A lesson in joy and beauty from Marc Jacobs
“Joy, period.” is how Marc Jacobs titled his latest catwalk show. Presented in the entryway of the New York Public Library in Bryant Park this week — so far from the official fashion calendar you couldn’t even glimpse the letters 'NYFW' on the horizon — the show lasted all of seven minutes. Across those 420 seconds, Jacobs managed to not only inspire joy and whimsy with blown-up cartoon proportions and festive summery colours, but also subtly reflect the darkness cast across the American — and global — political landscape.
It began with Marilyn Monroe. Continuing with the doll-like silhouettes of his last collection, Jacobs plumped up Marilyn’s white dress from The Seven Year Itch and froze its skirt in an eternally windswept position. To be a woman is always to risk being seen at a vulnerable angle, and the giant bell skirts that followed throughout the collection, so large and either tilted forward or hiked up in the back, gave those of us sitting in our folding chairs that upskirt vantage point. Some looks teased trompe l’oeil nudity, too, like a miniskirt with a model’s nude legs printed on it and a series of lace-printed dresses with skin-toned dipped backs. Even Jacobs’ heftier version of the itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini had a sort of “see me, don’t see me” look to it, the model’s body somewhat swallowed up within her two-piece.
After Marilyn, Jacobs riffed on 1960s cartoon icons like Minnie Mouse and her polka dots, Olive Oyl and her white collars, and Disney princesses with empire-waist gowns and white gloves. Some saw Cinderella in those finale gowns, but I saw Sleeping Beauty in that tone of saccharine pink, another woman frozen in time. In between the legible references to animated queens were plays on propriety, which Jacobs has done incredibly well since the start of his career, making the most sensible and appropriate 1960s jackets and full skirts seem almost scandalous through colour, cut, and proportion. Set to a menacing passage from Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” that featured a poem about shopping in a “prematurely air-conditioned supermarket,” this section was permeated by a slight spookiness. Minnie, Olive, Aurora — they’re all beauties in peril, whose stories end with salvation in the form of a prince or hero.
For many women in fashion, Jacobs has been that hero, saving not only our closets, but also our imaginations. His ability to walk this tightrope — responding to the essential need to feel beautiful and joyous, as well as the contemporary dread of being alive in a perilously dark time, without any heavy-handed metaphors or signposting — is what makes him a singular genius. “We use fashion to embrace bold and courageous self-expression to articulate and showcase our inner selves, allowing us to freely explore and display our thoughts, desires, and identities in a deeper pursuit of joy, beauty, and personal transformation,” he wrote in his press release for the show. “While the future remains unwritten, I am steadfast in my daily practice of choosing love over hate, faith over fear, and finding pause in reflection. I believe in living with authenticity — free from validation and permission of absurd conservatism and societal norms.”
This collection, like all his best, was also about Jacobs himself and his ever-curious mind. Throughout his many eras, he’s reinvented himself and his brand, and currently, he seems to be on a journey toward a glitzy maximalism. His recent penchant for extra-long nails and nail art have hinted at his obsession with fabulosity, and he even had his nails done in an XL French manicure with the same Swarovski crystals strewn about on tiny tweed suits on the catwalk.
Incidentally, or maybe not, Jacobs has been mentioned frequently as a front-runner for the creative directorship of Chanel, and you couldn’t help but read those little suits as a poke at this gossip. Some could say this show was a flag in the sand signalling that Jacobs is not interested. (Could Chanel send out cartoon clothes with Miss Piggy – by way of – Chappell Roan eye make-up?) But to me, this staunch show of creative and cultural currency is exactly why he’s the perfect candidate, whether he wants the job or not. He’s a showman and a pragmatist, a designer and a psychologist, and a fun, provocative presence on the fashion scene. He has also become an icon himself, his brand name and his own image as recognisable as the cartoon girls he referenced in his show.
Jacobs-ologists will also find through lines between this show and his spring/summer 2012 collection for Louis Vuitton, where eyelet and laser-cut floral dresses had doll-like shapes, and his famous SS13 Damier-print collection, soundtracked with the same Philip Glass passage. Hints of the empire waists of the Marc Jacobs autumn/winter 2005 collection (another cartoon It girl, Violet Incredible, played muse back then) and the eerie-pretty glamour of AW20’s Karole Armitage–choreographed collection peeked through. Discussing that Armitage show, Jacobs told me earlier this year: “It wasn’t a presentation of clothes you need. It was the telling of a story you might be interested in seeing. That was the big difference.”
So let’s look at this as a presentation of ideas for now: More is more. Bigger is better. Even at your most fragile, you can be beautiful; and even at your most beautiful, you can be silly.
“This is what that transcendent moment of joy is: It’s like that moment where all the pain and all the suffering and all the confusion and all the insecurity and everything negative goes away,” Jacobs told me in the same interview. “And you’re left with ‘This is why I do this. This is really good.’” We’re lucky he does this and gives us all these transcendent moments of joy through clothes.
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