I came across this collection on Style.com and I was immediately obsessed. I remember printing out a few of the looks and meticulously collaging them into the little sketchbook I carried around with me at all times. When I left Puerto Rico, where I grew up, to go to school in Philadelphia, the clothes suddenly made much more sense. They stopped being a sort of distant fantasy of who I may want to be one day, and I saw the way they fit in with the people I was meeting at school, the concerts I was going to, the world I was being exposed to. Almost overnight, none of my old clothes made sense to me, I felt like I needed to start fresh. One night, I was doing a random bit of online window shopping when I came across a graffiti sweatshirt from the fall 2001 collection, deeply discounted at $98. At the time it was the second-largest amount of money I had ever spent on something (first place went to my pair of Dr. Martens that I bought with a summer’s worth of babysitting cash), but I knew I needed to have it. It was one of those weirdly life-affirming purchases that help you realize the person you imagine yourself to be. (I still have it.)
In the years that followed, the cult of Marc grew. Every collection that followed seemed to intuit exactly what we were all thinking and how we all wanted to look, and it wasn’t long before a small Marc empire had taken over Bleecker Street in the West Village (there were separate men’s and womenswear stores, and then another space that sold little branded knickknacks, the star of which was an iconic tote bag that read Jacobs by Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs in Collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs).
Show any 40-something woman in fashion an image of his studded suede round-toe pumps, colorblocked dresses, denim jackets, or mouse ballet flats—ballet flats with a cartoon mouse face, complete with little floppy ears and whiskers that were a literal interpretation of the Marc Jacobs’ label pointy-toed mouse flats, another It-shoe), and you can count on this: They too will regale you with their own Marc by Marc memories. —Laia Garcia-Furtado
Marc Jacobs and Stephen Sprouse Hook up at Louis Vuitton—Logos Will Never Be the Same Again
Can you remember a time when collaborations didn’t smack of inevitability but had the shock of the new? Collabs have become one of fashion’s most lasting 21st century trends, and like any trend, the magic and myth making of this one has tended toward the formulaic in recent years. But when they’re good they’re still good, and this agenda-setting 2001 hook-up between Louis Vuitton’s Marc Jacobs and his friend Stephen Sprouse was great. It was four years into Jacobs’s tenure at LV, a tenure that began—remember—with a runway show that featured absolutely zero bags, when he did the then-unthinkable (yes, something even more outrageous than not include any bags at all) and invited Sprouse to “tag” the house’s monogram. It was sheer iconoclasm to fuck with something so iconic—and it was an instant hit. If Jacobs hadn’t enlisted Sprouse, would we have had Louis Vuitton x Supreme? Gucci’s “hacking” of Balenciaga? Or Crocs and, well, any of the high fashion designers who’ve partnered with the ugly shoe brand? Oh, probably. But as with so many things fashion (see above), Jacobs got here first.—Nicole Phelps
An It-bag to Conquer Them All: Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga “Biker” Bag
Fashion lore passed down in the great tradition of front row gossip places the genesis of Balenciaga’s famous City Bag to a visit by Kate Moss to the Balenciaga HQ, during which she spotted a sample of the bag and requested one to wear herself. Supers, true Supers, like Moss were once some of fashion’s great prognosticators. As history has come to witness, and as you will see as this very timeline develops, anything and everything Moss wore became a thing, and the City Bag is no exception.