Will These Designers Be The Next Marc Jacobs?

If you've flipped open a magazine lately, you'll notice that Louis Vuitton has been pushing the art of travel in a big way (that Bono ad is our favorite). So it makes sense that the French house teamed up for a second year with Parsons for Reconstruction 2.0, a competition that asked students to create a blanket—from Louis Vuitton Artistic Director and Parsons alumnus Marc Jacobs' runway samples—that embodied travel. The conceptual re-imaginings had six teams of students go all Project Runway, working real-time in the Louis Vuitton boutique in SoHo for this daylong challenge. Last night, at a cocktail reception in the store, a panel of judges that included Patricia Field, Style.com's Nicole Phelps, and LVMH Acting President Geoffroy van Raemdonck, selected the winning team, Time Travel, who was awarded a trip to Paris to tour the LV Museum, workshop, and flagship store. The designers involved, Janelle Abbott, Zachary Clark, Emily Hudson, and William Norris, conceived one cover we wish was on our bed: a dark palette of blues, navies, reds, browns, and blacks interwoven on three layers came together for a "topographical map of space and time." Perhaps Joel Towers, Dean of Parsons, said it best when he addressed the keyed-up room: "Our students are excited to be experimenting with designs by one of our most prominent alumni, Marc Jacobs." And, really, be him.