Marc Jacobs - Designer

[Chanelcouture09]

 

[eugenius]

Nice make-up application between his chest.

 

[Melancholybaby]

Marc Jacobs’ Future at Louis Vuitton in Doubt

PARIS, France — Marc Jacobs may be on the verge of leaving Louis Vuitton when his contract ends next month as designer’s future at the French luxury brand remains unresolved, an industry source told Reuters.

Since joining the group in 1997 Jacobs has steered Vuitton’s growth into a global luxury brand which generates nearly 7 billion euros ($9.46 billion) of revenues a year and more than half of parent LVMH’s operating profits.

“His contract may not be renewed,” the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity, without going into further detail. The French magazine Challenges this week said his departure had already been approved internally.

Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton declined to comment on Wednesday.

The potential move comes as the brand, famous for its LV-embossed canvas bags, is trying to regain some of its lost prestige, having failed to anticipate quickly enough consumers’ move away from logo-branded products, particularly in China.

Louis Vuitton’s sales growth has slowed down to 5-6 percent this year after decades of more than 10 percent annual sales growth, driven by an aggressive international expansion and demand in Asia, where it opened shops earlier than rivals.

Uncertainty about future growth at Louis Vuitton has been weighing on the stock price of LVMH shares which have gained 7 percent since the beginning of the year while the European luxury sector has gained more than 17 percent on average.

Marc Jacobs helped develop Louis Vuitton’s women and men’s ready-to-wear lines and runs his own eponymous brand which ranks among the most profitable smaller fashion subsidiaries within LVMH, fuelled by demand in the United States and Japan.

The Marc Jacobs brand also launched in August a cosmetics products line in the United States, exclusively distributed by Sephora, LVMH’s beauty products retail chain.

“Nothing has been decided yet,” a separate industry source told Reuters about Jacobs’ contract.

On Tuesday Louis Vuitton announced it had hired Proenza Schouler accessories designer Darren Spaziani as part of its upmarket drive and efforts to beef up its high-end offering of leather bags.

Earlier this month, signs emerged that Louis Vuitton’s revamp could be yielding results as the brand’s new bags have been flying off the shelves since their summer launch, according to a Reuters survey of shops in Milan, Paris and London.

Looking ahead, names in the hat to replace Marc Jacobs include that of Nicolas Ghesquiere, a darling of fashion editors, who left Balenciaga last year after having successfully infused new life into the Kering fashion brand.

Ghesquiere is regarded as close to Delphine Arnault, Louis Vuitton’s deputy chief executive and one of LVMH’s main talent-spotters. She is also the eldest child of Bernard Arnault, founder and chief executive of LVMH and France’s richest man.

Industry sources said it was possible that Marc Jacobs’s fashion show on October 2, as part of Paris Fashion Week, could be his last.

Jacobs introduced collaborations with famous artists such as Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami and Stephen Sprouse to help make Louis Vuitton bags more relevant to fashion followers.

“Marc Jacbos has done fantastic work at Vuitton but I think that today we need to reframe the leather goods and fashion proposition which has until now mainly been focused on the bags,” a luxury goods expert said, declining to be named.

businessoffashion.com

 

[angel222]

credit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/marc-jacobs-quits-louis-vuitton_n_4028515.html

He is leaving for sure.





