Vogue has been documenting Marc Jacobs’s work for nearly the entire 40 years he’s been in the business, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Jacobs is a quintessential New Yorker, one who has incorporated downtown cool, Broadway musicals, Capote’s Swans, and Hollywood glamour into his work in ways that are seemingly familiar but made distinct through the application of his own vision.
As Sally Singer wrote in 2001: “A sense of the continuities and patterns of history has always informed Marc Jacobs’s designs and imbued them with the warmth and humanity that are the hallmarks of American sportswear at its best.” Take a tattered debutante dress and stole made of mille-feuille layers of raw-cut lilac silk, or the way a platform shoe and exposed seams disrupt the “good girl” narrative of a lace-covered midi. Jacobs’s you-can’t-read-a-book-by-its-cover design approach is generous, it encourages discovery and openness. Clearly he was well cast as the open-minded Caterpillar to the inquisitive Alice in the magazine’s 2003 year “Wonderland” portfolio. Below, more Marc magic from the pages of Vogue.
