Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer.

With Robert Duffy, Jacobs's creative collaborator and business partner from the mid-1980s, he formed Jacobs Duffy Designs.

While at Parsons in 1984, he won the Perry Ellis & Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award, and Design Student of the Year.

In 1986, backed by Onward Kashiyama USA, Inc., Jacobs designed his first collection bearing the Marc Jacobs label.

In 1987, he became the youngest designer ever to receive the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent.

In 1987, he was the youngest designer to have ever been awarded the fashion industry's highest tribute, the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for "New Fashion Talent".

In 1988, Jacobs and Duffy joined the women's design unit of Perry Ellis as creative director/vice president and president, respectively, following the death of its namesake and founder.

In addition, Jacobs oversaw the design of the various women's licensees.

In 1992, the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded Jacobs with The Women's Designer of the Year Award.

In the same year, he designed a "grunge" collection for Perry Ellis, which was critically well-received but its commercial failure led to his dismissal.

He also won the Women's Designer of the Year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1993.

At age 15, Jacobs worked as a stockboy at Charivari, a now-defunct avant-garde clothing boutique in New York City.

While studying at Parsons, he designed and sold his first line of hand-knit sweaters.

He also designed his first collection for Reuben Thomas, Inc., under the Sketchbook label.

In fall 1993, Jacobs Duffy Designs Inc. launched their own licensing and design company, Marc Jacobs International Company, L.P. In 1994, Jacobs produced his first full collection of menswear.

He was the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2014.

In 1997, Jacobs was appointed Louis Vuitton's creative director, where he created the company's first ready-to-wear clothing line.

Jacobs collaborated with many popular artists for his Louis Vuitton collections, including Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Kanye West.

In spring 2001, Jacobs introduced his secondary line, Marc by Marc Jacobs.

In 2005, Look was the Marc by Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear license holder in Japan with retail value of €50 million.

In 2006, Jacobs started a new line of body-splash fragrances in ten-ounce bottles which were distributed by Coty.

In 2007, filmmaker Loïc Prigent released a documentary film about Jacobs entitled Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton.

In 2007, Jacobs released his popular Daisy collection of perfumes.

In February 2008, Jacobs was accused of plagiarizing a scarf design created in the 1950s by Swedish designer Gösta Olofsson.

Jacobs settled the matter by offering monetary compensation to Olofsson's son.

In 2009, Jacobs launched a shirt, sold at his stores, demanding the legalization of gay marriage.

In May 2009, Jacobs co-hosted, with model Kate Moss, a "model and muse"-themed gala for the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

Jacobs was on Time magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and was #14 on Out magazine's 2012 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".

In February 2010, Jacobs sued Ed Hardy for infringing on the designs of one of his embroidered handbags.

In the course of the Mercedes-Benz Berlin Fashion Week in July 2011, Jacobs was the patron of the young talent award "Designer for Tomorrow by Peek & Cloppenburg".

He is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs, and formerly Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, which was produced for approximately 15 years, before it was discontinued after the 2015 fall/winter collection.

At its peak, it had over 200 retail stores in 80 countries.

He married his longtime partner Charly Defrancesco on April 6, 2019.

Jacobs was born to a non-observant Jewish family in New York City.

When he was seven, his father, an agent at the William Morris Agency, died.

His mother, who remarried three times, was, according to Jacobs, "mentally ill" and "didn't really take care of her kids."

As a teenager, he went to live with his paternal grandmother on the Upper West Side, in an apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West.

Jacobs grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and attended Teaneck High School.

He developed a passion for fashion at a young age.

He attended the High School of Art and Design and studied at Parsons School of Design in New York.