Marc Jacobs As You've Never Seen Him Before
Interview by Aaron Hicklin Photography by Koto Bolofo
For someone in an industry as notoriously fickle as fashion, Marc Jacobs has remarkable staying power—not that he’s ever likely to take his success for granted. His legendary work ethic (“rebel without a pause” was how one publication characterized him) has taken him to heights unmatched by any American designer, but his response to each success is to work even harder to sustain it the next time. Although he can sometimes sound like an anxious freshman looking for approval, it’s been 13 years since he showed his first collection—a year after being fired by Perry Ellis for scaring the corporate pigeons with a women’s line inspired by Courtney Love, an early example of his pop-culture instincts. Over the years his friends and muses have also included Winona Ryder, Kate Moss, and Lil’ Kim. “I’m always very drawn to fallen angels,” he concedes, not without a hint of irony given his own battles with drugs and alcohol. In 1999 his friends, led by his long-term business partner, Robert Duffy, pretty much dragged him to rehab, most likely saving his life.
Never one to do anything by half measures, Jacobs—who divides his time between New York and Paris, where he helms fashion behemoth Louis Vuitton—is now on an extreme diet and exercise regimen that was punctuated by a less serious rehab stint earlier this year. His reappearance at the Paris fashion shows in June prompted a wave of media speculation on his dramatic makeover, and not a little misanthropic sniggering on the Web. “Right now I feel better about the way I look than I’ve ever felt,” he says, dismissing the bloggers who equate a tan and abs with selling out. He also sounds like a man learning to live more easily with himself. In a strikingly candid interview he talks about his insecurities, his first gay crush, and why there’s no such thing as a bad trend in fashion.
AARON HICKLIN: I last saw you dressed as a pigeon at your holiday costume ball. It seems that a lot has changed since then.
MARC JACOBS: Since I was a pigeon? No, nothing’s changed at all.
Well, there was rehab.
Oh, in terms of going into rehab again… Well, I wasn’t drinking or drugging daily or anything like that. When I first went into rehab in 2000, I really had a horrible problem. I was a daily drug user and abusing alcohol, and I went against my will. It was [my business partner] Robert Duffy and how much he cared about me—I just had no choice, so he kind of saved my life in 2000. I’ve had many years of continued sobriety, but around November 2005, I was in Russia, had a couple of drinks, got drunk, and a couple of months later I was in Hong Kong, got drunk again. I was sort of doing it periodically, and as anyone who has a problem with drinking and drugging knows, it’s a steady progression. It’s like someone who goes off their diet. If you’re serious about your diet you catch yourself and say, “This is not what I want to do. I don’t want to start overeating.”
Of course, the culture we live in now is such a fishbowl that nothing passes without a snarky comment on the Web.
I don’t care about all that shit. I’m very outspoken and honest. I’m the first to say that I’m gay, that I’m insecure, that I have certain hang-ups, that I’ve been dependent on drugs or alcohol, so I don’t really hide things with the fear that they’re going to be revealed on some blog. You’re going to get a bunch of blogs saying “He must be on meth in order to be that skinny compared to 10 months ago,” but in fact I’m eating a totally organic diet, which has no flour, no sugar, no dairy, and no caffeine, and I lost weight because of that diet and because of a two and a half hour exercise regimen seven days a week.
Have you become immune over time to gossip or just learned to disguise your sensitivities?
No, I am sensitive, and it does create problems for me. I mean, there’s part of me that really loves the attention, so there’s that side of it. But the side that’s sad is how much people love that kind of negativity—the bad news—and how that, unfortunately, allows certain people to feel better about their own lives. I think it exists in everyone to a certain extent, and I’m not going to exclude myself. I do sometimes, with my own insecurities, feel better about my abilities when someone else doesn’t do so well, someone I’m envious of.
And what are your insecurities?
There’s a lot of them. I mean, right now I feel better about the way I look than I’ve ever felt, which makes a huge difference, but I used to really hate seeing my own reflection in the mirror, and I’m not talking about in a drug- or alcohol-induced state—I mean in general. I just hid behind clothes, and I didn’t really care about what I wore, and I didn’t care about my skin or my hair—I just felt like, There’s nothing more I can do to look more attractive…what’s the point? and believing that, I just avoided having my picture taken. But I do feel better since I’ve been going to the gym and keeping on this diet, and also I find I’ve been taking time for myself. I’m doing all the things I used to make fun of. I’d always say, “The idea of a guy who spends an hour in his bathroom every morning, grooming and picking out his clothes, that’s just not me, I’d never do that,” but you know what—I really enjoy doing that now.
