Spring/Summer 1995 (left) and Fall/Winter 1995 (right), designs Marc Jacobs, drawings Grace Coddington. © 2019 Grace Coddington / typography and book design by Takaaki Matsumoto.

Marc Jacobs remembers 1995

Kate Moss, Guy Bourdin and the Beastie Boys feature in Marc’s Nineties memories

Marc Jacobs Illustrated is a beautiful book, featuring over 50 collections created by the fashion designer Marc Jacobs over the past 25 years, all illustrated by American Vogue’s creative director at large Grace Coddington

Grace’s pictures are great fun, and Marc’s recollections are equally engaging. Here’s how he recalls the events surrounding both his Spring / Summer and his Fall / Winter shows of 1995.

 

“This drawing is of me in my favorite bubble-gum-pink Comme des Garçons polo-shirt dress and my Pilgrim-inspired shoes, with Neville draped over my shoulders.” Marc Jacobs by Grace Coddington, from Marc Jacobs Illustrated
“This drawing is of me in my favorite bubble-gum-pink Comme des Garçons polo-shirt dress and my Pilgrim-inspired shoes, with Neville draped over my shoulders.” Marc Jacobs by Grace Coddington, from Marc Jacobs Illustrated

While preparing for the the Spring / Summer show Marc says he was “thinking about kitsch and camp and looking at all the Guy Bourdin adverts done for Charles Jourdan, commissioned in the 1960s.

"Stephanie Seymour and Tatjana Patitz were the sexiest girls I’d ever had in a show. Red Riding Hood, tropical, nautical, western, forties. I was loving costumes and clichés of all sorts. This show had more looks than I’ve ever had and went on, and on, and on . . . Every time Kate Moss appeared on the runway, the Beastie Boys’ “Girls” would play while she walked.” 

However, things changed by the time he was presenting his Fall / Winter collection (also pictured on the right in the spread, above). “This was the first of a few mod-inspired collections. The music for this show was Elastica. We played the CD from start to finish. Judith Leiber made the handbags for this show. We transformed one of the models into the spitting image of Edie Sedgwick. Michele Hicks, Emma Balfour, and Stella Tennant were my favorites in this show, as well as Jaime Rishar, who was the 'bride.'" 

 

Marc Jacobs Illustrated
Marc Jacobs Illustrated

Sounds like good times. For more from Marc and Grace, order a copy of Marc Jacobs Illustrated here. For more from Grace go here; for more on Kate invest in this; and if you like to look back on fashion photographs from collections gone by, take a look at Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines.