Marc Jacobs F/W 2016.17 New York

[lelaid]

He blew everyone else in NY out of the water, bottom line.

 

[jescajade]

^yep still Katie Grand styling the show. It's definitely a collection intended to sell the accessories. As per Marc saves NYFW and this was a pretty dreadful season, it was a great show, I do wonder though how much praise Marc would get if the rest of the weeks wasn't so dire.

 

[Mrs.Smith]

At the beginning I was way too distracted by the make-up and those boots, but I got into it after a while. Must also say, I was so scared we'd have to see some ankles break.. When it was over I felt like it had been my favourite show of this nyfw, but like the others said, this season this was hardly an achievement...

 

[TREVOFASHIONISTO]

it felt too extreme for me. It was like an anime on steroids.

 

[Phuel]

I get that this all is so not NYC RTW and that's why it’s generating buzz and excitement. But it’s just such a blatant copy (rip-off?) of Galliano’s recent Margiela HC presentation, down to the sterile environment. And whereas Galliano brought something fresh to that sort of tiresome gothy, even clownly fascination high fashion surprisingly still has, even though it’s become such mainstay with tweens, Marc’s version really didn’t offer anything fresh to me. The girls literally look like Corpse Bride-meets- Monster High dolls to me (with a dash of Chola thrown in), with the oversized and ballooning dresses and coats— and coatdresses.

Familiarity and tired styling aside, there are some really great Marc signature pieces there: the lace dresses, the patented dresses and the darkly trinket-embellished separates are amazing. I always preferred Marc when he’s closer to his Americana/ NYC-Warhol roots, like in his last collection than when he’s cosplaying Comme and Gallinao. His brand of trashy, kitschy but always undeniably sharp chic is so much more genuine than this goth costume ball to me.

 

[Fiercification]

^ Completely agree with you. I am a big Marc fan; his sublime F/W 15 collection and brash yet varied and exciting S/S 16 reignited my hope for fashion in the hash tag age, however I have my problems with this collection.

First of all those platform shoes need to be left in 1997. I don't need to see that s*it anymore! Secondly I found the silhouettes too frumpy and the whole goth Victoriana aesthetic has been beaten to death by MJ.

No doubt there are so beautiful pieces here, particularly when you deconstruct the styling but I've always preferred Marc when he's proposed something immediately tangibly wearable. He's usually able to propose a great idea for wearable clothes whilst still creating a fantasy on the runway.

Something like his iconic F/W 2006 or S/S 2009 collections where you were drawn into his references and fantastic vision but still saw those clothes that made sense for the street right away!

 

[donyan]

it's theatrical and interesting but completely out of sync with what's happening in fashion, or with the general feeling of where fashion is heading.. all theatre, like Galliano at Dior .. I feel like very few designers are actually proposing new, interesting clothes to wear or even a new point of view. Everybody's always talking about Margiela now as the most amazing influence, but his clothes were so strong because they were rooted in reality- you wanted to look like that person in the show. With this Collection, ( and many others) it's just theatre to sell bags and T-Shirts. And here I was, thinking we were past all that now.

 

[Elite13]

Looks more like couture than RTW.

 

[Frida]

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 2016
by NICOLE PHELPS

Thank God for Marc Jacobs. Just when you were ready to give up on New York Fashion Week—its dull, derivative shows, the general lack of risk-taking, the freezing cold, the traffic!—along he comes and renews your faith. Tonight’s set, a spare white box with glossy white floorboards, wasn’t necessarily auspicious. But then came the ping of a bell, and a model’s shadow crossed the backdrop. From the first sight of her gothy black liner and lipstick, foot-high platforms, shrunken band-concert sweatshirt, crocheted doily collar, and full skirt ballooning above a crinoline, we knew we were in for a show. Sixty-five heavily embellished, manically layered, and mostly black looks later, including one on Lady Gaga, we were all pretty much floored.

Like a lot of MJ collections, this one was full of callbacks; one of the pleasures of attending his shows is that they stir up memories. That concert sweatshirt was, of course, a direct reference to Spring 2016, but it took me back to Spring 2006, the season of the Penn State Blue Band. Black-and-white polka dots called to mind Jacobs’s Edie Sedgwick show; the long capes evoked last Fall’s Diana Vreeland moment. That game could go on and on all night. The trick was how Jacobs made the clothes both familiar and new, recasting all of them in black and white and shades of gray, and playing with proportions. Most of the time, he sized jackets and coats way, way up, but he shrunk some, too, like Julia Nobis’s fabulous crystallized bolero. The outerwear and the sparkly evening pieces are likely to be the major takeaways for retailers.