Marc Jacobs is leaving Louis Vuitton after 16 years with the brand -- and it's not to go to Coach. Women's Wear Daily confirmed Wednesday morning that Jacobs is exiting Vuitton to focus on an IPO for the Marc Jacobs brand, which could come some time in the next three years.
Rumors of Jacobs' exit began in June, when reports circulated that Jacobs would be leaving Vuitton to take Reed Krakoff's creative director spot at Coach. That gossip was debunked when Coach hired Stuart Vevers later that month, but buzz reignited last week during Paris Fashion Week. A source told Reuters, "His contract may not be renewed," and Fashionista wrote that their sources cited Nicolas Ghesquière, formerly of Balenciaga, as Jacobs' Vuitton replacement.
WWD reports today that Ghesquière is not confirmed in the new role, though he remains a frontrunner. But Jacobs as well as his business partner Robert Duffy are most certainly exiting Vuitton after nearly two memorable decades, a decision that marks the official start of Jacobs' IPO.
The move to go public follows several similar decisions by high-profile fashion brands. Prada raised $2.14 billion in its initial public offering back in June 2011, and Michael Kors followed suit to much fanfare that December with a buzzed-about IPO that raised $944 million. As of late, brands such as Tory Burch, J Brand, Valextra and Furla have all been floated as the next big fashion IPO.
Clearly, Marc Jacobs dwarfs them all. According to WWD, "LVMH officials believe the Marc Jacobs business could explode given sufficient investment and support, including the undivided attention of Jacobs and Duffy." Duffy's Vuitton contract is also set to expire in 2014 along with Jacobs'.
So what will an IPO mean for the company we all know and adore -- and what will happen to Louis Vuitton? That remains to be seen. Keep your eyes peeled as Vuitton seeks to fill Jacobs' very large, very stylish shoes and read more at WWD.com.

 

[Littleathquakes]

Excited about NG

 

[Nymphaea]

Excited about NG

Me too!!! Can't wait!

 

[aaronboomz]

where can i find marc jacobs' first collection for vuitton! i think its spring 1998

 

[VersaceVixen009]

If NG does happen to take Marc's place, I think it'll very interesting to see how he tackles accessories. He's always been known for his intricacy in his work and to see that transpire into accessories will be very interesting to watch.

 

[Vitamine W]

Maybe this is the thread for some gossiping re:Marc. Im pretty sure half of the community knows this story, but Marc Jacob's departure and consequently Nicholas GH. instatement as creative director at LV has been in the works for almost over a year. They call it a 'soft' firing of Marc, not extending the contract. Allegedly Marc himself was to blame and LV couldn't risk possible PR damage. This is the version that is doing the rounds in Paris.B)

 

[Benn98]

Marc Jacobs to Close London Store and Other European Outposts

As other luxury brands scale up their direct-to-consumer channels, the struggling LVMH-owned fashion house will significantly shrink its European retail presence.

LONDON, United Kingdom — As other luxury brands shift their focus away from wholesale and scale up their direct-to-consumer channels, BoF has learned that Marc Jacobs is set to close its last remaining London store on Mayfair’s Mount Street. Other European retail outposts are to follow, multiple sources said. The details of which other stores will be closed are not yet known, although the LVMH-owned fashion house currently operates retail stores in Denmark, Italy, Norway and Luxembourg, according to its website. The Paris location on Rue Saint Honoré will remain open, according to sources familiar with the business.

A spokesperson for LVMH declined to comment on this story.

While Marc Jacobs will maintain a physical presence in London through its wholesale partnerships with multi-brand retailers including Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, the Mount Street closing is symbolic for the neighborhood. The area's transformation from Mayfair backwater to luxury ground zero, home to top brands like Céline and Balenciaga, was kicked off by the opening of Marc Jacobs in 2007.

The new closures are the latest in a string for the Marc Jacobs brand, which has, over the past four years, shut down all of its Marc by Marc Jacobs stores, as well as some main line Marc Jacobs locations. At present, Marc Jacobs' retail network consists of four Marc Jacobs stores, one Bookmarc bookstore and four outlet stores in the US, as well as international stores and outlets in countries including Japan, Malaysia and China.

The streamlining is part of a larger restructuring at the brand, which has endured losses since its founder and designer exited his post as women's artistic director of Louis Vuitton at the end of 2013. At the time, the Marc Jacobs label was said to be on track to spin off from parent company LVMH and complete an initial public offering that would put it on par with Michael Kors.

During LVMH’s annual meeting in April 2014, chief executive Bernard Arnault said the Marc Jacobs business was generating a billion dollars a year in retail revenue, thought to include royalties from its partnership with Coty, which manufactures and distributes Marc Jacobs fragrances.

