Marc Jacobs signs up for 10 years at LVMH

[PrinceOfCats]

I didn't know the devil signed ten-year contracts...


He's obviously modernised since the heady-days of 'the rest of your life, signed in blood'. Maybe he took an MBA or something...

 

[aldn]

Are the bags really his fault? He's the head. But so busy.

Marc Jacobs at Gucci Group! That's sacrelige, imagine what would happen YSL monogram bags, Gucci monogram bags, McQueen monogram bags, McCartney monogram bags and worst of all vintage/retro Balenciaga...

 

[aldn]

Why does everyone like Marc Jacobs?? His clothing looks very plain to me? Is it because of his job at LV? Oh come on I will be a better designer and take his job hahaha!

Styling I think does the trick.

 

[aldn]

I'm back a year later and I LOVE MARC JACOBS! OMG OMG i never thought that i would say that..i even wear his clothes too

You got bit by the bug. Somethings by home you can't find elsewhere. So quirky!

 

[softgrey]

I didn't know the devil signed ten-year contracts...


He's obviously modernised since the heady-days of 'the rest of your life, signed in blood'. Maybe he took an MBA or something...

but the devil wears prada...


...

 

[GalleriaResident]

Funny Funny... I wonder if Prada got paid to use their name in the title?

 

[aldn]

Funny Funny... I wonder if Prada got paid to use their name in the title?

I assume not. I wouldn't know. But Miuccia usually just likes to be asked. If so they already would have gotten paid for the book.

 

[CTstyle]

A fascinating article about Marc Jacobs and LVMH

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Limited
All Rights Reserved
The Times (London)

July 8, 2006, Saturday

SECTION: FEATURES; Times Magazine; Pg. 36

LENGTH: 2649 words

HEADLINE: Jacobs' ladder

BYLINE: Marc Jacobs

BODY:


From uptown New York to downtown Tokyo, via Studio 54 and Paris's swankiest brand, Louis Vuitton's design supremo Marc Jacobs has endured the highs and lows to become one of fashion's most influential players. James Collard meets a man at the top of his game

It's June and from across Tokyo's vast sprawl, limos are converging on the city's Yumenoshima Park, where they disgorge their elegantly clad cargoes before a crowd of paparazzi and TV crews. Japanese models, artists and entrepreneurs; Korean film stars; socialites from Hong Kong and Shanghai; editors of glossies published everywhere from Seoul to TaipeiI le tout Asia is arriving and smiling for the cameras, before heading into the park. The guests then make their way towards a clearing that contains a transparent, dome-shaped pavilion. All around, fairy lights stretch out into the darkness of the park, while above, floodlights form giant arcs against the night sky. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree?

Maybe, but this particular pleasure dome has been decreed by Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, a global empire that isn't about territory so much as a fistful of the world's great luxury brands. Krug and Mo t, Guerlain and Givenchy... you name it, if it's high-end and swanky, LVMH most likely has it. Tonight's event, however, is a Louis Vuitton fashion show, Louis Vuitton being the LV in LVMH -and the monogram on a million products, as the Parisian luggage company which made its name making trunks for Empress Eugenie now supplies handbags to the bourgeoisie everywhere from Osaka to Alderley Edge.

Among all the fashiontastic types at his event, Bernard Arnault looks more like a senior diplomat than the archpriest of cool. But it is his ability to spot talent that has made the extraordinary scene tonight possible -and transformed a brand that was posh but staid into a fully fledged fashion house, where Parisian tradition is enlivened by the altogether more edgy urban influences of hip hop, downtown Manhattan and even the Tokyo art scene. For it was Arnault who, back in 1997, hired the tastemaker that is Marc Jacobs. Jacobs is widely seen as one of the world's most influential designers -someone whose clothes we all end up wearing, it has been suggested, as what he does for Louis Vuitton or his own eponymous label so quickly percolates down to the high street.

