Marc Jacobs’ castle-in-ruins set was designed by sculptor Rachel Feinstein. After the show, we caught up with an exultant Feinstein who explained how the whirlwind project all came together—in just a week and a half. “He called me and mentioned this sculpture I made called Puritan’s Delight, which is this broken black carriage, and he said that the clothes are starting to remind him of pilgrims, and kind of widows. So he was feeling my work, and whether I’d be interested in meeting with him. And I was, like, yeah.” Feinstein said. “So I went over that afternoon, and we had a meeting, and about two days later I brought up some ideas about broken castles and moats. And he said, ‘No castles, no fairytales—I want ruins, I want grottoes, I want, kind of like the Marie Antoinette version of a ruin.’”
She made four models in about a day and a half and then met with the carpenters and Stefan Beckman [Jacobs’ art director] on Super Bowl Sunday. The construction team started building that Tuesday, installing lighting and the runway, and Feinstein didn’t get to actually work on the project until Saturday. “I brought a team of two or three people that I always work with, and they had a team of about fifty carpenters, so we just did it in two days, really. Everything. So the last two days I have had no sleep,” she laughed. Feinstein has come to accept the fact that the set will be broken down. “It’s all made out of paper, basically. It’s not a real sculpture; it’s a very temporary structure that wouldn’t be able to exist after this time anyway.”