However, Marc Jacobs’ consolidated retail revenues, not including fragrance, have more than halved in the past three-to-four years, dropping from around $650 million to about $300 million, according to a source familiar with the business. (Industry analysts have also published similar estimates.) A significant proportion — from a quarter to a third — of Marc Jacobs' retail sales are generated by outlets, where the brand’s clothing and accessories are sold at a discount.

The drop in revenue can be traced to 2015, when LVMH announced its decision to unify Marc by Marc Jacobs and the main collection under a single brand umbrella, with British designer Luella Bartley and (accessories guru) Katie Hillier — who were hired in 2013 to craft a refreshed identity and product offering for the company's second line — leaving their posts. (Hillier continued to consult on accessories.)

Previously, Marc by Marc Jacobs’ bags, with price tags often under $500, allowed the brand to tap the then-growing demand for accessible luxury brands, competing with rivals such as Longchamp and Michael Kors. Launched in 2001, Marc by Marc Jacobs was once considered one the most profitable fashion subsidiaries of LVMH, enjoying strong demand in the United States and Japan. The line once accounted for about 80 percent of the brand’s revenue, according to analyst estimates. Collapsing the mid-range and high-end labels seemed to have confused consumers.

The brand unification has resulted in store closures both Stateside and in Europe, including several on Bleecker Street in New York, the brand's Bookmarc outpost on Melrose Place in West Hollywood and a Marc by Marc Jacobs store on London's South Audley Street.

However, the closure of the London flagship indicates deeper problems within the business that go beyond the restructuring. For the past two seasons, Jacobs has completely stripped back his once-elaborate runway shows, presenting at the Park Avenue Armory, where he has used the bare wooden floor as the catwalk and school-assembly-style folding chairs for seating. The approach was couched in the press as a creative decision, but is also a way of cutting costs.

Chief executive Eric Marechalle, who joined from Kenzo in July, replacing Sebastian Suhl, has been tasked with bringing back some "fun" into the brand, according to a source. Marechalle was the business brains behind the successful revamp of Kenzo, which he ran alongside co-creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. Marc Jacobs Beauty, which is part of the LVMH-controlled incubator Kendo, and its fragrance line continue to generate significant revenues.

LVMH has an 80 percent stake in Marc Jacobs. The rest of the company remains in the hands of the designer and his business partner Robert Duffy. Ownership of the brand's trademark is equally split between the group, Jacobs and Duffy.

Source: Businessoffashion.com

 

[Benn98]

Bridget Foley’s Diary

Catching up with Marc Jacobs on his latest launch.

• WWD Digital Daily
• 30 May 2019

It has been teased since December, most recently on Tuesday night when Marc Jacobs posted three new photographs to Instagram. Today, the designer’s new collection, THE Marc Jacobs, debuts at retail.

The launch marks a major milestone for the Jacobs brand. The timing seems perfect, Jacobs having put together a string of strong runway collections, including fall’s masterful outing, along with an interlude that fascinated across generations, in the form of resort 2019’s look-for-look redux of the seminal grunge collection he designed for Perry Ellis for spring 1993. That collection got the wheels turning for THE Marc Jacobs, which, for those familiar with the history of the designer and his brand, registers as something of a redux itself. Not in line-for line reissues (although there is an archival component), but in its positioning both within the greater market and within the Marc Jacobs brand itself.

“I want either a beautifully made version of a very simple thing or I want something very out there. That’s it, that’s what I like,” Jacobs said during a phone chat on Tuesday afternoon, describing his consumer approach to fashion.

