In this weekend’s T Magazine from The New York Times, Marc Jacobs gave the kind of candid interview that you’d expect from a famous designer who shrugged his shoulders when he accidentally posted a come-hither semi-naked butt shot to his public Instagram (most others would be mortified). “Yeah… I’m a gay man. I flirt and chat with guys online,” he said (which could be paraphrased as “Duh!”). Jacobs talked about his fears and his desire to do away with excessive background information when meeting people. Here are the highlights.
He wants to be on first name terms
“I think it was after the Caitlyn Jenner thing, and I just said, like, can we just start calling people by their name? You know, not what they do for a living, not what their sexual preference is, not their age, not who they’re related to. It’s 2015. Just say, ‘Hi, I’m Caitlyn.’ ‘Hi, I’m Marc.’ It’s not like, ‘I’m Marc, homosexual Jew from New York.'” He laughs. “You know, ‘fashion designer.'”
He has horrible, recurring nightmares, panic attacks (and a shrink)
“I was terrified last week. I went to my shrink — it was a Wednesday morning — and I felt like I was having such a panic attack. I’d had one of my nightmares. It’s a recurring theme: I’m up against something uncomfortable or difficult, and just as I feel like I’m making some progress, there’s an end to the dream that says no, you’re not getting anywhere, you have to start over. This time, the nightmare was so bad that it felt like I was awake thinking about it, rather than asleep and dreaming. Which is another recurring thing, when I can’t differentiate between creating a scenario and dreaming it.”
The future terrifies him
“If I think about the future, I just become afraid.”
He’s glad he followed his instincts
His Perry Ellis grunge collection in 1992 may have got him fired, but he’s happy about it: “I’d never had any idea I’d be fired. But it’s still my favorite collection, because it marked a time when I went with my instincts against instructions, and I turned out to be right. It came out of a genuine feeling for what I saw on the streets and all around me.”
Here’s his idea of Decadence (which happens to be the name of his new fragrance)…
Smokers are “decadent”, he says, before adding, “If somebody is eating cherries and drinking champagne on a street corner in an expensive dress, it’s a decadent sort of behavior, but it’s kind of playing at something. You know what I mean.”
…and social media
“It’s very addictive.”
And finally, a line that he loves
Comes from film director Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski’s speech in acceptance of the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award. She said, “There are some things that we have to do for ourselves, but there are other things that we do for other people.”
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