Marc Jacobs

New York’s appetite for reinvention runs through Marc Jacobs. Founded in 1984 by the designer and his business partner Robert Duffy, the label connects luxury fashion to the city’s creative life. A taste for the offbeat sits alongside an exact knowledge of conventional dress, giving even its most playful clothes a point of reference.

Jacobs’ reputation developed through a willingness to put supposedly incompatible ideas together. His grunge collection for Perry Ellis became a defining episode in his career, bringing the clothes of an alternative music scene into a designer context. At his own label, that instinct has continued through theatrical runway collections and a wardrobe that can move between dressed-up ceremony and deliberately scruffy ease.

Menswear has formed one part of this larger fashion world. The brand’s campaigns give musicians and other creative personalities room to project their own identities, while denim and graphic casualwear offer an accessible route into the label. Heaven by Marc Jacobs, launched in 2020, developed that connection to youth culture through a gender-inclusive approach and the visual language of alternative subcultures. The Tote Bag and Snapshot have supplied recognizable commercial signatures alongside the runway work.

LVMH became a majority investor in 1997. In September 2026, WHP Global and G-III completed their acquisition of the business, with a joint venture holding the intellectual property and G-III operating the brand. Jacobs continued as founder and creative director. Across these business chapters, the label’s most consistent subject has been the pleasure of getting dressed as a form of self-invention.