The dichotomy applies as well to his long-standing vision of his work. He and his, longtime business partner Robert Duffy, with whom Jacobs launched the business, always believed in the validity of a striated product range. They wanted to do dazzling runway collections, “whatever they were, whatever price, no matter what, for whomever could enjoy them on whatever level.” They also wanted to make more accessible clothes that resonated with integrity and value at their own price level and were consistent with the Jacobs aesthetic and ethos. Enter Marc by Marc Jacobs. Cue a series of revisions and miscues. Exit Marc by Marc Jacobs. Sunrise, sunset…

The Marc Jacobs is structured as was Marc by Marc when originally conceived— a collection of far-flung basics to mix and match with each other or whatever the heck suits one’s fancy. To that end, no season or delivery will be built on an underlying story premise. Rather, the campaign photography creates the story. Shot by Hugo Scott and styled by Lotta Volkova, the inaugural effort features various sets of twins, a lot charming and a little eerie, working a broad range of looks styled from the collection’s impressive range: girlish slipdresses over bi-color hose; vintage-y leopard-spotted coats over Forties-style dresses; sensible dirndl skirts paired to Peanuts sweatshirts, comfy grunge-sweater-and-pants combos.

“We always believed that we wanted to make fashionable clothes at different price points, and we wanted to reach different people with them,” Jacobs said. To his last point, Jacobs’ twins roster suggests success. But the returns aren’t in. “I’m very excited about this launch,” Jacobs said, “and to see how people respond.”

WWD: The “THE” Marc Jacobs retail launch is here. Tell me about it.

Marc Jacobs: We’re launching online, on Madison [the brand’s Madison Avenue store], and in wholesale accounts [today]. We have a pop-up store opening in SoHo on Greene Street, on June 4, and then the party on June 12.

WWD: How did you structure the collection?

M. J.: I struggle [to describe it] a little bit. I won’t struggle with you because you know our history so it’s very easy to explain. Something that Robert Duffy and I have always believed in and always wanted to do, we wanted to do our runway collections, whatever they were, whatever price, no matter what, for whomever could enjoy them on whatever level. With basically no holds barred, right?

We also always believed that we wanted to make fashionable clothes at different price points, and we wanted to reach different people with them. We wanted to maintain the integrity and the creativity in all the things we did at any of those prices. So whether it’s [a runway dress] or a $25 flip-flop. This goes back in our history, I mean obviously, clearly referencing Marc by Marc and the Special Items that Robert did with his team inspired by the spirit of what we did.

So I think emotionally for me, first of all, THE is based on the idea of describing the item that it is. When we first started talking about this collection, we knew that would include collaborations and Special Items, for lack of a better word — key rings or compacts or T-shirts or sweatshirts or coffee mugs or archival things that we’ve brought back and recolored or changed, or a collaborative curated selection with Sofia Coppola [Sofia Loves], or whatever we could dream of that would range in price. Philosophically, this was going to be a renewal or a restart of all of these things that Robert and I encapsulated in early Marc by Marc and the Special Items.

WWD: This new structure: Runway, Trade•Marc. It sounds like a direct parallel to Marc Jacobs, Marc by Marc, Special Items..

M. J.: Yes, yes, it is.

WWD: Is it an acknowledgement that maybe that original structure wasn’t such a bad thing?

M. J.: Well, I never thought the structure was such a bad thing.

WWD: I know you didn’t.

M. J.: I’m not going to point fingers or name names. But what we did, and we did very well, especially when it started and it was quote-unquote, unpolluted — theoretically, I think what we did was always the right thing for this company to be doing. And not because it was something that was marketable or that made a lot of money. That was good, of course, and it helped us to continue doing Runway and the things we wanted to do at that level. But it was more that this is what our belief was.

I love a designer coat over a pair of sweatpants. But I love the sweatpants to cost what the sweatpants cost. We’re not talking about cashmere sweatpants, we’re talking about cotton sweatpants with a print on them, or wearing flip-flops or canvas sneakers with an evening dress. I have always liked that aesthetic, and Robert has always supported that.

That was kind of what grunge was. Of course, all on a designer price level, but theoretically it was something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. And collaborations with Converse and Birkenstock, and things that we found in thrift shops that we remade in our way. It was things that we loved, things that inspired us.

