

Why Marc Jacobs Uses the Word 'Girl' Instead of 'Woman'

He may have bombshell Adriana Lima fronting his new campaign, but the designer's definition of sexy is quite the nuanced thing.

Arm, Hairstyle, Shoulder, Fashion model, Style, Black hair, Fashion accessory, Beauty, Dress, Fashion,

This article appears in the October issue of ELLE, on newsstands now.

Adriana Lima is not the kind of woman who tends to be kept waiting. Particularly when she's wearing a mere whisper of sheer black net and 27.26 carats of Chopard diamonds, her eyes half closed, her feline form arched in what looks like ecstasy, just waiting for the arrival of her paramour, who is…here! Yes. There he is! With the glossed hair of Rudolph Valentino and the post-bender professionalism of Don Draper (suit crisp, jaw unshorn, mood…stormy), Marc Jacobs steps onto set, sidles behind his new muse, glances at the camera, and—click!—he's done. And on to the next thing. This is how America's most famous fashion designer operates these days. In the two years since Jacobs left the helm of Louis Vuitton, he has been hyperfocused on his own company, which is moving fast: There's a new CEO in place (Givenchy vet Sebastian Suhl), an IPO said to be down the pike, a spate of internal shake-ups (most recently, shuttering Marc by Marc Jacobs as a freestanding entity and integrating it into the main collection), a makeup line launched, and now, right on cue, the birth of a fragrance. The new spritz boasts notes of Italian plum, Bulgarian rose, and liquid amber, with a name, Decadence, that in itself seems to herald a 180 for the maison Jacobs. The designer, having done his photo duty and extracted a pack of Marlboro Lights from a glossy black Hermès Birkin, was happy to discuss.


Silk gown, MARC JACOBS, $4,800, visit marcjacobs.com. Diamond necklace, CHOPARD, price on request. Designer in his own clothes. 

Earlier this year, you joined Instagram after saying for some time that you weren't interested. Is this a change of heart?

I've been saying, "I'm not into it and I don't want to know about it" for so long that one day I was just like, "You know what, maybe I will." It was very arbitrary.

You're a bit contrarian like that.

Yes, very much so. It's kind of indulging in something that I've been so dismissive of, and then embracing it, and then finding that actually, I do like it.

Are you feeling contrarian now? Because Decadence feels like a departure for you.

[My signature fragrance] Daisy was really evocative of this blue-sky freshness, innocence, sweet naïveté. We wanted to come up with something that told a different story. I've been much more interested in making sophisticated evening clothes, and this interior thing where people really indulge in their pleasures and luxuries—fragrance as something rich and sensuous, clothing and fabrics as being opulent, surfaces that dazzle, and environments that are really lavish. It doesn't have to be specific to any one era; it's about a situation. "Indulgent" can be sitting on the floor and eating cherries and drinking champagne. Or being in an evening gown, sitting on the curb and drinking a beer out of a paper bag. I guess with me there's always that offhanded—the word playful sounds too sweet—but there's something left of center. A charming sense of decadence rather than a dark side of it.

You've often talked about not liking an obvious sexiness. You've also sworn that your brand would never go mainstream.

Probably at the time I did feel that way, and I still do to a certain extent. But my idea of sex appeal or sultriness—it's putting it on, deciding to exercise that part of one's psyche or nature; it's not a vulgarity. I've always shied away from in-your-face. I still use the word girl rather than woman.


So then it's interesting for you to choose a face like Adriana for the campaign—who has the kind of sex appeal you can feel from three rooms away.

I wanted this Liz Taylor-esque, almost squirmy sex appeal, this sultriness, and Adriana does give that. It's a spirit that I'd like to believe exists in everybody. How people turn it on and how they see it, that's up to them. Even with Sofia Coppola, she'll put on a pair of heels and a dress, and she'll be like, "Ooh, I feel so adult and so grown up." Or she'll wear a mink coat and be like, "Oh, we're having one of our adult dinners." Me and my friends, we all go through that kind of thing—we know that we're still the same people, but we use clothes, we use situations, we kind of romantically, in our heads, go to something we know as "grown-up" or "sexy." We're amused and entertained and delighted by playing the part. I think about Sally Bowles in Cabaret—this awkward giddiness of playing at a decadent lifestyle.

There's so much talk about the possibility of your IPO.

That's a process. From what I understand, this is what the goal is eventually. The company, we're going through a change in terms of our business and trying to move it forward. It's finding this opportunity to look at things and adjust them. As I grow up, I have such a love/hate relationship with change. I want it and I don't want it. I love to change through fashion, but I also kind of resist it.

Really? You actually seem like a creature of change.

I am, but I always resist the labeling of it.

So how do you evolve a brand that's built partially on an ideal of quirkiness? "Left of center" feels antithetical to a publicly traded company.

I agree, and that is what's a challenge. If [the Marc Jacobs brand] was this cliché that was very easy to articulate, I think we'd have a much simpler time. I do get lost sometimes in thought and words because it isn't that linear. I don't know how you promote individuality and encouraging people to embrace their differences. It's much easier to sell an ideal: "It's a jet-set woman who has bodyguards and wears fur coats and diamonds." Sticking to one paradigm seems like a much more straightforward thing to promote and to get people to understand. But that's not what we're about. To say, "I don't want to be one woman; I want to be many different parts and moods and spirits of people…." It's much more challenging in a way.

You tapped into an idea of womanhood early on that has really come of age now.

It has, but it's still hard to put that one red pin on the map and say, "That's it!" I'm interested in creative women—women with a voice and a vision—and it doesn't matter what that voice or vision is, it's just that they have one. And I love people who really embrace art and culture and interiors and fashion. It's an indulgence. But how do you put that into one figure? It's not one hair color; it's not one age; it's not one size or shape.

How is life different now that you're not designing for two houses and flying to and fro between New York and Paris?

After 16 years of doing that, it was always very difficult and very stressful, but I adapted to it. [Now] I'm much more mentally exhausted than I am physically because the amount of time I'm putting into participating in all the aspects of Marc Jacobs as a company, just thinking about, Oh God, so if we were to have uniforms for the store, what would they look like? and What would I want a Marc Jacobs store to say, visually, as an environment? This feels like quite a new habit, to concentrate on each thing: the fragrance, the beauty, the fashion, the men's, the women's, combining the Marc by Marc with Marc. Thinking, What are we missing that we once had? What did we never have that we want? Where do we want to go? It's a lot of questions and a lot of philosophical, theoretical…

You're having an existential moment.

I am having a very existential moment! And believe me, it's tiring. There's this urge to get [the collection] down more, to figure it out more, and to deliver it with more strength and power because people perceive it as the only thing we have to do. I've always been somebody who's a little tortured by, "What will other people think; what do other people expect?" Although I do this for me, and it's my love and passion, it's so much about pleasing and surprising your audience.

So then how did you feel when fall 2015 was such a hit?

There's part of me that was thrilled, and then the next day I was like, "Oh my God, what are we ever going to do next?"


Skunk fur coat, price on request, patent leather pumps, $770, all, MARC JACOBS, at Marc Jacobs stores nationwide. Diamond and platinum bracelet (worn on neck), CHOPARD, price on request.

Hair by Kevin Ryan for Unite; makeup by Lisa Houghton at Tim Howard Management; manicure by Casey Herman at Kate Ryan Inc.; fashion assistant: Yashua Simmons

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