It’s somewhat ironic given that you’re in the business of making other people look and feel good about themselves.
Right, and as a kid I thought, God, I’d love to work in a pizza parlor because I’d get to eat pizza all day, but the reality is that if you work in a pizza parlor, I doubt you want to eat pizza all day. The funny thing is, going back to the blogs, there’s a bunch of people who’ve said, “Oh, we liked the way he used to look, when he was grungy, and now he just looks like every Chelsea queen, blah blah blah,” and I just think, You know what, I’m just going to do what makes me happy. And I’m the same exact person, so if my haircut is too Chelsea for somebody, and if I’ve changed from funny awkward ’70s reading glasses to contact lenses, and if I’m tan now and in slightly better shape, well, it’s too bad. My behavior and my likes and dislikes are the same.
Has insecure Marc Jacobs vanished along with the funny ’70s reading glasses?
No, I’m terribly insecure. I have a million choices to make every day. The thing is, I do base a lot of my self-worth on the opinion of other people. I’m not only what I do for a living, but it is a huge part of my life, so the opinion of others, whether critics, customers, or friends, does really affect me, and that is a huge breeding ground for insecurity.
But you’re one of the great American designers; you must have reached a point where you can say “I’ve done it”?
No, the reality is that we have to prove ourselves over and over again. It’s not like we’ve reached a certain point and we’re on cruise control: You’ve got to work harder and harder each time, not only to maintain but to better yourself and improve. The forward movement is what I’m interested in, in terms of growth, in terms of learning. Like everyone I know, what gives me the most pleasure also gives me the most pain. It’s like at the gym—the harder I work out, the more I sweat, the sorer I am the next day, the more likely it is that I’ve gained.
But you also need balance.
Well, and that is the key to all of my problems. I’m a very black-and-white person. I’m feast or famine. I’ll work out seven days a week or none at all; I’ll work all hours of the day or as little as possible. Balance is something that I’ve just not been able to obtain. The one thing that’s helped me to achieve some sort of balance is my life between New York and Paris, because Paris is a lot calmer and slower-moving than New York. I find myself at home at 8 o’clock for dinner, and I’ll walk the dogs, and I’m in bed before midnight. When I have a few hours to myself in Paris, I feel like a success, and when I have a few hours to myself in New York, I feel like a failure, because in New York there’s always dinners to go to, gallery openings to go to, movie premieres, parties—it’s just so full-on. If balance comes to me in any way, it’s through being in two places. I live in a bit of a bubble here.
Do you consider yourself an outsider?
Yeah, I do, I really don’t believe I fit in any of the worlds that we’ve mentioned. I feel slightly comfortable sometimes in each world, but never like I really belong to any of them. There’s never really been that moment where I’ve said, “Wow, these are my people, this is where I’m comfortable.”
Do you feel awkward at times?
Yeah, most of the time. I have an ability to be a chameleon, so I am able to adapt to an environment on the outside, but the internal stuff is complete awkwardness and discomfort.
You’ve obviously found a soul mate in your business partner, Robert Duffy.
Yeah, I’ve known him longer and been closer to him than any other human being, relative, friend, or anything, and not as lovers—ever—by the way.
I love that Naomi Campbell stepped in to intervene on your behalf the first time you went to rehab.
She did, but she’s a very, very good friend of mine. Naomi has an uncanny ability to know what’s going on with me, whether I tell her myself or not, and it’s not through gossip either. She’s just very intuitive and very sensitive. I met her when she was really young and I was starting out as a designer too, and we really became friendly from our first meeting, and we’ve always been completely honest with each other.
Yet the public perception of Naomi is very different, one-dimensional.
She’s a human being, you know. “Let he who is free of sin cast the first stone” is just my favorite saying. I’m always very drawn to fallen angels, and I really believe everyone is born perfect and good, and we all make mistakes.
Your father died when you were 7; you were raised largely with your grandmother. How much of who you are goes back to your unorthodox childhood?
I look at the positive side of all the negative things that happened to me. That, again, is a choice of perspective, and I’ve only learned in the past decade how important that sense of perspective can be. My sister and brother and I all grew up under the same circumstances, and I don’t think it strengthened them in the way it strengthened me, but then, others would also look at my strengths as weaknesses.
