Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs the designer was born in New York in 1963 and studied at Parsons. His earliest professional moment came in 1989 when, at 26, he was appointed Perry Ellis's first menswear designer; his Spring 1993 'Grunge' collection for Perry Ellis — featuring flannel shirts and combat boots on the runway as a direct quotation of Seattle indie rock — caused enough scandal that Ellis fired him on the spot. The collection is now widely regarded as having permanently shifted American fashion's relationship to subculture. Marc Jacobs founded his own house in 1986, refounded in 1993 with business partner Robert Duffy, and ran the brand alongside a 16-year tenure as Louis Vuitton's creative director (1997-2013). The Marc Jacobs vocabulary is eclectic by design: 1990s grunge references, 2010s 'It bag' commercialism (the Stam, the Sofia Coppola tote), and a strong continuing engagement with the New York downtown art scene through collaborations with Stephen Sprouse, Yayoi Kusama, Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami (the Murakami × Vuitton bag was a Jacobs project). The brand is owned by LVMH and includes the Marc by Marc Jacobs diffusion line (closed 2015, relaunched 2019), the Heaven sub-brand (the under-25 Y2K-revival line that has driven the brand's commercial recent resurgence), and the The Marc Jacobs flagship line. Jacobs himself continues as sole creative director. Few American designers of the past 35 years have left such an unmistakable graphic footprint across so many cultural conversations.