The core 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. The catalogue runs to ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance, 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. The designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range are the subject of this marc jacobs overview, as they stood in late September 2026. Anyone arriving marc jacobs collection 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, per the brand’s own timeline
- Headquarters: New York City
- Owners since 1 September 2026: WHP Global together with G-III Apparel Group
- Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, in the role since 2017
- Labels still running: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The designer behind it
Marc Jacobs was born in New York City in 1963 and trained at Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1984. He had not yet left college when he became the youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. 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. The “Original Grunge Collection” is recorded on his own timeline to 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. In 1997 he took the job of first creative director at Louis Vuitton, where he created its first ready-to-wear and ran artist collaborations with Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince and Yayoi Kusama. The final Louis Vuitton collection he showed came in October 2013, Nicolas Ghesquière succeeded him, and he remains Founder and Creative Director of his own company.
The labels that share one name
Across the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, four names matter, and three are still in use. The runway collections and the dearest products sit with the main line, which carries the plain name. Underneath it sat a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, for fourteen years. Created to occupy that space, The Marc Jacobs sits above the price floor. Heaven by Marc Jacobs stands separate from them, with its own art direction and price band. Offshoots that are not fashion labels are also run by the company: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.
Marc Jacobs
The main line holds the runway business and started every other label. On the bag side the categories are The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, plus groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. The Tote Bag is the biggest family, launched in 2019 and reinvented each season. A camera-bag shape, The Snapshot was, the brand says, conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. The Sack Bag first appeared on the 2022 runway, and The Scene now has its own place in the site navigation. The line “No more Birkins, only Tote Bags,” is credited by the company to Jacobs, framing it as a rejection of exclusivity rather than a pursuit of it.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
Marc by Marc Jacobs came out in 2001 as the diffusion line, aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. Fourteen years of trading made it the way many shoppers first encountered 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. That stripped a distinct price tier from the business rather than simply renaming it. Buyers still find the label on resale pieces from that period, the only place it now exists. Because it is routinely confused with the sub-label that replaced it, recognising the name matters.
The Marc Jacobs
An announcement in December 2018 was followed by a launch for pre-fall 2019, about four years after the diffusion line closed. That vacated tier is what this lower-priced sub-label, descended in function from Marc by Marc Jacobs, was built to reoccupy. Holding the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range, it is in practice the line most casual buyers meet. The online tag on those products is still “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. Capitalized on purpose, the definite article gives the written form The Marc Jacobs. Most of the price confusion around the label traces back to mixing it up with the main line.
Heaven by Marc Jacobs
Heaven by Marc Jacobs launched in September 2020 under art director Ava Nirui, built around youth subculture and a gender-fluid, do-it-yourself sensibility. The company describes it as 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”. Pricing 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.
The owners and the leadership
For nearly thirty years the question of who owns Marc Jacobs had one answer, before it changed in 2026. LVMH took a majority stake in 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. The announcement from LVMH of a definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group came on 14 May 2026; the deal closed on 1 September 2026. Under that 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. A figure of roughly $925 million came from Business of Fashion and WWD, but LVMH disclosed no value, so it is press-reported rather than official. As Founder and Creative Director, Marc Jacobs continues, the closing announcement committing to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| Year in question | Event |
|---|---|
| 1963 | Marc Jacobs born in New York City |
| 1984 | Parsons graduation; the brand timeline dates the founding here |
| 1988 | Takes a job at Perry Ellis |
| 1992 to 1993 | The grunge collection and then the exit from Perry Ellis |
| 1997 | The Louis Vuitton job starts; LVMH acquires a majority stake; the SoHo store opens |
| 2001 | Marc by Marc Jacobs launches |
| 2007 | Daisy fragrance goes on sale |
| 2010 | Bookmarc sets up on Bleecker Street |
| 2013 | The final Louis Vuitton collection comes in October |
| 2014 | Marc Jacobs Beauty launches |
| 2015 | Marc by Marc Jacobs comes to an end |
| 2019 | The Marc Jacobs and The Tote Bag arrive; watches end after November |
| 2020 | Heaven by Marc Jacobs comes to market in September |
| 2026 | WHP Global and G-III finish the LVMH acquisition on 1 September |
The show cadence
The company does not follow 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. The collections are seasonless and take the name of the year, which is why they are called runway collections rather than spring or fall lines. Recent dates were 2 February 2024 at the Park Avenue Armory, 3 February 2025 at the New York Public Library, and February 2026 at the Armory again. The 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, was read by trade coverage as a turn toward wearability. Whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week is not confirmed, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
The range today
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. Outside bags the offer runs to ready-to-wear, shoes, wallets, jewelry, eyewear and children’s products, plus a permanent discount section called MARCDOWN. The first fragrance was Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty dates 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. Bricks-and-mortar retail leans 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.