The starting facts
Marc Jacobs is a New York-based American fashion house, 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 form the catalogue, with handbags as its core. Roughly once a year, in early February, it puts on a show, outside the official New York Fashion Week calendar. Since the first SoHo store opened 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 new arrivals and the range as they stood in late September 2026. Readers arriving from the singular search phrase “marc jacob overview” should note the correct spelling carries a plural, Jacobs.
- Founder and Creative Director: Marc Jacobs, a New Yorker born in the city in 1963
- Founding year: 1984, by the brand’s own timeline
- Main office: New York City
- Owners since 1 September 2026: WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group
- Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, in the job since 2017
- Labels trading now: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The name on the label
Marc Jacobs was born in New York City in 1963 and trained at Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1984. The youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent, he collected it as a student. He went to Perry Ellis in 1988 and in November 1992 showed the grunge-inflected spring 1993 collection that made his name and cost him the job. His own timeline places the “Original Grunge Collection” to 1993 and lists a redux in 2018. In 1997 he was made 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. Nicolas Ghesquière succeeded him after he showed his last Louis Vuitton collection in October 2013, and he remains Founder and Creative Director of his own company.
The label family
Out of the four names that matter in the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, three are still in use. The plain name sits on the main line, which holds the runway collections and the priciest products. Fourteen years of a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, sat below it. Just above the price floor sits The Marc Jacobs, created to occupy that space. Apart from them stands Heaven by Marc Jacobs, with its own art direction and price band. Beyond the labels the company runs extensions that are not fashion labels: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.
Marc Jacobs
The runway business is the main line, and every other label grew out of it. Bag categories cover The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, plus groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. No family is larger than The Tote Bag, launched in 2019 and reinvented each season. The Snapshot takes a camera-bag shape the brand says was 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 company puts down to Jacobs the line “No more Birkins, only Tote Bags,” framing it as a rejection of exclusivity rather than a pursuit of it.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
Marc by Marc Jacobs launched in 2001 as the diffusion line, aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. Across fourteen years it was how many shoppers first came across the designer. An end came for the line in 2015, after the fall and winter collection, when it was folded back into the main line. The move deleted a distinct price tier from the business rather than simply renaming it. Resale pieces from that period are where buyers still find the label, the only place it now exists. It matters that you recognize the name, 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 cheaper sub-label descended in function from Marc by Marc Jacobs, built to reoccupy the tier the company had vacated. Most casual buyers meet this line rather than the others, since it holds the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range. Those products still carry the online tag “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. Deliberate and capitalized, the definite article means it is written The Marc Jacobs. Much of the price confusion around the label comes from mixing it up with the main line.
Heaven by Marc Jacobs
Heaven by Marc Jacobs started in September 2020 under art director Ava Nirui, built around youth subculture and a gender-fluid, do-it-yourself sensibility. The company calls it a gateway into what it terms the omniverse of Marc Jacobs subversion, and quotes Jacobs 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. Roughly 153 products sat in the range, and standalone stores run in Los Angeles, New York and London. Product names carry artist collaborations, among them a David Rappeneau shoulder bag listed at about $175. In January 2026 Nirui’s departure was reported with no successor named, so the label’s current creative leadership is not confirmed by the brand.
Ownership and leadership
For nearly thirty years the question of who owns Marc Jacobs had one answer, before it changed in 2026. LVMH acquired a majority stake in 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. A definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group was announced by LVMH on 14 May 2026; the deal closed on 1 September 2026. Two parts make up 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 both reported roughly $925 million for the transaction, but LVMH disclosed no value, so that figure is press-reported rather than official. Marc Jacobs remains Founder and Creative Director, and the closing announcement committed to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| Year | The milestone |
|---|---|
| 1963 | Marc Jacobs born in New York City |
| 1984 | Graduates from Parsons; the brand timeline dates the founding here |
| 1988 | Arrives at Perry Ellis |
| 1992 to 1993 | Grunge collection, then exit from Perry Ellis |
| 1997 | Start of the Louis Vuitton role; LVMH takes a majority stake; SoHo store opens |
| 2001 | Marc by Marc Jacobs goes on sale |
| 2007 | Daisy fragrance launches |
| 2010 | Bleecker Street gets Bookmarc |
| 2013 | Final Louis Vuitton collection in October |
| 2014 | Debut of Marc Jacobs Beauty |
| 2015 | Marc by Marc Jacobs is discontinued |
| 2019 | The Marc Jacobs and The Tote Bag both launch; watches end after November |
| 2020 | Heaven by Marc Jacobs arrives in September |
| 2026 | WHP Global and G-III close the LVMH acquisition on 1 September |
The show schedule
The company does not work to the four-season calendar most houses of its size still use. There is one show a year, in early February, a few days before New York Fashion Week opens and deliberately off schedule. Because the collections are seasonless and named for the year, they are called runway collections rather than spring or fall lines. Recent outings ran 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. Writing about the 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, the trade press read it as a turn toward wearability. No confirmation exists on whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
What the brand sells now
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. Canvas totes start at about $150 and leather totes reach about $598, while The Dakota Tote sits at roughly $798, all figures that vary by country and change without notice. Past the bags come ready-to-wear, shoes, wallets, jewelry, eyewear and children’s products, plus a permanent discount section called MARCDOWN. The fragrance business dates to Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty goes back 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. Physical retail tilts toward discount: 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.