Marc Jacobs Doesn't Give a F***
We've witnessed his total physical transformation, read his increasingly outspoken comments, and wondered: What makes a highly successful man who's the creative vision behind a $5 billion business resolve to change his body, dye his hair blue, date a former escort, and start speaking his mind? Well, ask the man himself
by lucy kaylin
Photograph by Martin Schoeller
chances are that over the past few weeks, Marc Jacobs has done something outrageous. Maybe he’s at the center of a Spitzer-sized sex scandal or tapped Flavor Flav to be the new face of Louis Vuitton. There’s no evidence, as yet, of either, but the way the perfectly zany Jacobs narrative is hurtling along, anything seems possible. Consider the highlights of the past year: a p*rn star crowing online about threesomes with Jacobs and Jacobs’s former-escort boyfriend; a tune-up in rehab; allegations that his line paid bribes for use of New York’s 26th Street Armory for his shows; then starting those shows at least two hours late, turning the normally adoring fashion press into a pitchfork-wielding mob.
And yet nothing has created a greater stir than his startling new look. Where he once had long greasy locks and the pallor of a shut-in, he now, at 45, has an iridescent blue crop, honking Harry Winston diamond studs, a gallery of tattoos, and a painstakingly ripped bod. After years of hiding in baggy sweatshirts while contemplating the beauty of others—of pondering any human facade but his own—Jacobs has discovered the consuming joy of narcissism. It’s his new addiction. Some would say, his midlife crisis.
“I don’t feel like I’m in crisis, and I don’t know that it’s the middle of my life,” Jacobs says, looking a little like Jeff Goldblum circa The Fly—large, dark, worried eyes weirdly belied by a dome physique. It’s a measure of how closely he is watched and the stir he has caused that even a self-described attention wh*re like Jacobs is starting to weary of the scrutiny. “Why is there this division all of a sudden between people in support of me and people against me? How did this happen? I haven’t done anything to anybody! I look at Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano—everybody has their shtick. And just because this wasn’t my shtick two years ago, it’s a problem.”
As Jacobs tells it, before now he simply had no budget in his psyche for self-maintenance: “I didn’t care what I looked like, because I knew I’d be on the floor picking up pins or drawing all day.” It’s a Friday afternoon in his cluttered, loftlike office in SoHo where boxes of Wheat Thins are stashed next to packs of Marlboro Lights and cheapo lighters. His hair juts like a Mohawk—the effect is thrusting, roosterish, in contrast to the Pre-Raphaelite languor of the long-haired Marc Jacobs in the photo on the wall behind him. “I thought, Who cares about my appearance? They only care about what I’m making.”
Then he got the existential b*tch-slap of ulcerative colitis, the disease that led to his father’s death when Jacobs was only 7. A nutritionist, Lindsey Duncan, recommended a monastic diet—no flour, dairy, sugar, or caffeine—as well as exercise. Jacobs was so enamored of the results he made the regimen his religion.
“The thing I love about the gym is not having to make choices,” he notes. “My trainer says, ‘You’re gonna lift this; you’re gonna do that ten times.’ Okay, great—just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. It’s the same thing with my nutritionist. All I have to do is follow instructions. I love that. This is not about ‘Would it be better in red or blue?’ There isn’t a lot of abstract, circular thinking involved. And it’s great. Those times are really nice for me.”
Because it’s hard being the decider—the face of a $5 billion business, the guy whose whims about pants width and buttons and colors can create an enormously lucrative global ripple. It’s hard being him. Torture, actually, much of the time.
But how can he be both a messiah and a mess? How can an industry titan, the most important person in fashion, be so fragile? Or is the fragility endemic to the success, the very thing that keeps us so riveted?
For a fixture in the haughtiest of worlds, Jacobs is curiously grounded about his work—he bristles when what he does is referred to as art. Whereas his competitors shroud themselves in mystique, Jacobs serves up his flaws and insecurities like canapés. “There are those gray, rainy days where it’s sad and you just think, God, I’m so lonely and it’s such a big world and there’s so much to do,” he says. According to Jacobs’s business partner of twenty-five years, Robert Duffy, “Marc is a very emotional person, and he takes his work extremely seriously. Some days it’s hard and some days it’s not—it depends on his mood swings. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with a drug addict,” Duffy tells me over the phone while Jacobs sketches a shoe a few feet away. “Even though he’s been in recovery now for a while, it’s not an easy process. There’s the continual process of staying sober.”
Jacobs’s father was an agent at William Morris and his mother a receptionist. (His uncle was the president of the company, and Jacobs worked in the legendary mailroom during high school.) When I ask him what he remembers about his father, he rests his chin in his hand and stares off. There was a trip to Puerto Rico, to the circus… And then he was gone. Thus began a chaotic period of power dating and failed marriages for his mother.
Naturally, it’s the clothes he remembers best. “I hate the term ‘bad taste,’ but my mother wasn’t, like, a very chic person,” he says. “Jane Fonda in Klute was definitely one of her role models, much to my father’s dismay. But when I’d watch my mother getting dressed up to go out on dates and she’d be putting on three rows of false eyelashes and some hideous fox-trimmed brocade coat with a wet-look miniskirt and knee-high boots, I thought she was fabulous.”
The feeling wouldn’t last. After she relocated to be with one husband or another, Jacobs went to live with his grandmother in Manhattan, where he attended the High School of Art and Design. At a certain point he cut ties to his mother, as well as to his brother and sister, both of whom, he says, couldn’t be less like him. Jacobs says they reached out some years ago—to borrow money. “But that’s just a little detail from a story that’s way more complicated,” he notes.
I cast around, trying to figure out what could have happened. Did they have a problem with his being gay? I ask.
Jacobs scoffs at the suggestion—as if it were anything that simple.
We've witnessed his total physical transformation, read his increasingly outspoken comments, and wondered: What makes a highly successful man who's the creative vision behind a $5 billion business resolve to change his body, dye his hair blue, date a former escort, and start speaking his mind? Well, ask the man himself
by lucy kaylin
Photograph by Martin Schoeller
chances are that over the past few weeks, Marc Jacobs has done something outrageous. Maybe he’s at the center of a Spitzer-sized sex scandal or tapped Flavor Flav to be the new face of Louis Vuitton. There’s no evidence, as yet, of either, but the way the perfectly zany Jacobs narrative is hurtling along, anything seems possible. Consider the highlights of the past year: a p*rn star crowing online about threesomes with Jacobs and Jacobs’s former-escort boyfriend; a tune-up in rehab; allegations that his line paid bribes for use of New York’s 26th Street Armory for his shows; then starting those shows at least two hours late, turning the normally adoring fashion press into a pitchfork-wielding mob.
And yet nothing has created a greater stir than his startling new look. Where he once had long greasy locks and the pallor of a shut-in, he now, at 45, has an iridescent blue crop, honking Harry Winston diamond studs, a gallery of tattoos, and a painstakingly ripped bod. After years of hiding in baggy sweatshirts while contemplating the beauty of others—of pondering any human facade but his own—Jacobs has discovered the consuming joy of narcissism. It’s his new addiction. Some would say, his midlife crisis.
“I don’t feel like I’m in crisis, and I don’t know that it’s the middle of my life,” Jacobs says, looking a little like Jeff Goldblum circa The Fly—large, dark, worried eyes weirdly belied by a dome physique. It’s a measure of how closely he is watched and the stir he has caused that even a self-described attention wh*re like Jacobs is starting to weary of the scrutiny. “Why is there this division all of a sudden between people in support of me and people against me? How did this happen? I haven’t done anything to anybody! I look at Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano—everybody has their shtick. And just because this wasn’t my shtick two years ago, it’s a problem.”
As Jacobs tells it, before now he simply had no budget in his psyche for self-maintenance: “I didn’t care what I looked like, because I knew I’d be on the floor picking up pins or drawing all day.” It’s a Friday afternoon in his cluttered, loftlike office in SoHo where boxes of Wheat Thins are stashed next to packs of Marlboro Lights and cheapo lighters. His hair juts like a Mohawk—the effect is thrusting, roosterish, in contrast to the Pre-Raphaelite languor of the long-haired Marc Jacobs in the photo on the wall behind him. “I thought, Who cares about my appearance? They only care about what I’m making.”
