Marc Jacobs offers an enchanted interlude with his fall 2024 collection

The news in recent days has been rather gloomy across the Atlantic, with a Biden-Trump debate that disappointed many. Marc Jacobs obviously couldn’t have known this when he chose the date for his fall 2024 show, which was held Monday night in New York, off schedule as usual. His PR team sent out the invitations a few weeks ago.

The romantic parallel universe imagined by Marc Jacobs was therefore particularly welcome. Among the guests were his colleague Anna Sui and the model Karen Elson. Presented in the solemn and majestic marble setting of the New York Public Library, this enchanted interlude allowed everyone to temporarily forget international tensions and lose themselves in the pure and simple beauty of fashion. “Joy, Period,” as the designer summed up in the show notes.

Marc Jacobs’ collections rarely disappoint. But the fall 2024 line follows a particularly successful spring collection, which played with the distorted proportions and doll-like silhouettes that enchanted the New York scene.

This collection follows the same trend. Marketed from this month, it draws gargantuan, dreamlike and exaggerated silhouettes.

Championing unlimited freedom of expression in fashion in the name of “joy, beauty and personal transformation,” Marc Jacobs wants to remind us of the reason for this art. Always in search of love, faith and reflection, he adds: “I believe in an authentic life, free from the validation and permission of absurd conservatism and societal norms.”

The piece “Trial/Prison”, taken from the opera Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, was playing as the soundtrack to the parade. The song tells the story of a person who discovers a Fourth of July bathing cap for sale in a grocery store and realizes he hasn’t been to the beach in a long time, a fitting theme for a July soiree.

The show opened with four white poplin dresses with large eyelets and sculptural, retro cuts, followed by bikinis in the same style. Marc Jacobs clearly doesn’t feel compelled to stick to traditional fabrications for fall or to play it safe with more common, but perhaps less bold and graphic, silhouettes.

The retro touches of Marc Jacobs’ looks were reworked for a cartoon-inspired chic. Pointed corsets evoked 1950s bras, while the asymmetrical cut of the show’s first dress recalled Marilyn Monroe’s in Seven Years of Reflection. 19th-century-inspired crinolines peeked out from under sequined dresses or gave miniskirts a quirky look. Tulip-shaped skirts, especially with a red and white shirt, recalled Popeye’s wife Olive. Flesh-colored inserts gave the illusion of a sleeveless cut.

Special mention also goes to the yellow polka-dot bikini (a recurring motif throughout the collection) and the purple baby doll dress with white cuffs and collar, reminiscent of the upper part of the sexy outfit worn by Barbra Streisand at the Oscars in 1969.

Pastel stones adorning fitted pieces in mini lengths and with buttons oversize are the direct descendants of the excellent jewel dress from the spring collection, worn in public by Jessica Wang.

To accentuate the cartoonish feel, the models wore long false eyelashes in the purest style of Jan, from The Muppet Show. The jackets, with their floral brooch lapels and their sleeves with turned seams giving the impression of shorter arms, also contributed to this fashion-fiction feeling.

Sandals, meanwhile, retained the exaggerated shape of the spring collection’s shoes. Soft, chain-detailed top handle bags were worn with multiple outfits, a wise move considering the category’s importance to the house.

The overriding impression is that of a designer who loves what he does and who innovates because he believes in the virtues of design, leading fashion towards a dreamlike space that allows us to transform ourselves. So, yes, we cannot control current events. But this collection offers a preserved refuge.