Also like a lot of Marc Jacobs collections, this was loaded with references. Jacobs name-dropped Lydia from Beetlejuice, Christina Ricci (who sat in the crowd), and various unnamed “ghosts of New York.” Some saw Kiss’s Gene Simmons in the coq feathers, starry eye makeup, and platforms; others saw fashion legend and Vogue contributing editor Lynn Yaeger in the furs on top of knits on top of prints on top of crinis. As for the cats and rats and crows that decorated many of the looks, they were drawn by Stephen Tashjian, the artist and drag performer known as Tabboo!

Jacobs came out for his bow in a suit and a T-shirt he’s designed for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. On her website, it’s red, white, and blue, but if HRC knows what she’s doing, she’ll get Jacobs to make a few special-edition black-sequined versions like his own. Bringing it all back around to the subject of New York Fashion Week, it’d be the see now-buy now item of the season.

vogue.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2016
by SUZY MENKES

An open space, a shiny floor, and the only sound a series of "pings" as the models walked the vast empty space at the Marc Jacobs show. Since one of those "models" was Lady Gaga, in an oversize coat with green fur sleeves and her hair in a 1930s wave, the show that closed New York fashion week was like no other.

The presentation was as dramatic as anything that had the Marc Jacobs name on it in the past, in Paris or New York. Yet this collection had an elegiac feel: the big cape silhouettes, the sweeping black dresses or short, full coats in intriguing fabrics, and surfaces from shiny to bobbly that gave an extra dimension to each outfit.There was stop-you-in-your-tracks grandeur in the couture cuts and intense detail. And there were also reminders of where Marc Jacobs has come from: Louis Vuitton and its Parisian ateliers.

The designer wrote a forward to the show that cited the Tokyo singer-songwriter Keiji Haino and the Japanese aesthetic concept of "Ma", meaning a pause or space. From this came "defying the notion that you can't create something from nothing". It didn't seem as though Marc's collection had started as an empty vessel, however. The totteringly high platform shoes might have come from geisha culture, but they were reminiscent of Alexander McQueen. To me, the make-up suggested John Galliano, while the play on black as a colour - not to mention the "pings" - flagged up Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.

rom his own fashion history, Marc seemed to have re-visited some of his former artistic ideas, including polka dots that recalled the Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton collaboration of 2009. The way Marc put all these clothes together, showing them in the lofty space, was magisterial and deserved the roar of applause as he took his bow.

The designer seems in a different, elevated position compared to most of his colleagues showing in New York. But there have been a lot of changes in the life of Marc Jacobs the brand, with the shuttering of the Marc by Marc Jacobs line. Let's hope this was not his swansong of grand shows. But if so, it couldn't have been finer.

vogue.co.uk

 

[dsamg]

Exquisite..amazing..this is what I want to see. Truly amazing in a sea of boring shows

 

[Spike413]

Marc? So pretentious? I don't think so.

Marc has never striked me as the pretentious type, because all his shows and collections - whether they be dark and moody or cartoony - always come across as an excercise in creativity, joy, playfulness and bravery. He does what he likes, he clearly enjoys the process and that joy shows! I never feel like he's ever trying to prove a point. Plus - he's never shy about his admiration, respect and love of other designers that he references.

Pretentious is Proenza Schouler...spouting every modern artist's name as a reference, all the while their collections look like a desperate attempt to knock Céline. Pretentious is Vetements...acting like they've solved fashion by making a hoodie and copying Margiela.

I've never -- seriously, never -- understood the usage of the word pretentious as an insult in the context of high fashion. It's world built entirely around the concept of caring, sometimes TOO much, about the way we look, the way we're perceived, about the effort involved in our external forms of presenting ourselves.

So how on earth could a deliberate showing of carefully honed effort be considered something bad? Isn't that level of effort a good thing? Isn't the real pretense deliberately working to give something the air of having not given much thought, of having not tried, or having been incapable of giving a s***?

There's something kind of honest to me about a designer who doesn't attempt to make their work appear as though it just happened without labor or thought or meticulous care. They're sacrificing that all important pretense of being cool or above it all.

Boggles the mind.

 

[fashionista-ta]

Yes, it was very entertaining, theatrical, dreamy, blahblahblah... but that's all this really is: theatricality for the sake of theatricality. It doesn't move or excite me one bit. He's so pretentious these days, these larger than life presentations but the clothes are simply rubbish. Not to mention the blatant impersonation of other designers which makes the whole thing even more soulless and gimmicky. Shock-value and face-value with zero depth. Actually now it makes sense having Lady Gaga there...

I assumed it was because she is the one person on the planet certified to be able to walk in those shoes!


I like that this shows a lot of effort (as opposed to some of his collections that have been phoned in), and that Marc Jacobs' DNA is all over this. Despite the influences, this could be no one else's collection. There are some beautiful pieces here, lots of detail, beautiful use of sequins, great Gothic looks. However, definitely girls', not women's, clothes. Marc gets older, but his clothes do not mature.

