>> At 7:56 pm EST this evening, a booming male voice came over the loudspeakers at the Armory in New York, asking everyone to take their seats, the Marc Jacobs show was about to start. Meanwhile, the rest of the audience, via live.marcjacobs.com, had already taken their seats at home and were watching. The lights went down in the space, covered floor, wall, and ceiling with corrogated cardboard. Then, a spotlight appeared on Marc as he and Robert Duffy walked across the room to tear down a floor to ceiling segment of brown paper, revealing all the models, standing in a giant wooden crate, behind.
Tatiana Cotliar opened the pared-back, neutral-dominated collection to the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" soundtrack, which featured a mix of three different renditions of the song. The 56-look collection was modeled by a cast who exited the box one at a time and included Marc by Marc Jacobs stylists Camille Bidault-Waddington and Suzanne Deeken, plus two girls who were pulled off the street; Jamie Bochert closed.
There was no finale procession, just Marc taking a bow in a Bottega Veneta suit; it really seems like Marc is ready for his show to be about the clothes again, something Robert Duffy suggested recently: no celebrities front row (just Crystal Renn — Andre Leon Talley was even left standing after coming late), a one song soundtrack, a brown paper set, very few recognizable models. Even the after-party is staff-only this year. "It's not about fashion, it's about style. That's why we used 'real' girls," he said post-show.
And people seem to be responding. "Beautiful show, wistful. Fab coats with glossy, shaggy fur. A-line skirts," Cathy Horyn remarked. Paper's Kim Hastreiter wrote: "Marc Jacobs show was the most beautiful of his career IMO."
