The core facts
An American fashion house based in New York, Marc Jacobs has been owned since September 2026 by a partnership of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group. It offers ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance, with handbags as its core. Collections arrive roughly once a year, in early February, outside the official New York Fashion Week calendar. SoHo got the first store in 1997, and its flagship perfect marc jacobs today is at 127–129 Prince Street in Manhattan. This marc jacobs overview covers the designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range as they stood in late September 2026. Anyone arriving 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
- Head office: New York City
- Owners since 1 September 2026: WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group
- Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, at the helm since 2017
- Current labels: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The designer behind it
Born in New York City in 1963 and trained at Parsons School of Design, Marc Jacobs graduated in 1984. The youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent, he took the prize while still a student. Perry Ellis signed him in 1988 and in November 1992 he showed the grunge-inflected spring 1993 collection that made his name and cost him the job. The “Original Grunge Collection” is placed on his own timeline to 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. The Louis Vuitton role came in 1997, the first creative director the house had, and 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 lines under one name
Of the four names that matter in the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, three are still in use. The main line uses the plain name and holds the runway collections and the priciest products. Below it sat a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, for fourteen years. That space above the price floor is held by The Marc Jacobs, created to occupy it. Separate from those is Heaven by Marc Jacobs, with its own art direction and price band. Alongside the labels the company runs extensions that are not fashion labels: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.
Marc Jacobs
The main line is both the runway business and the root of every other label. Bag categories cover The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, plus groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. The Tote Bag is the largest family, launched in 2019 and reinvented each season. The Snapshot carries a camera-bag shape the brand says was conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. First seen on the 2022 runway, The Sack Bag joined the range, and The Scene now has its own place in the site navigation. Cast as a rejection of exclusivity rather than a pursuit of it, the line “No more Birkins, only Tote Bags,” is attributed by the company to Jacobs.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
The diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, launched in 2001 as a line aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. Fourteen years of trading made it the way many shoppers first encountered the designer. The line was discontinued in 2015, after the fall and winter collection, and folded back into the main line. That took a distinct price tier out of the business rather than simply renaming it. The one place the label now exists is on resale pieces from that period, where buyers still find it. Routine confusion with the sub-label that replaced it is why recognising the name matters.
The Marc Jacobs
The Marc Jacobs was announced in December 2018 and launched for pre-fall 2019, about four years after the diffusion line closed. It is a lower-priced sub-label that descends in function from Marc by Marc Jacobs, built to reoccupy the tier the company had vacated. In practice this is the line most casual buyers meet, holding the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range. Those products still carry the online tag “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. The definite article is intentional and capitalized, so it is written The Marc Jacobs. Mix it up with the main line and you get much of the price confusion around the label.
Heaven by Marc Jacobs
Heaven by Marc Jacobs arrived 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”. On price it sits well under the main line, with bags around $150 to $250 and tees from about $65 on the US site in September 2026. The range held roughly 153 products, and standalone stores operate in Los Angeles, New York and London. Artist collaborations appear in product names, including a David Rappeneau shoulder bag listed at about $175. Nirui’s exit was reported in January 2026 with no successor named, so the label’s current creative leadership is not confirmed by the brand.
Ownership and leadership
The question of who owns Marc Jacobs had one answer for nearly thirty years before it changed in 2026. A majority stake went to LVMH 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. Two parts make up the 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. The transaction was put at roughly $925 million by Business of Fashion and WWD, but LVMH disclosed no value, so that figure is press-reported rather than official. Marc Jacobs continues as Founder and Creative Director, with the closing announcement committing to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| The year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1963 | Marc Jacobs born in New York City |
| 1984 | Parsons graduation; the brand timeline dates the founding here |
| 1988 | Starts at Perry Ellis |
| 1992 to 1993 | Grunge collection, and then departure from Perry Ellis |
| 1997 | Start of the Louis Vuitton role; LVMH takes a majority stake; SoHo store opens |
| 2001 | Debut of Marc by Marc Jacobs |
| 2007 | Daisy fragrance launches |
| 2010 | Bookmarc opens on Bleecker Street |
| 2013 | October brings the final Louis Vuitton collection |
| 2014 | Marc Jacobs Beauty launches |
| 2015 | Marc by Marc Jacobs comes to an end |
| 2019 | The Marc Jacobs launches alongside The Tote Bag; watches end after November |
| 2020 | Heaven by Marc Jacobs launches 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. Once a year, in early February, it shows, a few days before New York Fashion Week opens and deliberately off schedule. The name runway collections, rather than spring or fall lines, follows from collections that are seasonless and named for the year. The recent editions were staged on 2 February 2024 at the Park Avenue Armory, on 3 February 2025 at the New York Public Library, and in February 2026 at the Armory again. Coverage in the trade press of the 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, read it as a turn toward wearability. Whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week remains unconfirmed, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
What it sells 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. The entry point is canvas totes 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. Daisy started the fragrance business in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty goes back 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. Discount weighs heavily in physical retail: 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.
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