Marc Jacobs: 'The Driving Force In My Life Is Fear'

For 36 years, Marc Jacobs has been in the vanguard of what fashion is, of how it’s sold, of the way it’s presented and of its perils. Through his struggles, various identities and reversals of fortune, two things have remained consistent: his singular ability to predict a cultural moment and the profound emotion his designs awaken in all who encounter them.

- Aatish Taseer

"The Driving Force In My Life Is Fear,” Marc Jacobs said.

It was a November day in New York. I sat in Jacobs’s SoHo studio, in a room lined with oversize books about the history of fashion. The designer, 56, sat facing me, wearing black boots with platform soles as high as pylons. In his hands, fingernails encrusted with green and sapphirine rhinestones, he held a vape module — the Smok G-Priv — that looked like a piece of military equipment. His longish black hair was pasted down with gel and held in place with two barrettes. The extreme care with which he was dressed — black wool pants, a blue silk Hermès scarf tucked beneath the charcoal collar of his Celine pinstripe jacket — seemed, like the bright colours of certain animals, to be in part an armour against a hostile world, in part an invitation to draw closer. Against the somewhat stern aspect of strong classical features — a prominent jaw and nose, a short black beard — his hazel eyes were tender. My first impression was of both defiance and vulnerability. His candour was disarming; he was prepared to talk about all aspects of his life — “You can ask me anything,” he said — which made me wonder if he had given too many interviews, or whether, beneath his air of nightclubs and after-parties, hotel rooms and private planes, he had developed rich inner resources, the kind that have insulated him from the overexposure of being famous virtually all his adult life.