Then he got the existential b*tch-slap of ulcerative colitis, the disease that led to his father’s death when Jacobs was only 7. A nutritionist, Lindsey Duncan, recommended a monastic diet—no flour, dairy, sugar, or caffeine—as well as exercise. Jacobs was so enamored of the results he made the regimen his religion.
“The thing I love about the gym is not having to make choices,” he notes. “My trainer says, ‘You’re gonna lift this; you’re gonna do that ten times.’ Okay, great—just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. It’s the same thing with my nutritionist. All I have to do is follow instructions. I love that. This is not about ‘Would it be better in red or blue?’ There isn’t a lot of abstract, circular thinking involved. And it’s great. Those times are really nice for me.”
Because it’s hard being the decider—the face of a $5 billion business, the guy whose whims about pants width and buttons and colors can create an enormously lucrative global ripple. It’s hard being him. Torture, actually, much of the time.
*****
for years now, the Jacobs universe has been where everyone wanted to be. It radiates from that simple, ubiquitous sans-serif logo—a guilelessness, a downtown ease that never postures or preens. Consider the Jacobs signatures—retro cardigans and high-water pants with trainers for guys who look like they’ve actually read a book; slouchy, deconstructed sweaters worn with long, bulky skirts and flats for girls who don’t lead with their t*ts. The statement-making bags, the glamorizing of grunge, the pairing of fashion and anime…. If Ralph Lauren is a lifestyle, Marc Jacobs is an ethos. With his pitch-perfect instincts—say, using laconic, large-nosed Sofia Coppola in grainy, era-defining ads—he exerts an almost messianic pull. But how can he be both a messiah and a mess? How can an industry titan, the most important person in fashion, be so fragile? Or is the fragility endemic to the success, the very thing that keeps us so riveted?
For a fixture in the haughtiest of worlds, Jacobs is curiously grounded about his work—he bristles when what he does is referred to as art. Whereas his competitors shroud themselves in mystique, Jacobs serves up his flaws and insecurities like canapés. “There are those gray, rainy days where it’s sad and you just think, God, I’m so lonely and it’s such a big world and there’s so much to do,” he says. According to Jacobs’s business partner of twenty-five years, Robert Duffy, “Marc is a very emotional person, and he takes his work extremely seriously. Some days it’s hard and some days it’s not—it depends on his mood swings. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with a drug addict,” Duffy tells me over the phone while Jacobs sketches a shoe a few feet away. “Even though he’s been in recovery now for a while, it’s not an easy process. There’s the continual process of staying sober.”
Jacobs’s father was an agent at William Morris and his mother a receptionist. (His uncle was the president of the company, and Jacobs worked in the legendary mailroom during high school.) When I ask him what he remembers about his father, he rests his chin in his hand and stares off. There was a trip to Puerto Rico, to the circus… And then he was gone. Thus began a chaotic period of power dating and failed marriages for his mother.
Naturally, it’s the clothes he remembers best. “I hate the term ‘bad taste,’ but my mother wasn’t, like, a very chic person,” he says. “Jane Fonda in Klute was definitely one of her role models, much to my father’s dismay. But when I’d watch my mother getting dressed up to go out on dates and she’d be putting on three rows of false eyelashes and some hideous fox-trimmed brocade coat with a wet-look miniskirt and knee-high boots, I thought she was fabulous.”
The feeling wouldn’t last. After she relocated to be with one husband or another, Jacobs went to live with his grandmother in Manhattan, where he attended the High School of Art and Design. At a certain point he cut ties to his mother, as well as to his brother and sister, both of whom, he says, couldn’t be less like him. Jacobs says they reached out some years ago—to borrow money. “But that’s just a little detail from a story that’s way more complicated,” he notes.
I cast around, trying to figure out what could have happened. Did they have a problem with his being gay? I ask.
Jacobs scoffs at the suggestion—as if it were anything that simple.
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