FADER NYFW, Spring 2014
Marc Jacobs’s runway shows never fail to transport their attendees. Last spring, he reimagined the Swinging Sixties with mod bombshells teetering around in jailhouse stripes and trippy geometric patterns. The season before that, he took us down the rabbit hole where models flaunted Mad Hatter-style toppers stitched together from dyed furs. This season, however, was decidedly less glamorous. For spring ’14, Jacobs set his collection in a dilapidated Victorian haunted house. Villainous organ music played as models trudged across jutting floorboards and dusty Persian rugs. In case you didn’t get your bearings right away, a broken-down van along the runway, painted with “Dark Hallows,” served as a glaring reminder. The hair situation was equally nightmarish with models wearing choppy blonde bobs and blunted bangs that rendered them elfish and anonymous—even the lovely Sky Ferreira was hard to spot in the parade—but that likely wasn’t a coincidence.
The whole production felt rebellious. From gathering a fleet of top models—like Ferreira, Cara Delevingne and Georgia May Jagger, to name a few—only to conceal their beauty and celebrity, to playing with grotesque proportions such as football shoulders and treestump calves, with a few inches of skin between skirt hems and boots, Jacobs challenged the norm at NYFW, where notions of pretty rule the runway. Jacobs also questioned the purpose of spring collections, composing his with heavily embellished sweatshirts, tapestry suits and ruffled turtlenecks in shades of burgundy, navy and forest green—which makes total sense since spring collections are notoriously delivered during one of the iciest months, February. Even if the clothes Jacobs showed this NYFW might have alienated a few of his more recent customers, who were fans of the ladylike looks he’s mastered over the past two seasons, Jacobs could very well have just started a new trend among designers.