“I like romantic allusions to the past: what the babysitter wore, what the art teacher wore, what I wore during my experimental days in fashion when I was going to the Mudd Club and wanted to be a New Wave kid or a punk kid but was really a poseur. It's the awkwardness of posing and feeling like I was in, but I never was in. Awkwardness gives me great comfort.”

“Jacobs's clothes do, sometimes, require explanation, as well as a healthy sense of irony. With the wrong attitude, the wrong body, and without the right wink, wearing Marc Jacobs clothes could leave a girl looking a bit like Mrs. Doubtfire.”

“If Ralph Lauren is a lifestyle, Marc Jacobs is an ethos. With his pitch-perfect instincts—say, using laconic, large-nosed Sofia Coppola in grainy, era-defining ads—he exerts an almost messianic pull.”

“Jacobs's vision has transformed the luxury-goods market—you can feel the reverberations of his early inspiration that a sloppy flannel shirt could be rendered in fine silk, that the low could be high, and that streetwear could be fashion, in everything from the advent of the now ubiquitous two-hundred-dollar pair of jeans to the frayed hems and distressed elbows on the jackets that Karl Lagerfeld has designed for Chanel in recent seasons.”

“It's long been said that great designers understand what women want to wear before they've even seen it…. Jacobs has always known where the wind is blowing next, be it luxe logos, a prim fifties prettiness, or this new somber, romantic glamour. With both his own signature collection and the collection he designs for Louis Vuitton, this isn't fashion lite. These aren't clothes that make a seamless transition from runway to real life.”