Marc Jacobs Carte Orange. All card images courtesy of Marc Jacobs' Instagram

Marc Jacobs recalls his student days in three Eighties IDs

These identity cards capture some of the designer's earliest dramatic personal looks

Our new book Marc Jacobs Illustrated looks back at some of the designer’s best-loved collections, from the early 1990s through to the present day. Illustrated by Grace Coddington, and with personal recollections from the designer himself, it’s a wonderful record of his career to date.

However, Marc wound the clock back a little further recently, and shared some even earlier visual throwbacks, via Instagram.

In a post captioned “throw (way the f**k) back”, the designer shared photos of his 1982 International Student Card, his Parsons School of Design ID from 1983, and the Carte Orange he used in the summer of 1982 to ride the Paris metro.

 

Jacobs' International Student ID
Jacobs' International Student ID

We’re especially taken with the Carte Orange photo, though they're all pretty winsome. Indeed, the preppier Parsons card photo is almost a foreshadowing of the designer’s first role at Perry Ellis. In a further twist to the backstory, Jacobs apparently chose to study at Parsons on the advice of Ellis.

 

Jacobs' old Parsons ID
Jacobs' old Parsons ID

“Perry was very gracious and introduced me to his design assistants, Jed Krascella and Patricia Pastor, who were Parsons graduates," Jacobs recalls in a profile published on the Parsons site. "He said that if I were serious about fashion — which I was — I should go to Parsons. I knew that not many people were accepted, but I was jaded and pretty audacious. I said, ‘I’m going to Parsons or I’m not going to school.’”

 

Marc Jacobs Illustrated
Marc Jacobs Illustrated

That may have sounded risky, but it certainly turned out to be a wise choice. For more from Marc’s back pages, order a copy of Marc Jacobs Illustrated here.