Glimpsed backstage, even at 43, Jacobs cuts a slightly schoolboyish figure; dressed simply and surrounded by models wearing his own, infinitely more exotic creations, he seems an unlikely figure to be at the centre of so much hype. Indeed, earlier that day, as we talked in his hotel suite, he conceded of his own relationship with the luxe world of Louis Vuitton, "It's not who I am, it's what I'm doing. And it's not who many of the people who are my closest friends are, although they appreciate it, just as I can enjoy it." Jacobs' closest friends being people like the film-makers Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson. For if, back in 1997, Jacobs seemed an unlikely choice to develop a clothing range for Louis Vuitton, that was partly because people were wondering what would happen when someone with such an indie sensibility joined the studio system that is LVMH.

Jacobs' abilities, though, were never in doubt. Born to "dysfunctional"

upper-middle-class parents, he was brought up by his grandmother. As a teenager in New York on the cusp of the Seventies and Eighties, Jacobs showed in equal measure a prodigious talent for fashion and a precocious taste for the high life, skipping class from the fashion course at Parsons -but learning some equally key lessons at Studio 54. "My uncle told me I was too young, I'd never get in. But I did! And there was Halston (the designer) and Andy (Warhol) and I'm thinking, 'What are we doing here?', but loving it and going back every Thursday and getting into all sorts of trouble."

Yet despite all the partying, the talent stood out, in the form of best newcomer awards, early design contracts and his name appearing in countless people-to-watch features in the New York style press. Nonetheless, like most young designers, Jacobs' career had its ups and downs and in 1997, the decision to hire Jacobs to launch a clothing line at Louis Vuitton, that most chi-chi of French brands, seemed quixotic. After all, wasn't this the man who had famously brought a "grunge" sensibility (and with it, disappointing sales) to the most fresh faced of American labels, Perry Ellis?

"Arnault had the idea," explains Yves Carcelle, CEO of Louis Vuitton. "My reaction? He was known for the grunge collection. But I'd never met him, and Arnault said, 'I think you should meet.' So we spent several months talking and we gave him the opportunity to do a zero collection, which would never be seen, and he immersed himself slowly into the spirit of Louis Vuitton." It must have been a nerve-racking time, but Carcelle insists he never had any doubts, even when Jacobs' first collection for Louis Vuitton got, at best, mixed reviews.

"Personally I adored what he did," Carcelle insists. "He'd explained it to me before and I backed him because I felt it was right. He said, 'Yves, I can have the easy approach. I can have 20 bags with the monogram and everyone will be happy. Or I can launch a ready-to-wear collection when everyone's expecting bags, and they will be frustrated.' He sent just one bag out. He said that if we don't pay the price for one or two seasons, people will think that ready-to-wear for us is just a fancy way of communicating about our bags." Jacobs' approach eventually paid off, with turnover having more than doubled since his arrival. Culturally however, Carcelle admits there were some major difficulties to overcome. Louis Vuitton had to get used to the much faster lifecycle of ready-to-wear seasons, as opposed to the seven-year cycle of accessories. Jacobs had to adjust to living in Paris and to working with LVMH's corporate structure.

"I would go to a product meeting and there'd be a bunch of guys in suits,"

he recalls. "That's the way I saw it in the beginning. And this bunch of guys in suits would say, 'We like this one, we don't like this one.' And I'd think, 'What the f*** do you know?' Then I'd go home and spend five hours each night crying on the phone. Then I thought: this is eating you up. You can't control it. Just do your thing. And now it has become much more balanced. But I've become more accepting, and there's been some give on both sides."

What's more, Jacobs has learnt to "like the extroverted glossiness of that luxe thing" that goes with the territory at Louis Vuitton. "It's like an uptown/downtown thing. For some reason, I'm always described as being this downtown person. But I never lived in downtown New York. Yes, my heart was there, that was where I'd hang out with my friends. But I was always comfortable in every situation. I would hang out with socialites uptown and really enjoy those gals and their stories. Then I'd head downtown to some after-hours club and hang out until 6am. I was comfortable with both, although I know which I preferred."

