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The essentials
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion house headquartered in New York, owned since September 2026 by a partnership of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group. Ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance make up the range, with handbags as its core. Shows come roughly once a year, in early February, outside the official New York https://jacobs-clothing.com/ Fashion Week calendar. After opening that first SoHo store in 1997, the flagship has come to be at 127–129 Prince Street in Manhattan. What follows in this marc jacobs overview is the designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range as they stood in late September 2026. If you arrived from the singular search phrase “marc jacob overview”, be aware that the correct spelling carries a plural, Jacobs.
- Founder and Creative Director: Marc Jacobs, born in 1963 in New York City
- Founding year: 1984, according to the brand’s own timeline
- Headquarters: New York City
- Owners since 1 September 2026: WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group
- Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, at the helm since 2017
- Labels still running: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The man himself
New York City in 1963 was where Marc Jacobs was born, and Parsons School of Design was where he trained, graduating in 1984. The youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent, he collected it as a student. His Perry Ellis years started in 1988 and in November 1992 he showed the grunge-inflected spring 1993 collection that made his name and cost him the job. The “Original Grunge Collection” is placed on his own timeline to 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. In 1997 he became the first creative director of Louis Vuitton, where he created its first ready-to-wear and ran artist collaborations with Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince and Yayoi Kusama. The final Louis Vuitton collection he showed came in October 2013, Nicolas Ghesquière succeeded him, and he remains Founder and Creative Director of his own company.
The lines under one name
Out of the four names that matter in the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, three are still in use. The plain name belongs to the main line, which holds the runway collections and the priciest products. A diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, sat below it for fourteen years. Created to occupy that space, The Marc Jacobs sits above the price floor. Separate again is Heaven by Marc Jacobs, which has its own art direction and price band. Offshoots that are not fashion labels also run under the company: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.
Marc Jacobs
Every other label traces back to the main line, which is the runway business. The bag categories are The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, plus groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. Launched in 2019 and reinvented each season, The Tote Bag is the largest family. A camera-bag shape, The Snapshot was, the brand says, conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. A first showing on the 2022 runway introduced The Sack Bag, and The Scene now has its own place in the site navigation. The line “No more Birkins, only Tote Bags,” is credited by the company to Jacobs, framing it as a rejection of exclusivity rather than a pursuit of it.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
Marc by Marc Jacobs arrived in 2001 as the diffusion line, aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. It lasted fourteen years, and for many shoppers it was the first encounter with the designer. The line was discontinued in 2015, after the fall and winter collection, and folded back into the main line. Rather than a simple renaming, it took a distinct price tier out of the business. The one place the label now exists is on resale pieces from that period, where buyers still find it. The name is worth recognising, because it is routinely confused with the sub-label that replaced it.
The Marc Jacobs
The Marc Jacobs was announced in December 2018 and launched for pre-fall 2019, about four years after the diffusion line closed. It is a lower-priced sub-label descended in function from Marc by Marc Jacobs, built to reoccupy the tier the company had vacated. In practice it is the line most casual buyers run into, holding the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range. The online tag on those products is still “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. The definite article is deliberate and capitalized, so it is written The Marc Jacobs. Most of the price confusion around the label traces back to mixing it up with the main line.
Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The launch of Heaven by Marc Jacobs came in September 2020 under art director Ava Nirui, and it was built around youth subculture and a gender-fluid, do-it-yourself sensibility. In the company’s own framing it is a gateway into what it terms the omniverse of Marc Jacobs subversion, and Jacobs is quoted saying that “Heaven is a world within our Marc Jacobs world”. On price it sits well under the main line, with bags around $150 to $250 and tees from about $65 on the US site in September 2026. The range held roughly 153 products, and standalone stores operate in Los Angeles, New York and London. Artist collaborations appear in product names, including a David Rappeneau shoulder bag listed at about $175. Nirui’s departure was reported in January 2026 with no successor named, so the label’s current creative leadership is not confirmed by the brand.
Who owns it and who runs it
The question of who owns Marc Jacobs kept one answer for nearly thirty years before it changed in 2026. LVMH bought its majority stake in 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. On 14 May 2026 LVMH made public a definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group; the deal closed on 1 September 2026. The business is split in two by the structure: a fifty-fifty joint venture owns the intellectual property with WHP Global leading licensing, while G-III operates the wholesale, retail and e-commerce business under a long-term license from that venture. Business of Fashion and WWD placed the transaction at roughly $925 million, but LVMH disclosed no value, so that figure is press-reported rather than official. Founder and Creative Director is still Marc Jacobs, with the closing announcement committing to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1963 | New York City sees the birth of Marc Jacobs |
| 1984 | Graduates from Parsons; the brand timeline dates the founding here |
| 1988 | Starts at Perry Ellis |
| 1992 to 1993 | The grunge collection, followed by leaving Perry Ellis |
| 1997 | Louis Vuitton role begins; LVMH takes a majority stake; SoHo store opens |
| 2001 | Marc by Marc Jacobs comes to market |
| 2007 | Daisy fragrance goes on sale |
| 2010 | Bleecker Street gets Bookmarc |
| 2013 | The final Louis Vuitton collection comes in October |
| 2014 | Marc Jacobs Beauty comes to market |
| 2015 | Marc by Marc Jacobs comes to an end |
| 2019 | Launch of The Marc Jacobs and The Tote Bag; watches end after November |
| 2020 | September launch for Heaven by Marc Jacobs |
| 2026 | The purchase from LVMH by WHP Global and G-III completes on 1 September |
The pattern of the shows
The company does not follow the four-season calendar most houses of its size still use. It shows once a year, in early February, a few days before New York Fashion Week opens and deliberately off schedule. The name runway collections, rather than spring or fall lines, follows from collections that are seasonless and named for the year. Recent shows fell on 2 February 2024 at the Park Avenue Armory, on 3 February 2025 at the New York Public Library, and in February 2026 at the Armory again. Coverage in the trade press of the 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, read it as a turn toward wearability. It is not confirmed whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
What is on sale today
Commercially the core is handbags, with 312 products in the full bag listing on the US site in September 2026, across canvas, jacquard, leather, denim and seasonal fabrics. Starting at about $150 for canvas totes and reaching about $598, while The Dakota Tote sits at roughly $798, the prices are all figures that vary by country and change without notice. Beyond bags the range takes in ready-to-wear, shoes, wallets, jewelry, eyewear and children’s products, plus a permanent discount section called MARCDOWN. The first fragrance was Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty dates to 2014 and now operates under Coty, which relaunched the line in 2026, while watches were discontinued after November 2019 and carry no valid warranty. Discount dominates physical retail: the store locator listed 103 locations in September 2026, of which 46 were boutiques and 57 outlets, with Regent Street in London the only boutique in Europe.