 

[fashionista-ta]

it's theatrical and interesting but completely out of sync with what's happening in fashion, or with the general feeling of where fashion is heading.. all theatre, like Galliano at Dior .. I feel like very few designers are actually proposing new, interesting clothes to wear or even a new point of view. Everybody's always talking about Margiela now as the most amazing influence, but his clothes were so strong because they were rooted in reality- you wanted to look like that person in the show. With this Collection, ( and many others) it's just theatre to sell bags and T-Shirts. And here I was, thinking we were past all that now.

If Marc is out of sync with fashion, it will be a first. Being at the leading edge of the zeitgeist has always been one of his greatest strengths.

 

[Frida]

MARC JACOBS’S GRAND HISTORY OF POWER

The designer’s contemplative, cadaverous fall 2016 collection is deeply satisfying.

By Cathy Horyn

The faster the world moves, the more some designers want to slow its orbit. The set for Marc Jacobs’s show last night, at the Park Avenue Armory, was an open circle — large, unobstructed, bright white. It seemed more breathing space than void, and because it was round, it represented, to me, a fundamental life pattern: What goes around … the eternal return of the same …

But maybe because of the huge shadows cast by the models on the back wall as they entered the open space, I saw them as ghosts, and Jacobs’s collection as an expression of the way history remains as a trace. This is especially true of clothing, with its stock of human associations and, literally, body impressions. The Paris costume curator Olivier Saillard made this point in the performance pieces he did with Tilda Swinton a couple of years ago in Paris, in which she used gestures and words to relate historical garments to the figures who had once worn them.

Even though Jacobs’s show contained many historical shapes — silk robes and visiting dresses that might have been from around 1900, full skirts from the ’50s, poufy ball gowns and furs from the glitzy ’80s — it was no more a trip down memory lane than Saillard’s pieces were. If anything, the Jacobs show was a plea to step away from the runway rat race and Instagram hustle, and take time to seriously consider things. A possible clue to his intentions was the lack of music: the models, on towering platforms, walked just to the chime of single, irregularly repeated bell tones. The shoes were another clue. Not only did they make already tall women seem ridiculously tall, but they also made them seem quite wispy, as if they might blow away. With their raccoon eyes and 1920s finger waves, the girls looked like a cross between Edward Gorey figures and the eccentric Italian heiress Luisa, Marchesa Casati, who loved a cadaverous look. (Indeed, some of the full black skirts had black cats on them that suggested Gorey. And a smudgy hand-print pattern in gray added to the ghostly vibe.)

Another thing that struck me was the number of grand-looking clothes. Some, as I say, had overtones of the Edwardian era, others the ’80s in New York — a period associated with the Basses, Gutfreunds, Kravitzes, the lavish designs of Ungaro and Oscar de la Renta, and of course captured in The Bonfire of the Vanities. Those eras, though, were about power and greatness — great wealth and ambition but also a swaggering claim on the future. Masters of the Universe. Viewed in the calm of the Armory, the silhouettes of dresses seemed what mostly remains of that greatness. A new generation now sets the tone.

Sometimes I think a Jacobs show can get a bit old-clothesy. I felt that way a year ago about his ode to Diana Vreeland. Dreary me! But this time, in spite of the many vintage shapes, I didn’t have that impression. I thought Jacobs was relying more on his feelings, on ideas and images that have been stored in his mind for years, and which he wanted to selectively relate to the present — above all, perhaps, to our topsy-turvy sense of time.

And he began this collection so modestly, too. “I started with an oversize sweatshirt,” he said backstage. “And that led to …” In short, to a deeply satisfying experience.

nymag.com/thecut

 

[Lola701]

I really don't understand some of the comments here. Saying that it's out of sync with the fashion of the moment or that it is unwearable is a bit weird.
OK, the extreme platform helped to make a statement and to play with exaggerated proportions but actually, this is totally the fashion of the moment.
Long skirts, oversized coat, sweaters dresses...etc.
In the real-not-as-exaggerated proportions, this will totally work.

I'm not a ball gown person but they will work. This is not Comme Des Garcons spring 2016..
Those are still clothes to wear....

I'm glad the collection was well received because it was a good collection. Really!

 

[mariemaud]

vogue.com

The Styling is really, really cool, so are the clothes, I just hate the platform boots yet somehow they belong there, I just would never even wear such shoes
Nice one though,the best collection from fw fall winter 2016 so far to me

 

[Emmanuelle]

I loved the collection. I like when he goes back to this kind of Victorian, spectacular dresses. He even included some grunge items, whicch is really cool. However I am not a fan of the platorm shoes, but well it is not so disturbing.

 

[dior_couture1245]

Stumbled upon an image that HAD to have made its way onto the mood board during development. Fun find...an old new wave band called Strawberry Switchblade.


(gettyimages.com / vogue.com)