ILLUSTRATION: GRACE CODDINGTON. ROBERT FAIRER; STEVEN MEISEL; JUERGEN TELLER; GETTY IMAGES; GORUNWAY; SHUTTERSTOCKhow much does this curiosity affect what I do?” he wonders.
“Or maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know that this data I’ve gathered
about how young people communicate has really changed
the way I design a backpack or an evening dress. I still want
to do it by hand. I’m still not really interested in 3D printing.
My curiosity about technology has remained something that’s
interesting for me to watch in a Netflix documentary.”
And that’s where it will stay, because it really is the hand
that counts in Jacobs’s work. What these various strands
drawing him back to reflect on his past have done is confirm
him in one singular and uplifting conviction: “I have a
definite need to make things.” It’s the joy of creation that
drives him, whether it’s a bag, a shoe, an evening gown or
the ceramic ashtrays he used to make at holiday camp when
he was a boy. “Once I would have been too f**ked up to
admit that,” he concedes, “but I really am a creative person.
I like to learn how to make something, I like that it has
some meaning. I like to share it with other people, I want
them to like it. Then I want to be admired for what I make.”
The commercial consideration is much less significant for
him. “I’d probably be happier with one person who I really
admired choosing something of mine than a million people
I didn’t care about. I don’t know that what gives me the
most pleasure is really the popular voice.”
But have three decades of being one of the designers who
define American fashion at least blessed him with a sense of
achievement? “It’s a difficult question with a simple answer,”
Jacobs responds. “Not all the time. One of my old therapists
said to me, ‘I hope you never get it right, because as long as
that’s the case, you’ll be compelled to do it again.’” He says
that he and close friend Lana Wachowski – who, as director
of the Matrix films, has specialised in the kind of cosmic
ambiguities that underpin Marc’s own trains of thought –
both have Sisyphus tattooed on their legs. Just when you
think you’ve rolled the boulder to the top of the hill, boom!- straight back to the bottom. The struggle is real. “It’s too
simplistic to say I’ve been running away from myself,” Jacobs
says. “I won’t let go of the fact that there is pain in pleasure
and pleasure in pain. And I won’t let go of the fact that I’ll
never be good enough, but I feel satisfied. It’s just a duality.
I don’t believe I will ever be one or the other.”
“Elegance is refusal” was possibly Coco Chanel’s most
famous bon mot. It seems like the sort of insight you come to
in time, so it’s appropriate that Jacobs’s latter career embodies
the notion: the naked economy of spring/summer 2019, the
perverse luxury of a bare wood catwalk running through the
cavernous darkness of the Armory from Park to Lexington,
the drama focused solely on the clothes. And then autumn/
winter 2019, again in the Armory, a tiny show in a huge space.
“One spotlit girl at a time, there was nothing else for you to
look at, so we had to have a short runway because we didn’t
want to milk the moment.” (That moment was, of course,
Christy.) “But there was just as much heart and emotion in
that show as in something like the show for Louis Vuitton
with the Daniel Buren escalators and an unlimited budget.”
He’s a past master of extravagant spectacle, but what stands
out now in Jacobs’s work is an intense intimacy – in art, as
in life. In April, he finally exchanged his vows with Charly
Defrancesco, his partner of the past three and a half years,
in the house they’ve bought in the town of Rye, just north
of New York City. A few dozen of their nearest and dearest,
the family Jacobs has made for himself, were present. The
following night, 700 more joined them for a glittering reception
in Manhattan. Did I say intimate? Well, the guests were drawn
from the many lives of Marc – in art, music, fashion and all
things after hours – and, as a microcosm of four decades of
New York’s cultural hubbub, the evening did manage to pull
off a perverse intimacy. There were tears when the tiers of
wedding cake were trundled out after a screening of the previous
day’s joy, intercut with footage of Marc and Charly goofing
off on holiday. Love was the message. Happiness reigned.
Their new house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in
the 1950s; Jacobs is looking forward to working on it. His
other preoccupation at the moment is the forthcoming launch
of a new collection: The Marc Jacobs. It ghosts the second
collection, Marc by Marc Jacobs, which was shuttered in- “That wasn’t mine or Robert’s choice,” he says, maybe
still rankled by the closure. “We’re rediscovering the spirit
in which Marc by Marc was launched, trying to find a
vocabulary to speak to the different characters that I loved
and still love. They’re our classics: the 40s dress, the glam-
rock shirt, the St Mark’s jeans.” The Marc Jacobs offers a
new opportunity for him to address what he calls “that fashion
thing that’s democratic, like the cosmetics and the fragrance
are democratic”. Two words: price issue. And that is key for
a designer who insists he’s always loved the image of a ball
gown with a flip-flop, or a Converse sneaker with a fur coat.
There’s a hope that the new collection will take the commercial
pressure off the fabulous indulgence of his signature offering.
“I’ve always been envious of designers who I like to believe
have it so figured out, like Nicolas Ghesquière or Tom Ford,”
Jacobs muses. That sounds like someone who is outside
looking in, which is surprising given that the world imagines
Jacobs as the consummately cool fashion insider. Not at all,
he insists. “I never thought of myself as cool. Cool to me
is someone dressed in black with a motorcycle jacket.”
So if he’s not cool, he’s...? After some thought, he offers,
“Insecure. It’s just an honest word for what comes to mind.”
Why am I not surprised? n
“I won’t
let go of the
fact that
I’ll never be
good enough,
but I feel
satisfied. It’s
a duality”MARC JACOBS A/W ’18MARC JACOBS S/S ’18MARC JACOBS A/W ’19MARC JACOBS S/S ’1908-19-Well-MarcJacobs.indd 149 10/06/2019 13:54