The essentials
A New York-based American fashion house, Marc Jacobs has been owned since September 2026 by a partnership of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group. The company sells ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance, with handbags as its core. Roughly once a year, in early February, it puts on a show, outside the official New York Fashion Week calendar. After opening that first SoHo store in 1997, the flagship has come to be at 127–129 Prince Street in Manhattan. The designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range are mark-jacobs what this marc jacobs overview covers, 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
- Main 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
- Labels still running: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The founder
Born in New York City in 1963 and schooled at Parsons School of Design, Marc Jacobs took his degree in 1984. As a student he became the youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. 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. According to his own timeline the “Original Grunge Collection” sits in 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. In 1997 he was made the first creative director of Louis Vuitton, where he created its first ready-to-wear and ran artist collaborations with Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince and Yayoi Kusama. Nicolas Ghesquière succeeded him after he showed his last Louis Vuitton collection in October 2013, and he remains Founder and Creative Director of his own company.
The labels under a single name
Out of the four names that matter in the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, three are still in use. The runway collections and the dearest products live on the main line, which carries the plain name. Below it sat a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, for fourteen years. Above the price floor sits The Marc Jacobs, created to occupy that space. Heaven by Marc Jacobs stands separate from them, 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 runway business is the main line, and every other label grew out of it. The bag categories are The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, plus groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. Launched in 2019 and reinvented each season, The Tote Bag is the largest family. The Snapshot is a camera-bag shape the brand says was conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. A first showing on the 2022 runway introduced The Sack Bag, and The Scene now has its own place in the site navigation. The company attributes to Jacobs the line “No more Birkins, only Tote Bags,” framing it as a rejection of exclusivity rather than a pursuit of it.
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. What that did was remove a distinct price tier from the business rather than simply rename it. Buyers meet the label today only on resale pieces from that period, the only place it now exists. Knowing the name matters, because it is routinely confused with the sub-label that replaced it.
The Marc Jacobs
The Marc Jacobs was unveiled in December 2018 and launched for pre-fall 2019, about four years after the diffusion line closed. Functionally descended from Marc by Marc Jacobs, it is a lower-priced sub-label built to reoccupy the tier the company had vacated. Home to the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range, it is in practice the line most casual buyers meet. The online tag on those products is still “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. Deliberate and capitalized, the definite article means it is written The Marc Jacobs. Much of the price confusion around the label comes from mixing it up with the main line.
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. A doorway into what the company terms the omniverse of Marc Jacobs subversion is how it is described, and Jacobs is quoted saying that “Heaven is a world within our Marc Jacobs world”. Well under the main line on price, it had bags around $150 to $250 and tees from about $65 on the US site in September 2026. The range covered roughly 153 products, and it runs standalone stores in Los Angeles, New York and London. Names of collaborating artists appear on products, including a David Rappeneau shoulder bag listed at about $175. Nirui left, as reported in January 2026, with no successor named, so the label’s current creative leadership is not confirmed by the brand.
Ownership and who runs it
One answer covered the question of who owns Marc Jacobs for nearly thirty years, before it changed in 2026. LVMH bought its majority stake in 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. LVMH set out a definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group on 14 May 2026; the deal closed on 1 September 2026. Under that 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. A figure of roughly $925 million came from Business of Fashion and WWD, but LVMH disclosed no value, so it is press-reported rather than official. Founder and Creative Director is still Marc Jacobs, with the closing announcement committing to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| The year | The milestone |
|---|---|
| 1963 | Birth of Marc Jacobs in New York City |
| 1984 | Graduation from Parsons; the brand timeline places the founding here |
| 1988 | Begins work at Perry Ellis |
| 1992 to 1993 | Grunge collection, then exit from Perry Ellis |
| 1997 | The Louis Vuitton job starts; LVMH acquires a majority stake; the SoHo store opens |
| 2001 | Launch of Marc by Marc Jacobs |
| 2007 | Daisy fragrance goes on sale |
| 2010 | Bookmarc sets up on Bleecker Street |
| 2013 | Final Louis Vuitton collection in October |
| 2014 | Marc Jacobs Beauty comes to market |
| 2015 | Marc by Marc Jacobs discontinued |
| 2019 | The Marc Jacobs launches alongside The Tote Bag; watches end after November |
| 2020 | Heaven by Marc Jacobs launches in September |
| 2026 | The purchase from LVMH by WHP Global and G-III completes on 1 September |
The pattern of the shows
The company does not follow the four-season calendar most houses of its size still use. It shows once a year, in early February, a few days before New York Fashion Week opens and deliberately off schedule. Seasonless and named for the year, the collections are called runway collections rather than spring or fall lines. The last few editions ran 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. The 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, was read by trade coverage as a turn toward wearability. No confirmation exists on whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
What it sells today
Handbags form the commercial core, with 312 products in the full bag listing on the US site in September 2026, across canvas, jacquard, leather, denim and seasonal fabrics. Starting at about $150 for canvas totes and reaching about $598, while The Dakota Tote sits at roughly $798, the prices are 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. The first fragrance was Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty started in 2014 and now operates under Coty, which relaunched the line in 2026, while watches were discontinued after November 2019 and carry no valid warranty. Bricks-and-mortar retail leans toward discount: 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.
