FIFTEEN AND THEN SOME: Marc Jacobs might not think he is the new Andy Warhol, but Interview sure thinks so.
With a white mop of hair, crisp button-down shirt and tie, the designer looks mighty Warholian on the cover of the magazine's June-July double issue. White wigs and fake eyelashes aside, Jacobs does have some Warhol tendencies — the way he runs his business, his artlike advertising, stores that feel like clubs and collaborations with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince — according to Interview's Glenn O'Brien, who penned the cover story. "Andy was always talking about how new art is business art," O'Brien said.
Jacobs, who crossed paths with the Pop Art artist a few times, was floored to be the front man. But he is still not sold on the similarities. "I don't think of myself that way," he said. "Warhol is Warhol. He's practically a god. I thought, 'I'm going to get a lot of hell for this.'"
Truth be told, as a teenager, Jacobs read Interview religiously and was seduced by snapshots of Warhol's Factory. But the designer was more intrigued by their lifestyles than by any one personality in particular. "That really introduced me to that Studio 54, interesting, New York jet-setty lifestyle," Jacobs said.
He was such a devotee he often drew Richard Bernstein's Interview covers. "There was something so compelling about them. I wasn't trying to pass them off as my own," Jacobs said.
As of Thursday, Jacobs will be seeing more than quadruple, when T-shirts and tote bags imprinted with his cover shot, as well as magazines, will be splashed in the window display of his Bleecker Street store. (By chance, "Giorgio Armani" is one of the cover lines.) Proceeds from the $35 T-shirts and $15 tote bags will benefit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Jacobs has lensman Todd Eberle to thank for this particular 15 minutes of fame. He is the one who casually said to O'Brien at a dinner party, "Gee, Marc Jacobs is the new Andy Warhol," O'Brien said. "That kind of clicked in my head."
There were countless clicks during the 12-hour Paris shoot with lensman Mikael Jansson, who has pictured Jacobs in a Rellik dress and Louis Vuitton platforms, among other looks. "Even though my scalp and eyelids were completely sore, it was all worth it," Jacobs said. "It was just a ball."
In honor of what would have been Warhol's 80th birthday in August, the issue spotlights all things Andy, including photo booth shots of what "knowledgeable parties confirm" is his penis. There's also a note written by Valerie Solanas nine months before she shot him, complaining about the "gross misspelling" of her name.