Marc Jacobs has long been a favorite designer of hip hop fashionistas. We now learn that the designer is a big fan of the genre as well.
For his namesake brand’s fall 2017 “Respect” collection, icons of hip hop such as LL Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa, Biz Markie and Kurtis Blow served as the designer’s muse. The collection hosts several go-to 80s-era hip hop fashion items like tracksuits, bucket hats, big gold chains and shearling-lined jackets. Legendary music video director Hype Williams was called on to help visually bring Jacob’s vision to life in the campaign ads for the collection. “Respect” is said to be Jacob’s way of paying homage to a time where he first noticed that hip hop’s influence transcends music, fashion, art and culture.
Jacobs explained to InStyle Magazine how a docuseries he saw on Netflix called Hip-Hop Evolution played a role in bringing the hip hop-inspired fall collection to life. “Watching it brought back that whole moment and how cool people looked, and I thought about people I knew back in those days—Debi Mazar and different people around New York—and how that style infiltrated their style in some way,” said the former creative director of Louis Vuitton.
Jacobs, who was recently accused of cultural appropriation when one of his runway shows featured a mostly white cast of models wearing dreaded wigs, also discussed the controversial subject that brought about much criticism for him. “What I learned from that whole thing, what caused me to pause after it died down a little bit, was that maybe I just don’t have the language for this, or maybe I’ve been insensitive because I operate so inside my little bubble of fashion,” he told the magazine.
You can read more about Marc Jacob’s thoughts on hip hop in the the September issue of InStyle Magazine.