Designer of the Week - Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line. He is also the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997.

Marc Jacobs was born to a non-observant Jewish family in New York City. When he was seven, his father, an agent at the William Morris agency, died. His mother, who remarried three times, was “mentally ill” and “didn’t really take care of her kids”, according to Jacobs. As a teenager, he went to live with his paternal grandmother on the Upper West Side, in an apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West.
He graduated from the High School of Art and Design in 1981 and studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. During his time at Parsons, Jacobs won the Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award in 1984, and in the same year was also awarded the Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award and the Design Student of the Year Award.