BIOGRAPHY
Marc Jacobs was born in New York City on April 9, 1963. After graduating from the High School of Art and Design in 1981 he entered Parsons School of Design. While at Parsons, Jacobs designed his first collection of hand-knit sweaters commissioned and sold by Barbara Weiser under the label ÔMarc Jacobs for Marc and Barbara’ for the Weiser family’s well-known stores, Charivari,

As a design student at Parsons, Jacobs was the recipient of some of the school’s highest honors: The Perry Ellis Gold Thimble, The Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble and Design Student of the Year. On the spring evening in 1984 that Jacobs showed his senior collection and was presented with these awards, Robert Duffy, an executive with Ruben Thomas, Inc was in the audience. After seeing Jacob’s collection he called the next day to inquire about having him develop a ready-to-wear collection for Ruben Thomas, Inc. under the sketchbook label.

This conversation marked the beginning of what became a partnership, called Jacobs Duffy Designs, Inc. The partnership was based on two very simple concepts: a love for fashion and a commitment to quality. The partnership and concepts it was based on remain the cornerstones of the company today.

In 1986, backed by Kashiyama USA, Inc Jacobs designed his first collection bearing the Marc Jacobs label. The following year, Jacobs received the distinct honor of being the youngest designer ever to be awarded the fashion industry’s highest tribute when he was awarded the Council of Fashion Designers of America [CFDA] Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent.

In 1989 Jacobs and Duffy joined Perry Ellis and were named Vice-President of women’s design and president respectively. While at Perry Ellis, Jacobs created designer collection as well as overseeing the various women’s licensees. In 1992, the CFDA once again bestowed Jacobs with a distinct honor: Womenswear Designer of the Year.

In the Fall of 1993, Jacobs Duffy Designs, Inc. launched their licensing and design company: Marc Jacobs International Company, LP, and in 1994, the company signed its first licensing agreement with renown Look, Inc and Mitsubishi Corporation for distribution of the Marc Jacobs designer collection in Japan.

Soon after, Iris S.R.L. signed on as the licensee for the men and women’s shoe collections. The factory, located in Venice Italy, continues to produce all Marc Jacobs collection shoes.

1995 marked the first collection of men’s ready-to-wear. The collection was based on pieces that Jacobs and Duffy wanted to have in their own wardrobes.

1997 proved to be a big year for the company, in January Jacobs and Duffy joined Louis Vuitton, Jacobs as artistic director and Duffy as studio director. In his position as artistic director, Jacobs works on many of the French luxury house’s lines including handbags, men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, shoes and small leather goods.

Later that year the first Marc Jacobs store opened at 163 Mercer Street in New York’s Soho district and Jacobs was recognized by the CFDA a third times as womenswear Designer of the Year.

The first Marc Jacobs advertising images, featuring Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth was shot by photographer Juergen Teller appeared in magazines in the Spring of 1998. This was the beginning of a collaboration that has gone on to feature a variety of artists, models, musicians, and actors. Jacobs and Teller have collaborated twice a year for both Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs Ad campaigns ever since.

At the VH1 Fashion Awards in the fall of 1998, Jacobs received the Women’s Designer of the Year Award, and in 1999 he was named Accessory Designer of the Year by the CFDA.

The company launched the first handbag collection in the fall of 200 and a second Marc Jacobs store was opened on San Francisco’s historic Maiden Lane in August 2000.

The first free standing men’s collection store opened on Bleecker Street in New York City in September 2000, making the beginning of what would become a street of shops.

December brought the signing if a licensed agreement with L.S.A S.P.A. An Italian company based outside of Milan, to produce men’s and women’s ties and scarves.

Jacobs and Duffy introduced the secondary line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, with a Spring/Summer 2001 Runway show. The Marc by Marc Jacobs menswear collection was first presented for the resort 2001 season. Both collections have continued to grow exponentially to include shoes, handbag and other signature accessories. A licensed agreement with Calza Turificio Rossimoda S.P.A. was signed in 2001 to produce all women and men’s Marc by Marc Jacobs’ shoes.