That was a very long time ago collection, but it did have all of the bits of what in some way we’ve continued to do since then. And when we had this idea of Marc by Marc, it was originally just called

Marc Jacobs and the Jacobs was blacked out. But it was very hard to report about that because you could say it but you couldn’t print it, and we couldn’t own the name Marc.

Originally, it was our theory, Robert’s and mine, that there was Marc Jacobs, then there was Marc and then there was MJ. And within those three things, we could collaborate with people on items of different price points. It would allow us to make things that were outside the realm of fashion, and each one of them would have their place. And we had all of these little stores, some of which would offer all of it and some which would offer specific parts of it.

It was a very loose concept but very easy to work with. Because it was very freeing to say, “we can make USB sticks, and we can make compacts, and we can make cashmere coats, and we can make evening dresses, and we can make shrunken denim jackets.” It just allowed us to do everything and kind of — what’s the word? — justify making anything and everything we wanted.

WWD: Is it exciting to come back to that now?

M. J.: It has never not been exciting. But what I think is particularly exciting now is that it just seems that hopefully, there’s an understanding, an appreciation of that [concept] that doesn’t need the explaining or the defending that it probably did when we started Marc by Marc.

I think we kind of proved a long time ago that it was valid. But it was valid in its conception. Again, I don’t want to play the blame game, but when department store merchandisers and product supervisors and everybody came in and decided that we should make this for this department store and that for that, it was no longer what we envisioned it to be. It was everybody adding what they wanted based on what somebody else was doing. That, of course, was a recipe for markdowns. Markdowns — no pun intended.

WWD: The press release lists what you’re offering in various categories — The Clothes, The Shoes, M Archives. There’s so much there. Is it going to be a series of items from which a customer picks and chooses?

M. J.: That’s the intention. I think it might take a little bit of time to figure out how we break [the seasons]. Here, we’re still on that schedule of five seasons. Maybe when THE becomes up-and-rolling, there are five main deliveries but then also biweekly things and monthly things. That will rely heavily on what kind of online connection we have and what kind of production abilities, or the kind of pre-commitments to certain things.

Everybody dreams of having this new system or way of doing things, but that requires a bit of learning and a bit of trial and error. The base here is still two main collections a year for THE, which will offer a group of items, which will also include collaborations. The collaborations [in the launch collection] are Schott motorcycle and Peanuts and Porthault. There were a few in there.

WWD: Sofia. Stutterheim. New York Magazine. Stephen Jones.

M. J.: Yes. So there were several in there. And then we will also do this Trade•Marc which, again, I don’t think needs to be two [seasons]. It can be something new every month. But it’s very hard to break out of the rigidity of how these markets are set up. Until there’s a different system of selling and a different system of production and a different system of distribution, unless it’s just that there’s stuff available monthly that’s only available online.

Again, I don’t know about online selling. I have never bought anything online, so it’s a little foreign to me. But I know that we are going to great lengths and we are working with some really fantastic people on changing what I call “the web store,” and trying to make that an easy thing to — what is [the word]? I don’t even know the words that all those people use…Navigate?

WWD: Navigate.

M. J.: Not a word I’d normally use, but an easy thing to navigate. And also something that offers an experience that I guess people who shop online look for.

WWD: The clothes themselves — two primary seasons, but item driven?

M. J.: The collections are comprised of items. It’s not a collection where there’s an undercurrent of one thing that permeates everything. It’s a group of items that can be worn together as we’ve styled them or taken apart and worn individually. That’s what I mean by items. That eclectic feeling of putting things together was a part of the early days of Marc by Marc, when I loved it. You had like a jeans skirt and a more democratically priced designer jacket that emulated the spirit of what we did in collection.

WWD: The press release lists so many items — the blouse, the romantic blouse, the men’s shirt, the thermal. I imagine many will carry through from one season to the next.

