MissMagAddict
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Thursday November 15, 2007
THE New York Post began its review with a question: “What is wrong with Marc Jacobs?”
Suzy Menkes, in The International Herald Tribune, said, “The entire event was a parody of fashion now.”
And Women’s Wear Daily noted, “There were those who accepted it with stoicism and those who thought the designer was obnoxious.”
Had the critics been speaking strictly about his clothes, and not also reacting to the two-hour delay of his fashion show in September, Marc Jacobs might not still be asking, as he did outside the Mercer Hotel in SoHo two months later, “Why are people so bitter and jealous and being so horrible to me?”
Had no one accused him of being remorseless for that delay, or mocked him for other perceived sins against fashion, he might not feel as if he is experiencing a personal backlash, just when he is producing some of the most thrilling collections of his career.
The litany of personal attacks aimed at Mr. Jacobs is head-spinning. The tabloids accuse him of narcissism for shedding his pudgy, asexual image for a deep tan and a gym body (which he showed off by appearing half-naked in several magazines). Gossips charge him with the ultimate star indulgence: plastic surgery. He is chided because his boyfriend, whom Mr. Jacobs places front and center at his fashion shows, has a dodgy past.
Bloggers compare his brand to Starbucks because he opened a third store on Bleecker Street in the West Village, which has contributed to driving up rents and changing the neighborhood.
Page Six even issued a vendetta against him because he confirmed to Women’s Wear Daily that he was in rehab this spring before he told The Post.
His sanity was questioned because he stuck his tongue out at a fashion show.
“I’m starting to get very paranoid as to why it feels like so many people are against me, personally, at this point,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Despite whatever rumors you may have heard, I’m not out of my mind.”
On the other hand, had none of this happened — if people hadn’t reacted in the way that they did — he wouldn’t be having the time of his life.
For the last two years, beginning with his fall 2005 neo-grunge collection of voluminous clownlike smocks, no designer has generated more controversy by the mere act of a fashion show. Nor has a designer seemed more vital to the perception of what is American fashion now. The vividly emotional reactions to his shows — the love it or hate it debates they have inspired — seem to have heightened Mr. Jacobs’s appetite to create, and court, more controversy, as if he is sticking his finger in the eye of fashion.
But what is most captivating about his recent collections is that they are informed by all of the above. Mr. Jacobs is drawing from his own tabloid existence in creating clothes, as he did with his spring collection with underwear hanging out of undone dresses, that reflect the disjointedness and randomness of the contemporary culture of celebrity worship. He has held up a mirror to the styles of the Olsen twins, Victoria Beckham, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan in rehab, as they are displayed candidly in the pages of Us Weekly or Star, as women he views, in their imperfect ways, as modern. He also talks openly of allowing himself to be influenced by the work of designers and artists whom he admires.
Controversial, to say the least.
“The difference between a good designer and a real designer is to be in tune to what is there in the moment and define it before anyone else,” said Fabien Baron, the art director, who has observed Mr. Jacobs since the beginning of his career. “It is really a rare thing to see. He puts his soul and his entire self into creating these shows.”
The metamorphosis of Marc Jacobs, however, seems to be the work of a brilliant performance artist making a literal spectacle of himself. Six years ago, the city was plastered with billboards and advertisements zooming by atop taxis that declared “Girls love Marc Jacobs” and “Boys love Marc Jacobs,” slogans coined by Barneys New York. It was at a moment when Barneys, the Council of Fashion Designers of America and seemingly every fashion publication extant had jointly anointed Mr. Jacobs, after 15 years of struggling, as the paramount figure in American fashion.
Yet as his company, with an infusion of financial support from LVMH, was slowly becoming successful, Mr. Jacobs, as a personality, was becoming more reserved, awkward and, like his signature ballet-slipper designs, kind of mousy.
The explanation, he said, was that he was suffering from extreme insecurities, resulting from his longtime struggle with sobriety, and the onset around that time of severe, sometimes crippling intestinal pains, which he would later find out were a result of ulcerative colitis. He was miserable, and it showed.
“For 20 years, I wouldn’t even look in the mirror,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I was appalled by the way I looked. The big glasses, the greasy long hair, the oversized clothes, the math professor sweater — all of that wasn’t composed because I loved the way I looked.”