Today, Jacobs' desire to party is largely a thing of the past. "I used to think I'd miss something if I didn't go out," he recalls. "Now I don't."

Indeed, weeks after we met news broke that Jacobs had split with his boyfriend, saying, "I have to be in bed by 11.30, and he's 25 and wants to go to clubs every night." These days, the contrast in Jacobs' life is no longer between high life in the Upper East Side and low life in the East Village, but between Paris, where he designs for Louis Vuitton, and New York, where he designs his own Marc Jacobs label (backed by LVMH). He enjoys what he does, although the child who grew up "wanting to do arts and craft, while all the other kids wanted to go to camp," regrets the way he gets to spend less time working with the "fabrics and colours and shapes".

Both in New York and Paris, Jacobs, who seems to inspire a strong loyalty, has teams he enjoys working with. In New York, the money side of the Marc Jacobs label is headed by Robert Duffy: the business partner whom he first started out with, and who has stood by him through thick and thin -even if, Jacobs concedes, "there were times when we both felt like giving up."

See next post for the rest

 

[CTstyle]

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Limited
All Rights Reserved
The Times (London)

July 8, 2006, Saturday

SECTION: FEATURES; Times Magazine; Pg. 36

LENGTH: 2649 words

HEADLINE: Jacobs' ladder

BYLINE: Marc Jacobs
Continued from last post
Camille Miceli, who pops into Jacobs' suite as we're talking, straddles both labels: as artistic adviser at Marc Jacobs and as the designer of the Louisette jewellery range from Louis Vuitton (launched this month).

The contrast between the two brands is striking. If Louis Vuitton is swanky and luxe, Marc Jacobs clothes could be described as leftfield: understated clothes, "more likely to be admired by other women than men," according to one fan. There is, Jacobs insists, remarkably little seepage of ideas between the two labels. They're designed for rather different customers, for a start, even if the one thing they might have in common is pretty deep pockets, as neither Louis Vuitton nor Marc Jacobs clothes come cheap. "It's like being Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," Jacobs jokes. "It happens naturally. I get on a flight to New York and I become my New York self."

Not, of course, that something edgy and cool isn't a sizeable chunk of what Jacobs brings to the mix at Louis Vuitton. The crowd gathering at that park in Tokyo gives a glimpse of the strange alchemy by which the Louis Vuitton brand has somehow been invested with something altogether more interesting -although there remains a question mark over just how edgy it can be for rich people to buy expensive bags, clothes and accessories. If anyone could answer that question, it would the Tokyo street-style phenomenon and entrepreneur, Nigo, owner of the A Bathing Ape urban clothing brand, who arrives draped in jewels, his white-gold teeth glittering as he's photographed with Carcelle.

They make an odd couple, as like Arnault, Carcelle could pass for a high-ranking French diplomat, but Nigo is, by his own admission, "probably Louis Vuitton's biggest customer in Japan," with a vast collection of luggage, much of it made to special order by Patrick Vuitton, the descendant of the company's founder who runs that side of the business back in France.

But Nigo is a collaborator, as well as customer, having worked with Jacobs and Pharrell Williams on some Louis Vuitton sunglasses called the Millionaire. Nigo explains what he feels Jacobs has done for the company.

"As a student of brands," Nigo says, "I would always have been interested in Louis Vuitton. But when Marc took over and started doing the menswear, he broke down that stuffiness." What's more, part of Jacobs' appeal to style-conscious Japanese, Nigo argues, lies in the fact that he has been coming to Tokyo for years, "and he takes what's happening here seriously in a way other designers don't."

"It's like cartoon-land," Jacobs enthuses, "these kids with their rock'n'roll haircuts, these looks." He first visited Tokyo with Barbara Weiser of the Charivari store in New York, where a teenage Jacobs used to work folding shirts before being hired to create a Charivari knitwear line.

"She took me to all these new places, these beautifully designed Tokyo experiences, on what was really a design trip. Next time I came here it was different. There were all these kids from London and all these models. We'd go out and it was more like living here. We'd go to bars and clubs and I felt like I was a young person in Japan. Instead of going to all these fine places, we were going to all the not fine places," he recalls, breaking into laughter.

