Marc Jacobs: 'I Don't Think That The Creative Is to Blame'

Imran Amed (0:04)

Hi, this is Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BoF podcast. It's Friday, October 2nd. Earlier today, we introduced the BoF 500 Class of 2026 100 new members being added to our ever-growing index of people shaping the global fashion industry. You can explore the new class at businessoffashion.com.

Earlier this week, we revealed this year's BoF 500 Cover Stories, featuring Miuccia Prada, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy's Sarah Burton and Issey Miyake's Satoshi Kondo examining the ineffable creative quotient that turns clothes into things of desire.

But of course, creativity is just one part of the fashion equation. It is not something managers can simply turn on like a light switch. Designers need sufficient time and resources, and teams that know how to translate their visions into commercial products, not to mention the best factories, strong retail networks and so on, to make a fashion business tick. Recently, Marc Jacobs has been grappling with some big changes at his namesake brand, opening a new chapter under new owners WHP and G-III, which closed a deal to acquire the Marc Jacobs business from LVMH in September. As the deal was coming together over the summer, Marc met with BoF contributor Eric Wilson to discuss life after LVMH, and whether he can work with his new business partners without losing his soul. You can read the in-depth story on BoF on October 7th. In the meantime, I wanted to share a conversation I had with Marc after our cover shoot. Amongst other things, I asked him for his views on all the new designer appointments in our industry, as a potential solution to the ongoing fashion slump.

Marc Jacobs (2:03)

What I see is a bunch of non-creative people thinking that this all hangs on a creative person. I think it's just a big mistake. I mean, the world is in a place.

Regardless, you can put a different logo over a designer's head, or you can change the store that his clothes are available in. It's, there's an exhaustion, I think, from all of this stuff. And I don't know that the world even knows who's where at any given point.

Imran Amed (2:36)

Here's Marc Jacobs on the BoF Podcast.

Imran Amed (2:43)

Welcome. Thank you.

Imran Amed (2:45)

I love the colors.

Marc Jacobs (2:46)

Thank you.

Imran Amed (2:47)

They look amazing. And we're on a pink carpet too. We didn't even plan that.

Marc Jacobs (2:50)

I know. It just worked out.

Imran Amed (2:54)

You know, this is a very interesting time for you as a designer. For you as a founder.

Your most recent show was called Gratitude, and the show notes named all these people who shaped you. Why was this a moment for you to look back at? What were you thinking or feeling?

Marc Jacobs (3:18)

I think at every show, there's an automatic, like, I can't avoid it even if I tried, sort of feeling of like the past and what came before and where I'm at. It's always just very emotional. And I think that's been consistent for all the years that I've been doing this.

Is like thinking about, I mean, before the show is thinking about not only the process and what we've done and how it's come together, but like all the feelings that occurred during that process. And so, as you can imagine, one of the things I was thinking about was like, where will we be going in our new iteration of our company and my work life?

Imran Amed (4:09)

Yeah. You wrote also about recognizing abundance in life's most uncertain moments. Is that how you're feeling now, right now? But is this a transition and change?

Marc Jacobs (4:21)

I think this is not just about, that was not solely about work. That was, it's like sometimes, I mean, I believe, get these messages. And when certain ideas or concepts, thoughts repeat, you receive them from different sources, et cetera. Pattern recognition, pattern recognition, thank you. I didn't realize there was an easier way of saying it. But pattern recognition, yeah. I'd had lunch with a friend and she was talking about someone in her life who used the word gifts all the time, you know, especially in times where one feels discomfort or anger, whatever, that redirecting it as a gift, no matter what it is, was like the way to go. And I like that. So the word abundance to be represented all of these gifts.

Imran Amed (5:16)

You're this transition after 29 years with LVMH, something like that?

Marc Jacobs (5:21)

I guess so, if you say so.

Imran Amed (5:24)

Does that in a way give you a sense there's uncertainty in all of that, but there's also kind of freedom or like a new phase? Or like, what are the feelings or?