M. J.: Yes. So “THE” became a device to talk about an item, sometimes a generic thing like THE blouse. We’ve always had a blouse in a collection, we’ve always had a hoodie. And then it gets more specific, like THE Forties dress. We’ve always had a Forties-style dress, which you could call the grunge. It’s one of the things we’ve revisited every season. So it could be long-sleeve, short-sleeve, printed, not printed, it could be embroidered, longer, shorter, whatever. There’s a placeholder for that item we’ve always loved. So yes, some things will carry over because most things we do carry over in some way. And then some things will be just repeated, more driven by people’s reception, the customer’s reception to it.

We stand behind certain things. And there are times, if the customer decides they want [an item] again and again and again, then we know how to continue to refresh it and give it to them again without it becoming [boring].

WWD: Tell me about the collaborations. Are they all one-season collaborations?

M. J.: We will continue the Schott collaboration [Schott x Marc Jacobs]. Schott is a great collaborator who I really love. I mean, they’ve made the perfect motorcycle jacket, you can’t get more authentic than that. They are willing and happy to collaborate or continue to collaborate with us when we want a motorcycle jacket with some authenticity or something derived from that. So I think that’s one thing. The Sofia Loves is an ongoing thing which she will curate. She curates basically from her closet, the things she’s bought and loved over the years.

WWD: How many items a season will you do from Sofia?

M. J:. It depends. Again, the idea is not to make something so rigid with this; it’s to allow freedom. It’s what she loves [at a given moment]. What was so beautiful again about Marc by Marc in the beginning, and sorry to harp on it, was that it was instinctive. We went with our instincts and allowed ourselves the freedom to do what we wanted, not get dictated to by a bunch of rigid ideas about what marketing and production and everything needed to be or should be, quote/unquote.

WWD: How did you come up with this list of collaborators?

M. J.: The collaborations were based on things we wanted to make. I love the idea of that Morton Salt Girl raincoat. Stutterheim, they make a great little A-line raincoat. And I said, “let’s not do that [ourselves]. Let’s go to the people who do that, and work with them and make that ours.”

The same thing with the motorcycle jacket. Who would the best person be to go to? Schott. [The inaugural version is pink.] We wanted to do these vintage-looking Peanut sweatshirts. Well then, we need to collaborate with Peanuts and so on and so forth. And then for the Marc Jacobs New York logo, we were inspired by Milton Glaser’s New York Magazine logo, so we went to him.

WWD: What about D. Porthault?

M. J.: Porthault has done all my table linens and all my sheets since I moved to Paris and Lee Radziwill recommended I work with them. She turned me onto them and I’ve had this affair with them ever since.

And then Olympia [Le-Tan] was like, “I love their prints.” We were talking about doing boudoir-inspired pieces, and she had this idea of asking if we could use their prints. And Porthault Europe (Porthault America, I think, was a different thing) was very, very excited by it and they allowed us to use their archive prints. They told us the story behind each one. We enlarged them and changed them a little bit to suit the pieces we were making, all with their approval.

WWD: And obviously, you worked with [milliner] Stephen Jones for years starting in 2001. Which collection was that?

M. J.: I don’t know what collection was 2001. We can find out. What collection was 2001? Quick, somebody!

WWD: Will the collaborations commingle or are they all separate? I know there’s a Snoopy charm on the Schott jacket.

M. J.: They’re all pretty separate. What happened [with the jacket ] was we developed this really cute little Snoopy charm, and when we had this pink leather motorcycle jacket with the logo lining, I was like, “we should just hang a charm off the zipper pull,” which is not something that I haven’t seen before.

I remember back in the days of St. Mark’s Place, during the punk scene, when everybody wore motorcycle jackets, people would put either a rabbit’s foot or a charm at the end of the zipper. Like a jeans jacket, I’ve always felt a motorcycle jacket is like a blank canvas for one to customize.

WWD: Will the collaborations have separate labels?

M.J.: They all have labels that mark the collaboration. [With the exception of Sofia Loves, the format is New York Magazine x Marc Jacobs, D. Schott x Marc Jacobs, etc.] So we created a little bit of a vocabulary. Peter Miles [the art director] who we collaborated with for our logo and has worked with us for ages, recently updated our logo, made it.