In September 2001 the company launched its first fragrance. The scent, called Marc Jacobs Perfume, was inspired by gardenias in water. The launch took place on the Pier 54 on the Hudson River and was staged as a benefit to a dozen downtown New York City charities.

In Spring 2002 the women’s fragrance ad campaign, featuring Sofia Coppola and shot by teller, was honored with the Fragrance Foundation’s Award for Best Advertising Campaign for a Women’s Fragrance. Spring 2002 events also included the opening of a new accessories store at 365 Bleecker Street.

June 2002 brought another CFDA Award, honoring Jacobs as Menswear Designer of the Year for the first time. Simultaneously the company opened a men’s showroom in Milan and signed a licensed agreement with Italian sportswear company, GIBO Co. S.P.A.

In Fall 2002, the company introduced a fig-based men’s fragrance. The fragrance was launched in conjunction with the spring 2003 fashion show. The event also served as a benefit for cancer care. Launching the yoga bag Jacobs and long-time friend model Christy Turlington designed together to benefit the organization.

Following the spring 2002 opening of a collection store in Osaka, the company debuted it first multi-brand store in Aoyama, Japan.

In June 2003 Jacobs was awarded his 6th CFDA Award: Accessories Designer of the Year.

Winter 2010 Collection

December 2003 brought the launch of the Marc Jacobs Home Collection. The collection began as a small line of home accessories designed to keep within the traditions of luxury and quality that the ready-to-wear collections had long embraced. The line includes crystal, sterling silver, cashmere pillows and other luxury accessories for the home and is sold exclusively at Marc Jacobs boutiques.

Multiple free standing stores and shopin-shops continue to pen domestically and across the Far East. Currently Marc Jacobs Collection and Marc by Marc Jacobs stores can be found in the seven locations in Hong Kong, four locations in Taiwan, Twenty-five locations in Japan including flagships in Osaka and Aoyamai and nine locations in Korea.

March 2004 marked the signing if a distribution agreement with Imaginex Holdings, LTD. (a division of the groups whose companies include Lane Crawford and The Joyce Boutiques) for the territory of Hong Kong and Mainland China. It was the beginning if a substantial partnership which included the opening on a flagship store in Shanghai in August 2004 as well as stores in Beijing and Chengou.

The company’s eyewear collection produced by Italian luxury eyewear partner, Safilo S.P.A. was first previewed with the fall 2004 collection. The full line of eyewear will be available in the Spring of 2005.

The first U.S. multi-brand store opened in July 2004 on Boston’s Newbury Street and was followed by the launch of the company’s third women’s fragrance at the Spring 2005 show. The fragrance is called Blush and was inspired by the scent of jasmine blooming. All fragrance is currently developed and produced with company’s fragrance partner, Lancaster Group US, LLC.

March 2005 marked the opening of two stores in Los Angeles: a collection store at 8400 Melrose Place and Marc by Marc Jacobs store located at 8410 Melrose Avenue. Later that month the company opened a collection store at the Bal Harbour Shops in Bal Harbour, Florida.

2005 will also bring the launch of the company’s first watch line with partner, Fossil and collection store in Paris.

Bio Via Infomat

Pictures and more info @ Marc Jacobs

Dorsia is defined by their web site as “a contemporary men’s collection that adds a twist to traditional pieces. The collection combines American prep, French chic, and Italian tailoring in its designs. This season Dorsia emphasizes classic and sophisticated colors, and rich and interesting textures. Each piece is influenced by style and functionality that transcends culture. Dorsia has a distinct identity for men with refined style and taste.”

I personally think this brand has a very nice collection of garments. Their clothing is well made and was created with a simple yet modern style.

I look forward to seeing their collections in the future.

Here are some of their current collection as well as their upcoming spring/summer line.

Shop Dorsia and the Dorsia Web Site

I love this collection.

