{"id":17466,"date":"2015-08-21T10:50:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T10:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delightfull.eu\/blog\/?p=17466"},"modified":"2016-01-29T12:56:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T12:56:23","slug":"a-day-in-the-life-of-marc-jacobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/2015\/08\/21\/a-day-in-the-life-of-marc-jacobs\/","title":{"rendered":"A day in the life of Marc Jacobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marc Jacobs<\/em><\/strong> gave an incredible interview to the NEW YORK TIMES. Our team has, of course, kept a close eye on fashions trends and what\u2019s hot in the fashion world because we live and breathe fashion, it\u2019s fashion that moves us! So here it is Marc jacobs, the hottest designer right now, as you never seen it before\u2026and it\u2019s yours to ..ah\u2026read!<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:<\/strong> Unique Mondays: Top 10 Fashion Collaborations<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

HI, I\u2019M MARC,\u201d says a smiling, shortish, muscular man in a white shirt and black trousers with even whiter socks. He has a housekeeper (\u201cThis is Reisa\u201d) and a personal chef (\u201cThis is Lauren\u201d), but he answers the door of his West Village townhouse himself, at least, when reporters come over. He looks 38 or 39 and is definitely Jewish, but maybe he could also be Greek. \u201cI thought it was so strange this morning,\u201d says Marc Jacobs, who is not going to say anything stranger than the fact that he\u2019s actually 52, \u201cbut Nick said, \u2018I left you a folder with Sarah, a picture of Sarah,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018Why, so I wouldn\u2019t let someone else in the building?\u2019 But no, the press office just did it. They put a picture of you, and like, who you wrote for. Like, as if that would change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marc prefers not to use last names. In fact, he is bored with most ways of being identified. \u201cI think it was after the Caitlyn Jenner thing,\u201d he says, folding himself into a snail-colored sofa, \u201cand I just said, like, can we just start calling people by their name? You know, not what they do for a living, not what their sexual preference is, not their age, not who they\u2019re related to. It\u2019s 2015. Just say, \u2018Hi, I\u2019m Caitlyn.\u2019 \u2018Hi, I\u2019m Marc.\u2019 It\u2019s not like, \u2018I\u2019m Marc, homosexual Jew from New York.\u2019 \u201d He laughs. \u201cYou know, \u2018fashion designer.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

If Marc isn\u2019t a fan of the full introduction, it\u2019s partly because he hasn\u2019t needed one since at least 2008, when Page Six made him a fixture and the New Yorker profiled him for the second time. Twenty-four years before that, in 1984, a 21-year-old Marc met a 30-year-old Robert, who became his business partner and best friend for life. This past February, Marc entered his fourth decade on the runway with a fall collection of after-eight wear in every available shade of \u201cdeep,\u201d littered with minks and sequins and inspired by Diana Vreeland\u2019s memos. (Imagine her now: \u201cDon\u2019t you think it would be a good idea if we did away with last names altogether?\u201d) To industry observers, the show was both a dramaturgic triumph and a commercial departure from his on-trend yet offbeat sensibility: an announcement that \u201cMarc Jacobs\u201d means serious business. The company is alleged, finally, going public within the next several months, which means the designer famous for changing his mind with the seasons may soon be bound by expectations not for newness but for quarterly earnings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was terrified last week,\u201d Mark Jacobs says when I ask how he\u2019s sleeping. \u201cI went to my shrink \u2014 it was a Wednesday morning \u2014 and I felt like I was having such a panic attack. I\u2019d had one of my nightmares. It\u2019s a recurring theme: I\u2019m up against something uncomfortable or difficult, and just as I feel like I\u2019m making some progress, there\u2019s an end to the dream that says no, you\u2019re not getting anywhere, you have to start over. This time, the nightmare was so bad that it felt like I was awake thinking about it, rather than asleep and dreaming. Which is another recurring thing, when I can\u2019t differentiate between creating a scenario and dreaming it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Marc Jacobs has been seeing shrinks since he was 7. From 11 or 12 to 19, he was raised in the Majestic, an acropolitan co-op on Central Park West, by his grandmother, Helen, who went around telling shop owners that her son\u2019s son would be \u201cthe next Calvin.\u201d She was right: Like Calvin, his name would become synonymous with youthful American sportswear, provocatively advertised. Unlike Calvin, who eventually settled into a repertoire of whistle-clean minimalism on the catwalk and heritage logo wear on the street, Marc has kept his rangy mind on \u201cnext.\u201d \u201cIf I think about the future,\u201d he says, \u201cI just become afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DelightFULL<\/a><\/p>\n

His fear is at odds with his reputation for effortlessly setting trends, yet his reputation belies his real talent: setting a trend on its head. In 1992 he showed his infamous \u201cgrunge collection\u201d for Perry Ellis, perennially cited as the reason he was fired four months later and, since being fired made him sound like a rebel, as a groundbreaking moment in fashion. \u201cI had no idea I\u2019d be fired,\u201d Marc tells me. He laughs. \u201cI\u2019d never had any idea I\u2019d be fired. But it\u2019s still my favorite collection, because it marked a time when I went with my instincts against instructions, and I turned out to be right. It came out of a genuine feeling for what I saw on the streets and all around me.\u201d Indeed, grunge was already everywhere, from the streets to the malls to the collections of two other New York designers that very same season but only Marc\u2019s dream of the zeitgeist was so lucid, so precisely appropriated from what he saw, that the zeitgeist came to look like his creation. By taking $2 flannels from St. Marks Place and copying them in silk \u2014 a trick akin to his parents\u2019 switching a \u201cc\u201d for \u201ck\u201d in his name \u2014 Marc made the familiar uncommon.<\/p>\n

