself entertaining.'
Professor Wendy Dagworthy, head of the school of fashion and textiles at the Royal College of Art, says he could be the next Yves Saint Laurent. 'There's that classic look to his designs. But he's a real original and it's these sorts of people who push the future of fashion. These are the people who are remembered.' 'Everyone wants to be at his show,' says Lorraine Candy, Elle's editor-in-chief, 'because there's always a sprinkle of stardust.'
With Sofia Coppola as a muse, Jacobs brings avant garde credibility to a centuries-old leather manufacturer. His designs for Louis Vuitton and his own solo label sell for almost £2bn a year, but he's known as much for his sense of humour as his Tootsie-style clothes and clinking accessories. The success of his designs means that the details - the round collars and oversized buttons - have been copied extravagantly and clones of his handbags, which, with their heavy chains, branded plates and affectionate names, were central to the rise of the 'it bag', are available on market stalls worldwide. All of which he's rather pleased with.
After a lucrative collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, he set up stalls at the opening of Murakami's recent Brooklyn show, with market sellers hawking the real Marc Jacobs bags as if they were $3,000 fakes. He was there in black tie, giggling.
Jacobs was born in New York in 1963. His father died when he was seven and his mother (whom he's described in interviews as 'troubled') sent him to live with his paternal grandmother in Manhattan, who encouraged his ambitions as a designer. She'd boast to the butcher, Jacobs says, that he was going to be the next Calvin Klein.
Donatella Versace and American Vogue editor Anna Wintour started a standing ovation for his first show in 1992 and he became, according to Vogue, New York's 'dauphin of grungy, understated cool'. Five years later, his business partner Robert Duffy, who remortgaged his house to launch the brand, landed him the job as creative director of Louis Vuitton. Which is when his partying - the alcohol, heroin and cocaine - became a problem.
'It's a cliche,' Jacobs said, 'but when I drank I was taller, funnier, smarter, cooler.' He was also thrown off a plane for being disruptive, which moved Anna Wintour and Naomi Campbell individually to have quiet words with Duffy, who sent him to rehab. A press release was issued the second time he entered rehab in March last year; he received fan mail there within days of his arrival.
When he emerged, aged 45, clean and gym-honed, wearing contact lenses, and fitted shirts rather than shlubby sweaters, the tabloid media went wild - when his New York fashion show ran two hours late it was headline news. After the makeover, his designs became sexier, sheerer; he made a cameo on an MTV reality show; he persuaded Victoria Beckham to pose naked in a carrier bag.
'People don't really want reality,' he said. 'They want surgically enhanced, scripted reality.'
For a brief period last autumn, when he was dating Jason Preston, a retired prostitute 17 years his junior, he dyed his hair Smurf-blue. 'I suppose you could say I'm having a midlife crisis,' Jacobs told W magazine, around the time he appeared nude in Out magazine and Arena Homme Plus: 'But I'm enjoying it.' The couple broke up this year, but Preston is left with a Marc Jacobs logo, tattooed on his forearm. Jacobs is planning his 29th tattoo. He likes to show off the word 'perfect' on his wrist. While his body changes - his tan deepens, his six-pack becomes almost obscenely defined - his profits, his power and his influence grow.
In the decade since he became creative director at Louis Vuitton, he's quadrupled its business. Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue says: 'He's one of the most talented designers in the world right now. He knows what people want to wear before they do.' Elle's Candy agrees. 'He's a predictor, like Karl Lagerfeld was. And there's a lovely feel to his designs. I'll sit in the front row of other designers' shows and see models walking towards me in these odd shoes with their breasts hanging out, and I wonder whether they even like the women they're designing for. But you can tell that he respects them. And his shows are always fabulously slick, apart from the wait.'
Last year, when his show ran two hours late, International Herald Tribune fashion editor Suzy Menkes was quoted as saying she wanted to murder him with her bare hands. A feud began and fashion bloggers were thrilled. He threatened to leave New York and show in Paris, screaming to Women's Wear Daily: 'I work my *** off. I don't take vacations. I ****ing work for a living... you have a family? OK, well that's nice, I don't, and I work. So leave me alone and don't come to the show next time.'