Pictures Via The Fashionisto

With his high profile design of the President Obama’s Hope poster, Shepard Fairey has come out the shadows of his highly successful line of clothing Obey.

There is still a lot of debate going on whether the Obama poster design is protected under the fair use act, and does not infringe on the copyright of the original photo which was taken by Mannie Garcia. I personally feel that this design was a magnificent expression of art that should be protected by the law of fair use act. The photo may have been used as a reference point but it is an obvious piece of art that is and should be respected by the artistic community as a whole.

I have personally seen the growth of obey the clothing line from a line of tee shirts into a beautiful collection of denim, outerwear, and other cut and sew peices that should make any designer proud. His line consists of garments that are made with excellent quality and very tastful details in every peice. I own a couple pairs of denim and will keep them in rotation of farvorites very consistantly.

You can buy Obey online at Stores & Metro Park for exclusives

Oki-Ni has always been about exclusivity. The company started as a retail/design hybrid working in collaboration with (mostly streetwear and denim) designers to create and sell limited-edition products. But now as even collaborations have become commonplace Oki-Ni moved on to a more traditional retail model, focusing its full energies on making unique and hard-to-find men’s clothing and accessories available globally. While plenty of streetwear and casual designers are still offered, the company has expanded its merchandise to include avant-garde luxury men’s labels. High-end men’s designers that were previously available sparingly in a handful of cities are now on offer globally at Oki-Ni’s online store. Via Jargol.com

Oki-Ni has featured a new function of his e-commerce web site which features pieces of his collection that are already styled for your convenience.

Oki-Ni.com Direct

From his single-handed revitalisation of Gucci to his innovative approach to the aesthetics of cinema, Tom Ford is a man of many accomplishments. However, his greatest achievement may be a much more personal reinvention.

“Oh, excuse me,” murmurs Tom Ford sheepishly, as he leans over his can of Diet Coke and discreetly belches. He catches my eye. “Excuse me. I don’t like seeming human,” he deadpans, gently mocking his self-perpetuated reputation for being some sort of hyper-perfect, control-freak fashion automaton.

This is the new Tom Ford: as impeccably dressed and preternaturally good looking as ever, but newly approachable, funny and self-deprecating, embracing what he calls his “spiritual side”. That’s not to say that he is suddenly going to kick back and take things easy. Since leaving Gucci, the label that made him famous, in 2004, the man has not only established an international bespoke menswear business, created 24 fragrances and designed everything from sunglasses to a Villa Moda khandoura: he has also written and directed a critically acclaimed film and is contemplating returning to womenswear. “Leisure” is a word that has little meaning for Ford.

“People crack me up when they say, ‘Let’s hang out’,” he marvels, adopting a dopey voice to demonstrate the pointlessness of such an exercise. “I don’t know what that is! I can’t wander around aimlessly, like, ‘Oh, let’s go here…’ I can’t do that. I have to have a schedule. So if I’m going to relax, I know that I have two hours to relax on this day, from this time to that time.” Of course, while he willingly laughs at his own foibles, Ford knows that this is just the sort of statement that will confirm the suspicions of those who decry the designer for his unsentimental view of fashion.

His mastery of PR over the last 15 years and his tight control of his image have led some people to tag him as much marketeer as designer. “Fashion has always been a commercial endeavour to me,” he says at one point. “It doesn’t mean I’ve churned out things I didn’t love because I thought they’d be commercial, but the primary function of clothing is to wear and to be sold. So it’s artistic but it’s commercial.”

Yet to see Ford as merely a photogenic and business-savvy clothes designer is to do him a serious disservice. Certainly his role as a kind of savant of the zeitgeist is well-established. Like his near contemporary and fellow Parsons alumnus Marc Jacobs, his ability to feel, capture and propagate the mood of the moment is uncanny yet apparently unforced. Ford’s breakthrough came in 1995 when, having worked at the then-failing Italian leather goods brand Gucci for some years, his first collection as creative director was a decade-defining series of rock ’n’ roll velvet suits with hipster pants, lean satin shirts, bed hair and smudgy eye make-up.

