Whether he’s casting his models on social media,
pushing the boundaries with provocative collaborations,
or championing one Kendall Jenner, Marc Jacobs clearly has his finger firmly
planted on the pulse of youth culture. But, as he tells BritishVogue's Suzy Menkes, there's an important difference between being clued in to what's trendy and blindly following the pack. He says that too many designers are doing the latter — which is exactly the problem with young fashion today.
He explained, "I look at
young fashion, and it seems like it's all the same — the idea of what is edgy or
cool. It's style with no substance; it doesn't really seem born of anything." According to Jacobs, too many young designers are lacking a reference point. "I don't see the rebellion or edge in it. It just looks like a cliché: salad oil in the hair, Frankenstein shoes, and the trappings of punk and all these other things," he said, referring to some of the preeminent trends of the past few seasons. Yikes. These are strong words coming from one of fashion's most notorious rabble-rousers (who could forget spring 2008, when Anna Wintour walked out of his two-hours-late show?), but Jacobs tells Menkes that those days are far behind him.