A love of Tokyo is just one of the many things Jacobs shares with Sofia Coppola, who like Jacobs, has spent a lot of time in the city over the years. Coppola has often been described as Jacobs' muse. Actually, the truth is more complex, for Jacobs and Coppola are key players in a tight network of creative, highly successful friends who together, somehow make stuff happen. Thus, for example, Jacobs introduced Coppola to Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Coppola then met her (now ex-) husband Spike Jonze on a Sonic Youth video shoot; Moore gave Coppola a copy of The Virgin Suicides, which in turn became a Coppola movie. "All-cool-worlds-collide," one commentator dubbed this hub of the music, fashion, film and art scenes, colliding everywhere from New York to LA or Paris (where Jacobs and Coppola got to hang out together while the latter made Marie Antoinette). But as Jacobs puts it, "in this crowd, if you don't have at least two careers, you don't fit in." Coppola, for example, is still involved with Milk Fed, the streetwear brand she helped set up back in the Nineties -and which has stores in Hollywood and, you guessed it, Tokyo.

The Japanese, famously, have long been among Louis Vuitton's keenest customers. But it was Jacobs' idea to return the compliment in a collaboration with the Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami, whom he commissioned to do a cheery reworking of the Louis Vuitton monogram. It was an equation that worked: Louis Vuitton cachet and quality plus Murakami artwork equalled thousands of shifted units, not to mention even more counterfeits, a fact which Murakami readily admits he enjoys. Jacobs owns to appreciating with a sense of wonderment the fact that something he's worked on should make an appearance in the lives of millions, "even if they don't know my name".

The semiotics of the company's decision ("one-off" according to Carcelle) to repeat the Paris runway show in Tokyo are also telling. Showing in Asia signals a recognition -in which LVMH has long been ahead of the curve -of an eastward shift in the world's axis. But choosing Tokyo suggests that while the rest of the world has focused on Shanghai and Beijing, LVMH is also celebrating Japan's return to the form it enjoyed in the Eighties and early Nineties, when Tokyo in particular seemed to represent the metropolis of the future. Some of the palpable buzz in the city is economic, but some is harder to quantify, beyond a discernible quickening of the pulse in the clubs and galleries and design studios where, as Nigo explains, "the people who are making waves now are the generation who were kids during the last boom". Carcelle, seeming more like a diplomat than ever, also links the renewed hype about Tokyo to a wider Asian moment, citing "this fascination of the Asian countries one towards the other. Politically you feel tensions: China and Japan, South Korea and Japan, China and Taiwan. But there is such interest between Seoul and Tokyo and Taipei and Shanghai.

Competition, of course, but curiosity."

And for a Westerner, there's something extraordinary about the pan-Asian gathering in Monsieur Arnault's pleasure dome -where, at the end of the show, the party begins with one of those great moments of theatre designed to stir even the most jaded fashionista's soul. Jacobs takes his bow, then heads backstage and suddenly we see him under a giant glitterball, surrounded by models dancing, hands in the air, to the strains of Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough (not a bad anthem for Tokyo's Louis Vuitton customers). Very Studio 54, pure pizzazz.

Then Nigo mans the decks, beautiful girls on roller skates appear with canapes, and in the VIP area Tokyo club kids mingle with Asian celebs like Wing Shya, "the Chinese Testino", and Yang Yang. Yang Yang's grandfather was Deng Xiaoping, who pioneered the "Socialism with a Chinese face"
policies that put China on the roll it's on today; Yang Yang is a socialite. All the while Arnault looks on impassively. "Where is our surprise guest?", he asks at one point. "Maybe that's the surprise," we quip. But then Grace Jones sings Slave to the Rhythm and the crowd goes wild, including Jacobs, applauding from the side, and a Japanese trannie who enthusiastically joins in the show, with slightly chaotic results. Not Xanadu, perhaps, or stately, but definitely fun.

 

[JuiceMajor]

Well good for him


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