Dark Marc

Today I picked up the latest issue of Interview magazine, I must admit only because Marc Jacobs was on the cover. In the vein of the magazine's founder, Andy Warhol, MJ poses with white hair and skin, false lashes and platforms, looking very fierce indeed. The interview inside suggests Jacobs is the modern day Warhol, which is quite a grand statement, as much as I love him. Similarities they draw are their shared "art is business, business is art" approach, their work as collaborators (Marc with contemporary artists like Murakami, Stephen Sprouse and Richard Prince) and being very aware and ahead of their times. By defacing, blatantly appropriating and blurring the lines between high and low with irony, MJ is one of the very few in fashion employing the techniques of post modern artists. He is very clever, but only he, and Warhol of course can get away with it. His recent obsession with the cult of celebrity and casting Victoria Beckham in his campaign is so very satirical, so typically Warhol, in fact I think he fancies himself a bit of an Andy something chronic, even ditching his recent blue hair for peroxide.
To celebrate the first official MJ Day of Whichway?  I made a pilgrimage to the store on Mount Street. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. After everything I've seen all week, these clothes from the S/S 2008 collection looked just like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The silk dresses with rainbow poppy and swan prints, the sheer knit and sequinned trompe l'oeil sweaters and even the window display jam packed with multi-coloured roses with the big black tulle dress from his controversial show where the media declared he had lost the plot. Just beautiful! All of it! There is no doubt that he is brilliant at what he does.

But as democratic and "art for the people, art for the streets" as Marc says he is, he's still all about Mayfair, luxury, and the pretense of fashion that he always denies and whinges about in every interview. With me toting around my faux Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton tote from Hong Kong, ripped off the original LV, which was copied by Marc from the large refugee woven shopper bags that the Chinese fake designer good dealers cart around the fakes of his original handbags in, I felt like I had beaten Marc at his own game.