Do you have any nostalgia for your childhood?
No, I don’t have nostalgia for anything, really.
Which is odd, because so much of fashion is informed by sentiment and nostalgia.
I guess on a certain level I love old clothes, I love knowing about the ’20s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, and certainly I have a lot of great memories, but they’re just nice thoughts that get added to the human hard drive and then you can access it as you want. Whatever impulses or feelings come up for me is how I’m going to respond or react, but it’s not a longing or nostalgic desire to live or re-create or fix past events.
I guess that’s one definition of being, as we say, fashion-forward. What trends most excite you right now?
Kind of all of them. It’s so amazing to me how into fashion the majority of people I come across are. It doesn’t really matter what the trend is or what the look is—you’ve got to have one, so I find it’s like a cartoon world out there where everyone’s sort of playing dress-up, and that’s why I say there are no bad trends. I don’t care if you’re doing the sleazy suburban look or a nerd look or a jock look. It reminds me of the voguing balls from years ago where people used to dress to pass as a certain type of person in society. Young people have always dressed as their idols, but I think we’ve greater accessibility to how those people look today.
How about sex? Is that part of fashion for you?
I don’t think clothes are sexual; I think people are sexual. You can always tell somebody’s sexy—whether they’re wearing a big old baggy tracksuit or a skintight, low-cut dress. But everything affects me and what I do, whether I’m in a relationship or wanting to be in a relationship or obsessing over someone. Lately the shows we’ve been doing in New York have been these tableaus of my inner world—whatever’s going on, whatever perversity. It’s not manifesting itself in a low-cut, slinky floor-length gown with beads in it, but that’s not to say it isn’t informed by a lot of sexual tension.
When did you realize you were gay?
I was in sleepaway camp, and there was a counselor, and we all had to take showers together and that kind of thing. It was weird. I was always teased by other kids for being gay before I’d ever had any kind of sexual contact with another man, and I was always afraid of what it meant [to be gay], but I was also very excited by it because I couldn’t deny to myself that I found naked men really attractive, especially my camp counselor. I just thought he was the most exciting, sexual thing I’d ever seen in my life. And I was turned on by the images of naked men, as opposed to the images of naked women.
Where were you seeing those images?
Well, my mother would read Viva magazine and Playgirl—it was those kinds of things.
What kind of guy is attractive to you?
Well, in the past what was attractive to me was unavailable people, but I’ve moved on. I’m trying to correct that kind of thinking and behavior now.
There’s been a lot of speculation about your relationship with Jason Preston [invariably prefaced in reports as a former rent boy]. Did that upset you?
No. I had a relationship with him, and it was crazy, and sometimes it was a lot of fun, and sometimes it was not a lot of fun, and the biggest frustration was that I wanted him to be something he wasn’t, and I don’t mean on a social level, and I don’t mean about his past or anything like that—I just mean that I wanted to come home and have somebody be available and have conversations and just to be there. And Jason is a young guy who wanted to go out and party and do his thing, and it just wasn’t there. I don’t think there was any chemistry—it’s just that we both do enjoy each other’s company on occasion. We’re better off as friends.
Do you think the kinds of guys that attract you are the kinds of guys that make it harder for you to stay sober?
No, I don’t think so—again, when I first met Jason I was completely sober, and I had no problems staying or being sober for the first few months I met him. Of course, I think it’s so much more complicated than that. In order to be with him, because he wasn’t happy staying in, I ended up going out more to be with him. First of all, I’ve done that all already, and secondly, I just ended up in situations where, in order to be entertained or in order to stay out, I would drink or partake in drugs or whatever, but I can’t really blame him. I was changing my value system and what I believed in order to be with somebody, and none of that can make a relationship that’s not working really work.
But the people we’re attracted to aren’t always the best people for us, are they?
Well, it depends where you are. Right now I can’t even imagine being attracted to someone who isn’t in a healthy place on all levels. So I have to not be in the healthiest place in order to be attracted to someone like that. Again, I own my feelings and accept that stuff. It’s like, if I’m not in the greatest place, then chances are I’ll seek things that are like that.
Are you in a relationship now?
No.
Do you want to be?
That’s a good question. I would like to be in the right relationship, of course. I am a romantic to a certain extent—I’d love to share my life with someone who wants to share their life with me. But I don’t want to sit in a rocking chair and commiserate or have breakfast when two people read newspapers and don’t talk to each other—that’s not the relationship I’m looking for. I like living.
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