Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs, and formerly Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, which was produced for approximately 15 years, before it was discontinued after the 2015 fall/winter collection.[1] At its peak, it had over 200 retail stores in 80 countries.[2] He was the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2014. Jacobs was on Time magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world,[3] and was #14 on Out magazine's 2012 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".[4] He married his longtime partner Charly Defrancesco on April 6, 2019.[5]
This article is about the fashion designer. For other uses, see Mark Jacobs.
Marc Jacobs
April 9, 1963
- Marc Jacobs
- Marc by Marc Jacobs
- Louis Vuitton (1997–2014)
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (France)
Early life and education[edit]
Jacobs was born to a non-observant Jewish family in New York City.[6][7][8] When he was six, his father, an agent at the William Morris Agency, died. His mother, who remarried three times, was, according to Jacobs, "mentally ill" and "didn't really take care of her kids."[9] As a teenager, he went to live with his paternal grandmother on the Upper West Side, in an apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West.[10]
Jacobs grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and attended Teaneck High School.[11][12]
He developed a passion for fashion at a young age.[13]He attended the High School of Art and Design and studied at Parsons School of Design in New York.[6] While at Parsons in 1984, he won the Perry Ellis & Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award, and Design Student of the Year.[14] In 1987, he became the youngest designer ever to receive the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. He also won the Women's Designer of the Year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1993.[15]
Style[edit]
Explaining his clothes, Jacobs has said "what I prefer is that even if someone feels hedonistic, they don't look it. Curiosity about sex is much more interesting to me than domination... My clothes are not hot. Never. Never."[10] The audience for his fashion shows typically includes celebrities such as Kim Gordon and Vincent Gallo.[53] Guy Trebay, a critic for The New York Times, in response to Oscar de la Renta's comment that a coat designed by Jacobs closely resembled one that de la Renta had designed thirty years earlier, wrote that "unlike the many brand-name designers who promote the illusion that their output results from a single prodigious creativity, Mr. Jacobs makes no pretense that fashion emerges full blown from the head of one solitary genius".[54] Jacobs was one of the first fashion designers to establish this "street wise aesthetics – a [mash up of] a little preppie, a little grunge, a little couture."[21]
The Marc Jacobs brand has fine arts driven and avant-garde advertisement campaigns, often featuring a group of cultural icons and artists, in lieu of traditional fashion models in minimally staged settings and photographed by high-profile photographers. In 2015, Jacobs launched a popular lifestyle campaign that featured artists, celebrities, and cultural icons such as Sofia Coppola, Cher, Willow Smith, Winona Ryder, Daisy Lowe, and Anthony Kiedis.[55]
Jacobs revisited this approach for the Marc Jacobs Spring 2016 advertising campaign, describing the concept as a fashion story representing a "series of connected events; a visual narrative. It is a personal diary of people who have and continue to inspire me and open my mind to different ways of seeing and thinking. The spectrum of individuals photographed in our Spring/Summer 2016 ad campaign represent a celebration of my America." He further added that "the people featured in our campaign personify this collection of fashion through their individuality. Collectively, they embody and celebrate the spirit and beauty of equality." The New York Observer called it "the best campaign of the Spring 2016 season," and that "the designer [Marc Jacobs] has handpicked a star-studded cast of his family members [people who are key to the Marc Jacobs brand] to model the Americana gear from this collection," thus making the collection notable. The Marc Jacobs Spring 2016 advertising campaign featured Lana Wachowski, Sandra Bernhard, Bette Midler, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Sky Ferreira, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Vincent Michaud,[56][57] Oli Burslem, Milk, and several runway models.[58]
Personal life and causes[edit]
Jacobs has an ongoing project entitled "Protect The Skin You're In", which has celebrities pose nude, with their breasts and frontal area covered, for T-shirts to raise awareness about melanoma; all sales benefit research at the NYU Langone Medical Center. Some of the celebrities who have posed include Miley Cyrus, Eva Mendes, Kate Upton, Victoria Beckham, Heidi Klum, Hilary Swank, Cara Delevingne, Debbie McGee, and Naomi Campbell.[59]
On April 4, 2018, Jacobs proposed to his then-boyfriend, Charly Defrancesco, via a flash mob while in a Chipotle restaurant.[60][61] The flash mob did a routine to the song "Kiss" by Prince.[61] They were married in New York City on April 7, 2019.
The couple purchased a home in Rye, New York, in April 2019. The Westchester County home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is known as the Max Hoffman House.[62]