He was a star, and Gucci was transformed from a maker of high-quality but frumpy bags and loafers into a huge fashion player that would later, with the luxury-goods conglomorate PPR, go on a buying spree of companies from Yves Saint Laurent (of which Ford was also head designer) to Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney.

This was the era of “masstige” – the peddling of previously exclusive labels to the masses, something that at the time was seen as a democratisation of luxury but that has, in retrospect, been the author of many of the fashion industry’s ills today. The result was the logo mania of the early Noughties, a trend that Ford was instrumental in creating but has since been at pains to avoid. But this corporatisation of the luxury market was also the movement that would see Ford lose creative control of the brand, resulting in an acrimonious departure from Gucci in 2004, taking with him Gucci Group NV’s president and CEO Domenico de Sole, who is now thechairman of Tom Ford International.

Hoist by his own petard, Ford vowed that he would not return to fashion, and he has made no secret of the difficulty he had dealing with this sudden change in his life – a change that is behind the new, improved Tom Ford we see today.

“I really didn’t think I was going to go back to fashion, but I was in a moment of just extreme burnout, quite honestly. I had been doing 16 collections a year for Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, and I worked so hard for so long. And I love designing, but the business of fashion? Mmm. Not so much.”

At 48 (though he barely looks 38), Tom Ford is in reflective mood when we meet in The Address hotel in Downtown Burj Dubai: an older, wiser person than the hard-partying, good-living young man of old: the image in which his public persona was forged.

“I was fortunate enough to have all the material success that the world can offer at a very early age. I had a great personal relationship, I had friends and I had… really everything that in our society one is told we’re supposed to have and that is supposed to make us happy. And it didn’t make me happy. I had neglected the spiritual side of myself, which was always there. I’d sort of pushed it to the back and really come to believe that if I have one more house or more success that I was going to be happy.

“This is something in the western culture. We never say, ‘You know what, I have everything I need now.’ It’s always, ‘Well, when I get this, and when I get that, and when we have that, when I get that job, when I get this new girlfriend, when I get that pair of shoes,’ and it’s an unending – ungratifying, ultimately – way of life.”

This is, of course, a little rich coming from the designer who returned to fashion in 2007 with a plan to create high-luxury, super-exclusive, made-to-measure men’s suits and shoes at prices that only the wildly wealthy would ever contemplate. He has homes around the world, including a Tadao Ando-designed ranch in Santa Fe (he grew up in Texas and Santa Fe and spends his downtime there), and this Christmas he will holiday for three weeks on Mustique. It is safe to say that he will not be giving up worldly pleasures any time soon. He acknowledges the irony, but defends his stance.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with materialism to a certain extent,” he argues. “We are actually physical, material beings. We do sit in a room, look at the sun, feel fabric: we experience these things. So as long as you keep them in perspective they can add to the joy of being a human alive on our planet. But you have to keep them in perspective. So I enjoy what I do in terms of design, I enjoy creating things and making things, and I’ve always been very meticulous about the details, but maybe I’ve placed a little too much importance on that at certain times of my life.” He is the very model of a modern Epicurean.

It was his post-Gucci epiphany that led him to the making of A Single Man, a film for which its star, Colin Firth, received the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival and that is already being talked about as an Academy Award contender. One would have expected, of course, a visual tour de force from this fashion icon (especially given that he used the Mad Men production designer Dan Bishop for his sets), but what has surprised everyone is the fact that the film was not a case of style over substance: it is, in fact, a profoundly tender and sensitively conceived film that has garnered plaudits from even the industry’s harshest critics.

For Ford, the story, based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel of the same name, is one that has universal significance. Firth plays a college professor whose long-term love has died, leaving him determined to take his own life. On what he believes to be his final day on earth, his perception of the world he lives in is heightened and he sees the real beauty in life.

