Marc Jacobs Doesn’t Care That Justin Bieber’s Perfume Looks Like His

by Julia Rubin | 11:47 am, June 1st, 2011

At next week’s CFDA Awards, Marc Jacobs will take the podium to receive the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. (And, yes, he’s only 48. A deserving 48, but 48 nonetheless.) Women’s Wear Daily‘s Bridget Foley sat down with the prolific designer for a lengthy interview, and while you really should read the whole thing, we’ve parsed our favorite parts just for you.

On the new class of fashion designers:

B.F.: The younger designers —whom do you think is good?
M.J.: I think Alexander Wang is really good.

B.F.: What do you like about his work?
M.J.: I don’t know it really well but I know people wear it and I hear people talk about it all the time and I’ve seen pictures. It looks well-formed and well-thought-out. And Jack and Lazaro [of Proenza Schouler], I think they’re really mature in what they’re doing. I’m not going into whether I like it personally, that’s not what I’m talking about because we all have different taste. The clothes I like are Prada so that’s that, or Comme. But as young American designers, they seem to be really good. There are probably others that I’m sure are really good but I’m not paying that much attention.

Prada is his favorite:

B.F.: Where do you fit in fashion history?
M.J.: I don’t know. I guess many years will have to pass and we’ll have to look back and see what the social contribution is….I think the greatest contributors to fashion are women. Chanel, Vionnet. I think Vivienne Westwood; I think Miuccia Prada; Schiaparelli, Rei Kawakubo.

B.F.: Would you pick one of them out of the group?
M.J.: The one that I probably feel the most strongly about is Miuccia, because of the aesthetic and the mood. There’s something so shocking and so tender about it, and it’s also very real. I mean, I’m sitting here in a banana print shirt from Prada [with a Comme des Garçons kilt.] In the way that Ralph Lauren has created a world that’s affluent, I think Miuccia Prada created an aesthetic that, to me, is so rife with references to other great works. And I never think that’s problematic because it’s always filtered through her very specific aesthetic. There’s an eccentricity but there’s also a chic old world sophistication, but it’s so new. It’s young but never vulgar. There’s a sex appeal that’s kind of naïve. It’s all the things I love.

He doesn’t really care about that familiar-looking Bieber perfume bottle:

B.F.: About fragrance branding, have you seen the Justin Bieber fragrance bottle?
M.J.: Yes.

B.F.: Does it remind you of anything?
M.J.: Yep, yep. We just had a conversation about it. Coty said, “Do we sue them?” and I said, “You know what? Let everyone else say what they want.” I received Google [Alerts] about people saying it was derivative. We’re not going to do anything about it.

B.F.: That bottle is very similar to your Lola.
M.J.: But you know, I look around the room and I look at the work we’ve done and a quote I always bastardize but I really believe in, is something Chanel said: “He who insists on his own creativity has no memory.”

Jacobs also has thoughts on journalists (“I think their opinions should be based on history and what they see, not what they feel, how long they’ve been waiting or whether it’s raining or it’s snowing or whatever.”), social media (“I don’t need to talk to like schoolteachers from New Jersey about what was valid and what was invalid and what was derivative and what was referencing.”), and growing up (“We’re all in this because we love fashion and part of that love for fashion is being unapologetic.”). So many thoughts!

[WWD]

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