From 1998 to 2013, the clothes at Marc Jacobs could be delightfully unpredictable, and the ideas behind them occasionally unclear, but the branding was crystal. Juergen shot the print ads, which starred Sofia, Harmony, Chlo\u00eb, Posh, Dakota, Winona and so on. The ads were all Juergen in their whitewashed debauchery and charm, but because Marc lent him a trust and a creative freedom that Juergen describes as unparalleled in fashion photography, they were also definitively Marc Jacobs. In contrast, the print ads for Decadence star Adriana, the veteran Victoria\u2019s Secret supermodel and the kind of unmysteriously sexy woman who was always a foil to the scatty-go-lucky \u201cMarc Jacobs girl.\u201d There\u2019s hardly a trace of what Sofia describes as a hallmark of Marc\u2019s personality: \u201ca sly smile, which shows his sense of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2013, Marc Jacobs left his 16-year tenure as the creative director at Louis Vuitton. LVMH, the parent company and a majority owner of Marc Jacobs International as well as a one-third stakeholder in the trademark, announced that Marc Jacobs International would spend the next three years preparing for an IPO. A new beauty line was launched. A new C.E.O. was installed. New designers were hired, most prominently Katie and Luella, to reinvent Marc by Marc Jacobs, which Robert had established in 2001 as a less expensive, dearly beloved kid sister to the women\u2019s wear line. (\u201cIt was supposed to be just \u2018Marc Jacobs\u2019 \u2014 like, we tried to gray out the \u2018Jacobs\u2019 on the label, but it just didn\u2019t photograph,\u201d says Marc.) Katie and Luella did by all accounts a stellar job, but last March, it was confirmed that Marc by Marc Jacobs was folding. The next day, Marc joined Instagram, a month after saying he was appalled by the whole social media thing. (\u201cIt\u2019s very addictive,\u201d he says now.) Today, Marc is not only the head designer of Marc Jacobs, which he and Robert say will absorb the range of items and price points formerly available at Marc by Marc Jacobs but also the creative director of Marc Jacobs International as a whole. He has never had more control over himself, his body, the way he lives or \u2014 ostensibly \u2014 his brand.<\/p>\n

SIX DAYS AFTER OUR LUNCH, he accidentally leaks a picture of his naked butt to the 191,000 followers he has amassed in his first month on Instagram \u2014 a picture he meant to send to a potential lover via the app\u2019s direct messaging feature \u2014 after which he responds to Tweets with a calm \u201cYeah\u2026 I\u2019m a gay man. I flirt and chat with guys online.\u201d Meanwhile, Marc Jacobs International changes its Twitter bio to the photo\u2019s caption: \u201cIt\u2019s yours to try.\u201d It is a ready-made slogan, and the entire nonissue is yet another example of Marc Jacobs and his team\u2019s historical ingenuity, like the time in 2012 they turned an image of their vandalized Paris storefront into a series of $686 T-shirts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a conflict to be both romantic and famous, and Marc Jacobs has never seemed very romantic. But he does strike me as sentimental. The fall ad campaign features many women who have been close to him for decades, including Sofia and Winona. The captions accompanying his own \u201cleaked\u201d Instagrams of the images are long and sweet. Marc says the dresses he designed for the season are not meant to be dry-cleaned and preserved in garment bags but worn out all night \u2014 a sign he is still more interested in bringing the party to American fashion in a way no designer has since Yves.<\/p>\n

When something makes Marc Jacobs feel good, he wants more of it, whether it\u2019s drugs or food or sex or exercise or making clothes or getting tattooed. One of his tattoos is an all-caps \u201cperfect\u201d on his wrist, reminding him that he\u2019s exactly who and where he\u2019s supposed to be at that moment, and that everything is good because it\u2019s there. It\u2019s really about acceptance, not perfection. He wants to make precious things that people aren\u2019t precious about. His favorite work of art is Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cL.H.O.O.Q.,\u201d the Mona Lisa with a mustache because anything is more interesting next to something that doesn\u2019t seem to match.<\/p>\n

That day at lunch, 18 cigarettes or 90-some minutes into our conversation, he tells me that he often gets d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, an experience he relates to the alternate realities of \u201cThe Matrix\u201d (1999). This, in turn, reminds him that he\u2019s a big fan of Lana, who directed the movie with her brother. During the 2000s, when Marc Jacobs was trading his schlubby, bespectacled exterior for that of a tattooed and blue-haired gym rat, Lana was practically a recluse. She was also transitioning from Larry. In 2012, she appeared for the first time as a woman in a trailer for one of her co-productions. \u201cHi,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m Lana.\u201d Later that year, she gave a reluctant, generous and self-baring speech in acceptance of the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award. She talked about her family, about the time she almost killed herself and about love. She didn\u2019t have to talk about identity. Since Marc Jacobs first saw it several months ago, he has watched it almost every week. I ask him to tell me one of her lines, and he does it verbatim: \u201cThere are some things that we have to do for ourselves, but there are other things that we do for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

A beat or two passes. He seems to be thinking about what it means. Then Lauren comes to clear the second course, and it\u2019s time for dessert.<\/p>\n

RELATED STORY: <\/strong> The Most Iconic Fashion Designs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marc Jacobs gave an incredible interview to the NEW YORK TIMES. Our team has, of course, kept a close eye on fashions trends and what\u2019s hot in the fashion world because we live and breathe fashion, it\u2019s fashion that moves us! So here it is Marc jacobs, the hottest designer right now, as you never seen it before\u2026and it\u2019s yours to ..ah\u2026read! SEE ALSO: Unique Mondays: Top 10 Fashion Collaborations HI, I\u2019M MARC,\u201d says a smiling, shortish, muscular man in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":17472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[198,658],"tags":[5179,5183,5181,5180,5186,5185,5184,5182],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delightfull.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}