When it was reported that he'd stuck his tongue out at Menkes from the catwalk, he posted a reply on the New York Times blog, littered with exclamation marks: 'Why would I do anything to further upset her? Right after a show!!?? Come on guys, give me a break!!!!!'
'Marc is a great, great designer - his talent is stronger than it's ever been before,' says Anna Wintour, 'but he also has a very acute sense of how to use the media.' Jacobs has embraced the internet - updates on his relationship with Preston appeared regularly on MySpace, and he named an ostrich-skin bag after a blogger. It's this, in part, that places him apart from other contemporary designers. 'He's switched on,' says Harriet Quick, Vogue's fashion features editor. 'He's young, he's affable and as a member of the style generation, he uses lots of mixed-up references, which is the sign of a great talent.'
He's generous with praise for his design team, whom he credits with much of his success. 'Everybody who says they do everything themselves is just exaggerating,' he says. 'Doing things by yourself is - well, it's masturbation.' 'The people who work for him are like his family,' says Quick. 'He's not a megalomaniac. And as a business model, his B-line isn't just a cheaper version of the Marc Jacobs brand. He's taken by the way cool young girls dress and his Marc for Marc Jacobs collections are definitely influenced by his young fans.'
While a Marc Jacobs handbag retails for around £1,000, his target demographic begins with the teenage girls who dawdle in New York's Bleecker Street, an area he's monopolised, with five shops in the West Village alone. Worldwide, there are 160 stores in 19 countries, selling the Marc Jacobs Collection, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Little Marc - 70 per cent of sales are what Duffy calls their 'junk' - $20 T-shirts (recently Jacobs designed one with a portrait of Hillary Clinton on), a growing fragrance collection and $5 plastic rings. 'And each piece,' says Candy, 'each T-shirt or boot has a particular "him-ness", even his crockery. He's democratising fashion, in a way, by making the Marc Jacobs brand completely accessible.'
If Marc for Marc Jacobs is for New York's mussy-haired art students, his designs for Louis Vuitton are for their sleek, moneyed stepmothers. Marc Jacobs adverts are bleached-out, unretouched ('Fabulously free,' says Quick). They feature Chloe Sevigny, Jarvis Cocker, Sofia Coppola sunbathing in early evening light. Vuitton ads star Uma Thurman and Jennifer Lopez - they sell weekend bags for £2,000. In 2006, artist Cindy Sherman directed a Marc Jacobs campaign. It coincided with the start of his huge art collection, which now fills his Paris apartment. 'Typical addict behaviour,' he admits.
Fashion editors are looking forward to Jacobs's show, partly because of the clothes (expect narrow shoulders and lots of buttons) and partly because of the intoxicating combination of celebrities promised. According to the New York Times: 'The front row of a Marc Jacobs show provides a snapshot of where, at any particular time, as a culture, we find ourselves.' Charlie Porter, deputy editor of Fantastic Man magazine, breathlessly recalls seeing the Olsen twins, P Diddy, Donald Trump and David Copperfield.
Despite their slavish devotion though, Jacobs claimed in New York Magazine: 'I'm dead set against courting [celebrities]. I look out there before my shows and it's like in a movie, where the transparent me sees the real me and all of these people are there, and I just can't believe it. And every time I'm like, "What did you do in your life to deserve this?"'
The Jacobs lowdown
Born Marc Jacobs 9 April 1963 in New York City. His father died in 1970 and when his mother remarried, he moved in with his grandmother. He's since chosen to cut off contact with his family.
Best of times The bag he created with artist Takashi Murakami, which replaced Louis Vuitton's traditional brown and gold palette with 33 different colours, took in $300m during its 2003 debut year.
Worst of times When Jacobs went missing before a show, his business partner Robert Duffy tracked him down and sent him to rehab in March 2007 for the second time.
What he says 'I often feel uncomfortable ... it's not even like, you have to change the shape of handbags and the luxury market. It's like, this has to change the shape of history. And I don't know how to calculate that. I really don't.'
What others say 'I think all that pain that Marc goes through always brings him so much farther in terms of his ability to create. He's very much like an artist that way.'
Artist
Elizabeth Peyton
'It's very hard to really be authentic or make deep creative products if your foremost thing is being really cool. You have to have a full range of emotion and Marc has that.'
Musician
Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth
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