A week after debuting his fall-winter 2015 collection inspired by Diana Vreeland, Vogue UK featured an interview with American designer Marc Jacobs by Suzy Menkes. In the interview, he talks about young designers, the new collection and social media.
“You know, I am an older person now, I’m going to be 52 in a couple of months,” Jacobs says. “But I look at young fashion and it seems like it’s all the same – the idea of what is edgy or cool. It’s style with no substance; it doesn’t really seem born of anything. I don’t see the rebellion or edge in it. It just looks like a cliche: salad oil in the hair, Frankenstein shoes and the trappings of punk and all these other thing.”
He also goes on to take an anti social media stance. “I am so appalled by the whole social media thing,” he says. “I don’t get it, it doesn’t appeal to me, neither does a computer, or working on a laptop. I don’t want to read a book on a device. I like a book with a hard cover, and text on a piece of paper.”
Image: Marc Jacobs via Label
I think this is an interesting observation, though I do not think it a young/old split as I have seen some young emerging designers that are thoughtful and have done their research and thinking about the context they are designing in, and older designers who design for the flash moment we are in. I was drawn to Marc Jacobs collection, it had a richness, complexity and depth and I actually had a visceral feeling when viewing it, online and I imagine it would be many times more intense if I saw them up close. My barometer is, “Do I feel kicked in the gut when I am looking?” If so something more is happening.
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