Marc Jacobs biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Fashion Designer. Born April 9, 1963, in New York City. Jacobs' home life was turned upside-down at the age of 7, when his father died from ulcerative colitis—a condition that Marc also suffered from. According to Jacobs, his mother responded poorly to his father's death, embarking on a life of power dating and failed marriages that caused serious upheaval in the family. With each remarriage, Jacobs and his siblings would be forced to relocate to a new home, bouncing from New Jersey to Long Island and then the Bronx.

Feeling alienated from his mother and siblings, Jacobs moved in with his paternal grandmother on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when he was still a teenager. It was while living with his grandmother that Jacobs truly felt at home; well-traveled and educated, her love of aesthetically beautiful things and her appreciation for Jacobs' creative designs helped the grandmother and grandson forge a close relationship. "I always say I lived my life with my grandmother," Jacobs says. "She was emotionally stable, and she was very encouraging to me." Jacobs' grandmother also allowed Jacobs to enjoy a permissive adolescence full of self-exploration. "No one ever said 'no' to me about anything," he said. "No one ever told me anything was wrong. Never. No one ever said, 'You can't be a fashion designer.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't take tap-dancing lessons.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't have long hair.' No one ever said, 'You can't go out at night because you're 15 and 15-year-olds don't go to nightclubs.' No one said it was wrong to be gay or right to be straight."

Fashion Prodigy

Yet, for all his freedoms, Jacobs stayed focused on his dreams of becoming an important designer. By the age of 15, he was attending the High School of Art and Design during the day and, after school, working at the upscale clothing boutique Charivari. The staff of Charivari allowed their young stockboy to design sweaters for the store in between his tasks of folding clothes and dressing mannequins. The work helped Jacobs land a spot at the coveted Parsons School for Design, where he stood out among his classmates by winning both the Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award and Design Student of the Year at graduation in 1984. Just after graduating, at the age of 21, he designed his first collection for the label Sketchbook for Reuben Thomas. He cited the visually rich films Amadeus and Purple Rain his inspirations for the line. In 1987, he became the youngest designer ever to win the Council of Fashion Designers of America Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent.

Jacobs took over as the women's-wear designer for Perry Ellis, where he won the prestigious 1992 CFDA prize for Womenswear Designer of the Year (an award he would win again in 1997). In 1993, after Perry Ellis shuttered its manufacturing operations—and after Jacobs sent out a "grunge" collection for the label that critics loved but the company