KEY POINTS:
Marc Jacobs' broad appeal, and eye for the kind of fashion accessory that incites rampant materialistic desire in women from Lisbon to Liverpool, has made him the fashion industry's golden boy.
For the past decade, his collections have been the favourite source of ideas for the high street, so his designs are among the most familiar in the world. Not that this has devalued the appeal of the genuine article.
In 2001, Winona Ryder was famously moved to pinch an armful of his cashmere tops from a Saks Fifth Avenue store. Jacobs rewarded her by giving her a starring role in his ad campaign.
A sense of humour, then, is also part of his appeal. Through his designs for Louis Vuitton, his Marc by Marc Jacobs diffusion line, and his signature collection, the New Yorker's influence is felt at every level of fashion.
Here's a quick refresher course on the multi-award-winning designer's career highs.
Round collars
If a Marc Jacobs blouse reminds you of one that your mother wore in the60s, it's not surprising. Jacobs is the vintage reinterpreter par excellence, and has always been open about his plundering of the past for inspiration. There are eras to which Jacobs returns over and over. For instance, the 50s prom dress features on his catwalk regularly, as does the rounded collar, as seen on the summer macs and sequined blouses in his new collection. Feminine details just the right side of whimsical are typical. Cutest of all are his Peter Pan collars.
Fragrance
What does Marc Jacobs smell like? In 2001 we found out when he launched his first self-titled fragrance for women. This floral scent based on gardenia settled like a morning mist over every fashion show. Since then the company has added men's fragrances (in 2002) and in 2004 another women's title, the jasmine-laden Blush. Last year Jacobs picked up on the trend for single-note perfumes and launched three summer scents based on the smell of cotton, grass and rain, followed by ivy, violet and amber in autumn. Worth buying if only for the 50s boudoir-style packaging.
Layers
In 1992, Jacobs designed a collection inspired by the Seattle grunge scene, for the American sportswear label Perry Ellis. Featuring layers of floral dresses over trousers, worn with satin Birkenstock sandals, it was his most notorious collection to date. Many loved his anti-glamour statement, but his bosses at Perry Ellis felt otherwise and fired him. Jacobs struggled financially until Bernard Arnault's LVMH offered the company backing in 1997, also putting the designer in charge of fashion collections at Louis Vuitton. But Jacobs' love of the layered look has endured. He made reference to the grunge collection in last autumn's workwear plaids and dresses worn in bulky layers over trousers. This season, the layered outfits were made up of baggy trousers, granddad cardigans and sack dresses. More stylish than it sounds.
Famous friends
While celebrities from Madonna to Bryan Ferry pose in sympathetically lit advertising for other fashion brands, only the more degage actors and singers submit to Juergen Teller's unforgiving style of photography in Marc Jacobs' campaigns. Stars of the grainy ads have, over the years, included such unlikely models as Jarvis Cocker, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Meg White of the White Stripes, Charlotte Rampling and Jennifer Jason Leigh; after the shoplifting scandal, Winona Ryder was the face of Marc Jacobs in spring 2003. For those who take such things seriously, a campaign that starred Teller himself alongside fellow-photographer Cindy Sherman was last year compiled as a book.
Waffle-Weave
The transformation of a once dowdy garment into a luxurious fashion item is a Marc Jacobs hallmark; baroque eveningwear and high-concept design isn't in his vocabulary. And so it is with his waffle-weave sweaters. A humble fabric usually associated with thermal undergarments, the nubbly waffle weave was given a makeover in 1997 when Jacobs introduced it, in cashmere, in his collection.
Mouse shoes
Not so named because they're fashioned from rodent hide (we'll leave that to the Milanese designers) but because the pointed toe, cutaway leather and little flat bow on these shoes look a bit like a mouse's head. Sort of. The super-flat Mouse shoes (Mice shoes?) first appeared in the late 90s, and for their practicality, led to a brief period of increased mobility and reduction in average height among fashion-istas. Although high heels and platforms have dominated the catwalks ever since, the Mouse pumps repeatedly make a comeback in Jacobs' collections, including in his diffusion Marc by Marc Jacobs range.
Cult bags
Marc Jacobs' first handbag was the multi-pocketed Venetia bag, named after his longtime stylist and collaborator, Venetia Scott. Introduced in 2000, the ladylike tote has been a big hit. No other bag quite sums up the early-00s obsession with girlie vintage accessories. In autumn 2005, Jacobs launched the Stam, a quilted bag with an antique-style heavy brass chain that bears a passing resemblance to a certain style of Chanel bag. Named in honour of the kooky Canadian model Jessica Stam, it's the reticule of choice for LA starlets: Lindsay Lohan has one in the most hard-to-find colour, petrol blue. Join the queue, please.
- INDEPENDENT