“He has a kind of epiphany and understands his connection to the world, to the universe, his connection to other people, and he has a real understanding and a kind of joy. I would say most people, at some point in their life go through some sort of change of life or crisis,” he points out. “I think that all three of our principal characters in the film can’t see their future. George can’t see his future, Charlotte can’t see her future, Kenny can’t see his future. They’re all in a moment where their life is about to change and I’ve certainly experienced that. I experienced it to a dramatic degree when I left Gucci.”

Making a feature film is certainly a leap for a fashion designer, but Ford, it seems, lets nothing as trivial as fear prevent him from doing what he wants to.

“I was very nervous the first time I ever screened it for a group of people. In fact, I was physically ill. But during the process I wasn’t nervous, and I don’t usually think, ‘Oh people are gonna like this, people are not gonna like this…’ Usually if I believe in something, I just do it. It isn’t that I’m not afraid; it’s just that I don’t choose to let my fear stop me if I believe in something.”

As both a designer and a filmmaker, the influence of old movies on Ford (who was an aspiring actor before he went to Parsons to study architecture) is very evident, from his vision of Firth as a sort of Cary Grant to his conception of fashion as a sort of visual narrative. He cites Hitchcock, Wong Kar-Wai and the Italian realist Vittorio De Sica’s heartbreaking film Umberto D as “all-time favourites”, and his own movie shows the strong influence of these great fillmmakers.

But his sense of character is not confined to the screen. His public persona is a conscious creation, and he has talked before of the place of character in fashion, when, for example, describing the difference between the Gucci woman and the Yves Saint Laurent woman.

“Womenswear is very much about where our culture is at a particular moment,” he says. “Women in our society and what they wear are a physical expression: if we’re in a very flashy glittery moment, women are wearing flash. If we’re in a calm, more sedate, more introspective moment, it’s reflected in clothing. Men dress pretty much the same way all the time. It changes slightly, which is also one of the interesting things about designing it, because you have a very narrow framework in which to work. Menswear for me is very much about the cut, the quality.”

It is clear that the brash, modern iconoclast of the Gucci days is long gone. When Ford returns to womenswear, he says, it will not be to the crazy world that he left. “I haven’t quite come to terms with making the commitment of coming back to women’s fashion. I love the designing, but all the sort of craziness that goes into shows and the very inside quality of a very few people thinking that the world revolves around your type of heel and look for that season – I don’t want to go back to that.”

Is this thoroughly contained man still flinching from the harsh industry that made him and broke him with such short shrift? Or is he simply once more ahead of the game with his return to the exclusivity of luxury and the pleasant certainties of good manners, fine fragrances, hand stitching and horn-rimmed spectacles?

“You know, I did grow up maybe at the end of ‘manners’,” he muses. “When I used to fly as a little kid we had to wear a jacket and tie. No one does that any more. Some of my favourite fragrances were the original Guerlain, fragrances that were quite classic. I was born in 1961 and the Fifties really continued until Kennedy was assassinated.

“My references are maybe, in a lot of ways, old-fashioned. I like manners. I like men to stand up when a woman comes into the room – that doesn’t mean that I’m sexist at all: I’ll stand up when men come into a room too; I think of it as a polite gesture. So I think that I’m maybe left over from another age,” he sighs.

And with that hint of nostalgia in his voice, it seems that Ford is human after all.

Source : thenational.ae

Five Four is a modern brand for a modern man. Their clothes fit with perfect taloring and make use of quality fabrics.

This is definatly one of my favorite brands!!!

Shouts out to Sameer over at Five Four.

Fivefourclothing.com

Quality garments are what you can come to expect from William Rast. Sharp and intelligent marketing has helped this brand take off since the creation in 2006.

You can see the owner Justin Timberlake and supermodel Erin Wasson in a series of mini films that depict the lifestyle that is created around the brand.

williamrast.com

Source: Staple Design

Spring 2010 collection