Marc Jacobs posted on Instagram about his brand’s 40th anniversary (he was the 1984 Design Student of the Year at Parsons), so as his show approached tonight, the question was whether he would revisit his own past collections. There have been many archival revivals in fashion in recent years, no need for special anniversaries; among designers of a certain age, self-quoting has become all too common. Jacobs may be a fashion student, someone who often looked to the past when designing, but he never seemed particularly preoccupied with his own history. He’s way too irreverent, and that kind of self-seriousness just doesn’t fit the brand.
Still 40 years! That’s a long time. There are only a handful of designers on the New York Fashion Week calendar – the official start is still a week away – who can boast such longevity. Tom Ford, his fellow ’90s superstar and just two years his senior, retired from the industry last year. But if Jacobs is now one of our elders, he retains the fashion-crazed quality of his youth.
The Park Avenue Armory was dark when we entered; When the lights came on sharply very close to 6 p.m., a giant folding table and chair stood at attention at the back of the runway. They were the work of the late artist Robert Therrien, who Jacobs cited in his show notes. “I try to stick to themes, objects or sources that I can trace back to my personal history. The further I can trace that something is meaningful to me in some way, the more drawn to it I am.”
The models emerged backstage and walked under the table, a lopsided perspective made all the more extreme by the exaggerated proportions of their clothes, the stiff foam-like fabrics Jacobs chose and the way some garments were sewn together with side seams on them. the outside, or exposed their changes instead of hiding them. Their ordinariness had been all but squeezed out of them, a disorientation that felt current and relevant. On thick sweaters, the shoulders were pushed forward, creating strange 2D effects, and flat trompe l’oeil embellishments were added, giving the impression of a necklace or brooch.
They were living mid-century paper dolls, in women’s suits, slips, cocktail dresses and evening columns glittering with oversized sequins, albeit tracksuits with shrunken jackets and trousers that reached the sternum, and pastel velvet sets à la Juicy Couture. via Balenciaga disrupted the swans-on-psychedelics story. So did the, ahem, “ridiculously roomy” version of his Venetia bag, a bestseller from the boys with a memorable cameo in The devil wears Prada.
Walk the streets of New York City, or take the subway, and Marc Jacobs’ Tote Bags, the words spelled out on the side in his familiar sans serif font, are everywhere you look, a mini phenomenon of a new generation. Jacobs put some of his own thoughts on paper. “Through the inevitable lens of time, my glass remains full of wonder and reflection,” he wrote. Thirty-one years after his infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis, and forty years since his graduation, he remains New York’s most reliable source of fashion highs.