Now Mr. Jacobs, at 44, looks quite different, and younger, with his gym-toned body, clear skin and diamond studs from Harry Winston in his ears. His arms are lined with tattoos of cartoon characters, including a gleeful SpongeBob SquarePants and, on his right wrist, the word “PERFECT.” Three weeks ago, he dyed his hair a shade of blue so electrifying that it has been described, from the online peanut gallery, as indigo, cerulean or Smurf.
More and more, there seems to be an important correlation between Mr. Jacobs’s physical appearance and his work, as he has pushed harder in recent seasons to create collections that reflect the pace of contemporary culture in ways that are extreme, exposed and cartoonish.
“Ever since that fall collection, the one everyone flipped out about, I felt more like I love fashion, and that’s why I’m doing this,” he said. “The more people responded, the more I got into it.”
When he was 20 pounds heavier, the clothes were more discreet and ladylike, almost a version of classic Chanel. Now, for spring, they include glimpses of underthings showing through sheer panels of dresses and skirts (at the same time Mr. Jacobs is posing naked for the covers of Out and Arena Hommes Plus) and oblique references to the phenomenon of reality television shows like that of Ms. Beckham, which are partly scripted (at the same time he made a cameo appearance on “The Hills,” the MTV reality show centered on a Teen Vogue intern).
“People don’t really want reality,” he said. “They want surgically enhanced, scripted reality. The perversity of life today is so thrilling to me. It’s like a circus out there. It’s cartoon land.”
And Mr. Jacobs recognizes his place there. He spends at least two hours each day with a personal trainer and eats an entirely organic diet.
At the Mercer, his New York residence since 1998, he sat before a plate of skinned chicken breasts and steamed spinach, rejecting, when asked, an invitation to complain about it. He was again in physical pain, now a result of an operation two days earlier for a hernia caused by overexercising.
Despite doctors’ orders to remain in bed, Mr. Jacobs said he had too much energy to sit still, and several times he walked outside to have another cigarette, a last vice.
He was recognized almost instantly, by a group of young tourists from Stockholm who appeared star struck.
“Jag alskar svenska flickor,” Mr. Jacobs said to them, meaning, “I love Swedish girls.”
“It’s the only thing I know how to say in Swedish.”
They took pictures with Mr. Jacobs, as did a much older French couple who spotted him a few moments later. There were a couple of paparazzi across the street as well, waiting to capture the moment two hours later when Jason Preston, Mr. Jacobs’s boyfriend, returned from the gym and plopped his bag down on the street with a heavy sigh. The on-again, off-again relationship with Mr. Preston, a former male escort, slim and boyish, with sleepy eyes, has made for constant snippy items in the news media.
“I don’t mind,” Mr. Jacobs said to a hotel manager, who pointed out the photographers.
“In the most basic way I can say it,” he said, relighting a cigarette, “coming from a psychological place, what I love more than anything is attention. That is about as honest of a statement that I could possibly make. I want a reaction, because I want the attention.”
Whether everyone in the fashion world still loves Mr. Jacobs has become an open question. Bridget Foley, the executive editor of Women’s Wear Daily and W, suggested that the backlash has more to do with Mr. Jacobs’s crossover from young, cool designer to a major fashion force — who still seems young and cool — that has made some people uncomfortable.
“Maybe Marc’s growth in confidence has occurred later than it does in a lot of people, and maybe that’s what is startling,” she said.
Mr. Jacobs denied that his actions were purposefully calculated to provoke. He said he thought he was giving the audience what they wanted with bigger shows, more fashion and complicated sets.
When it came time to show in September, a dozen dresses were still under construction, and to start without them would have ruined the effect of a video projection that simultaneously showed the models in just their underwear.
He pointed to the tattoo on his wrist. “I really do feel that everything was perfect,” he said. “If one thing was different, if one piece of the puzzle was missing, it wouldn’t be the same.”
As with the collection, as with his life.
“You know they are expecting a show,” he said.
i liked the colours... you don't have to wear it that way in real life... it was not that bad... so much drama
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...i don't get it...