WWD

 

[fizfizfiz]

Hello everyone,

In a recent Instagram post, Marc Jacobs wrote a lengthy passage on a deceased friend he calls Johnny Love (or is it Iove?). He seems to be really influenced by him.

Does anyone know if this man had a link with the fashion world?

Thank you in advance for your help and time.

 

[KoV]

John Reinhold. Art collector and diamond dealer, and from what I understand just a New York fixture - part of Andy Warhol's cohort.

 

[fizfizfiz]

John Reinhold. Art collector and diamond dealer, and from what I understand just a New York fixture - part of Andy Warhol's cohort.

Thank you so much. I guess the "Love" or "Iove" moniker appearing in the post text was actually a term of endearment.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[RaisinBoy]

Marc is so funny! He should do a TV hour, like MTV style or something. Not sure if his clothes mean anything to anyone any more. He’s so charming though.

 

[GoldenTribe]

Can we just pause to marvel at the powerful and incisive intellect, drawing on decades of industry expertise, that came up with this brilliantly articulated, penetrating question:

WWD: There’s so much there. Is it going to be a series of items from which a customer picks and chooses?

The only thing more astonishingly original than the query is the unprecedented notion of creating "a series of items from which a customer picks and chooses"; welcome to the future, consumers!

I am in awe.

 

[Steddycam91]

Random thought: What if Miuccia ditched Raf and brought on Marc as her co-creative director at Prada? Marc has always been open about his admiration for Miuccia, and for a long time there was this amusing sort of interplay between their collections, especially during the early 2010s. Seeing that his mainline is touch-and-go and Heaven is basically just Y2K-heavy licensing deals, it would be incredible to see him tap back into that nostalgic minimalist sportswear look that he seemingly promised to return to with F/W 2020. I feel like he could also help inject Prada with a romanticism and a genuine sense of humor again, two things that seemingly escape Raf...

 

[Kimihiro]

Random thought: What if Miuccia ditched Raf and brought on Marc as her co-creative director at Prada? Marc has always been open about his admiration for Miuccia, and for a long time there was this amusing sort of interplay between their collections, especially during the early 2010s. Seeing that his mainline is touch-and-go and Heaven is basically just Y2K-heavy licensing deals, it would be incredible to see him tap back into that nostalgic minimalist sportswear look that he seemingly promised to return to with F/W 2020. I feel like he could also help inject Prada with a romanticism and a genuine sense of humor again, two things that seemingly escape Raf...

Yes. I’d rather have Marc at Prada. He has the knack for merchandising which they desperately cling to but without the heavy handedness that descended to the Prada collections of late. You could be intellectual but fun. Prada used to be fun. Now it’s a bit too sterile.

 

[Drusilla_]

Yes. I’d rather have Marc at Prada. He has the knack for merchandising which they desperately cling to but without the heavy handedness that descended to the Prada collections of late. You could be intellectual but fun. Prada used to be fun. Now it’s a bit too sterile.

Marc is an open and enthusiastic Miuccia fanboy but I can't see this working any better than Raf, for the opposite reason - where Raf can be a touch too sterile, Marc has the humour but and I'm not sure he can nail that rarefied air that's a classic Prada trait. Raf has that but lacks the humour (and I think the theory is that Miuccia is meant to balance that).

Heaven is such a waste of his talents, it barely feels like him since it's Ava Nirui's thing anyway. Which was not the case in the 00s when Marc by Marc Jacobs was still around and even simple tote bags and accessories that retailed at a lower/more accessible price point, like the fruit pendant watches, still felt like they belonged to the same line as what ended up on the runway. Even the prices weren't that bad, he had in-demand bags too (both at MJ and LV), the main problem is that he was the king of daywear for the 'downtown cool-girl' set that decade and eventually Urban Outfitters, Topshop etc just got too good at copying that vintage-influenced aesthetic he had in that decade.

 

[Drusilla_]

Is Marc's mainline stuff still exclusive to Bergdorf's, btw? For anyone who knows.