Marc Jacobs is not leaving his company. He is having a show in September.
The man whose public fascination launches more rumors than Helen’s face launched ships told WWD definitively that “there is no truth” to speculation that he may exit his company, or that his spring 2018 show, on the New York Fashion Week calendar for Sept. 13 at 6 p.m., will be canceled. While in the past he has shown on Thursday, Jacobs moved his show up by a day to facilitate tightening the NYFW schedule.
“We’re all hard at work on the collection and the preparation for our show in September,” Jacobs said. “That’s really all I have to say on that.”
Jacobs acknowledged that the rumors are “upsetting and stressful” to his staff. “I have been in the office every day, night and weekend working away on the collection/show. I don’t know what else to say or do but carry on working as usual.”
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To that end, stylist Katie Grand was in town for a few days of consultation earlier in the summer, and is scheduled to return at the end of August.
Jacobs, one of fashion’s most ardent creators, has become known as one of its most vivacious showmen as well, his approach to staging varied and typically audacious. His stagings have vacillated between the elaborate and the spare, the former including his takeover for spring 2016 of the Ziegfeld Theater, where he presented an over-the-top treatise on Americana. He employed the latter for his two most recent fall shows, his extraordinary fashion noir extravaganza for fall 2016, shown on a stark white, circular set and last season’s show, a supposedly bare-bones installation, just two rows of folding chairs at the cavernous, otherwise empty Park Avenue Armory. Only the show concluded with the models exiting the building into a boisterous block-party tableau outside.
Marc Jacobs International has made news recently apart from the designer’s shows. Last month, parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton confirmed that Eric Marechalle, lately of Kenzo, will take over as chief executive officer from Sebastian Suhl. The appointment signaled LVMH’s intention to continue with Suhl’s broad-stroke vision for the house, focused on integrating Jacobs’ luxury and contemporary components under the single Marc Jacobs brand.