The starting facts
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion house based in New York, owned since September 2026 by a partnership of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group. Ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance form the catalogue, with handbags as its core. It shows roughly once a year, in early February, outside the official New York Fashion Week calendar. Since the first SoHo store opened in 1997, the flagship has come to be at 127–129 marc jacob bag Prince Street in Manhattan. What follows in this marc jacobs overview is the designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range as they stood in late September 2026. If you arrived from the singular search phrase “marc jacob overview”, be aware that 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, as the brand’s own timeline has it
- Headquarters: the house is run out of New York City
- Owners since 1 September 2026: the partnership of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group
- Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, at the helm since 2017
- Live labels: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs
The man himself
Born in New York City in 1963 and trained at Parsons School of Design, Marc Jacobs graduated in 1984. As a student he became the youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. He was at Perry Ellis from 1988 and in November 1992 he showed the grunge-inflected spring 1993 collection that made his name and cost him the job. On his own timeline the “Original Grunge Collection” falls in 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. His Louis Vuitton appointment 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, was succeeded by Nicolas Ghesquière, and remains Founder and Creative Director of his own company.
The label family
In the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, four names carry weight, and three are still in use. The plain name sits on the main line, which holds the runway collections and the priciest products. Below it sat a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, for fourteen years. Created to occupy that space, The Marc Jacobs sits above the price floor. Heaven by Marc Jacobs sits apart, with its own art direction and price band. Offshoots that are not fashion labels also run under the company: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.
Marc Jacobs
The main line holds the runway business and started 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 heads the families by size, launched in 2019 and reinvented each season. The shape of The Snapshot is a camera bag, and the brand says it was conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. The Sack Bag turned up first on the 2022 runway, 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
Marc by Marc Jacobs started in 2001 as the diffusion line, aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. For fourteen years it ran, and it was how many shoppers first encountered the designer. The company discontinued the line in 2015, after the fall and winter collection, and folded it back into the main line. That stripped a distinct price tier from the business rather than simply renaming it. Resale pieces from that period are where buyers still find the label, the only place it now exists. It matters that you recognize the name, because it is routinely confused with the sub-label that replaced it.
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. That vacated tier is what this lower-priced sub-label, descended in function from Marc by Marc Jacobs, was built to reoccupy. Home to the canvas totes and much of the everyday accessory range, it is in practice the line most casual buyers meet. Online, those products are still tagged as part of “THE collection,” the quickest way to identify one. Because the definite article is deliberate and capitalized, 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 launched in September 2020 under art director Ava Nirui, built around youth subculture and a gender-fluid, do-it-yourself sensibility. In the company’s own words it is a gateway into what it terms the omniverse of Marc Jacobs subversion, and Jacobs is quoted saying that “Heaven is a world within our Marc Jacobs world”. Priced well under the main line, it listed bags around $150 to $250 and tees from about $65 on the US site in September 2026. Roughly 153 products made up the range, and it runs standalone stores in Los Angeles, New York and London. Product names carry artist collaborations, among them a David Rappeneau shoulder bag listed at about $175. News of Nirui’s departure came in January 2026 with no successor named, so the label’s current creative leadership is not confirmed by the brand.
Ownership and the people in charge

The same answer served the question of who owns Marc Jacobs for nearly thirty years, before it changed in 2026. LVMH took a majority stake in 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. A definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group was announced by LVMH on 14 May 2026; the deal closed on 1 September 2026. The arrangement splits the business in two: 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. As Founder and Creative Director, Marc Jacobs continues, the closing announcement committing to continuity of the creative vision, collections and shows; Eric Marechalle has been chief executive since 2017.
| Date | The milestone |
|---|---|
| 1963 | Marc Jacobs comes into the world in New York City |
| 1984 | Graduation from Parsons; the brand timeline places the founding here |
| 1988 | Starts 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 | Marc by Marc Jacobs comes to market |
| 2007 | Launch of the Daisy fragrance |
| 2010 | Bookmarc arrives on Bleecker Street |
| 2013 | The final Louis Vuitton collection comes in October |
| 2014 | Marc Jacobs Beauty comes to market |
| 2015 | End of Marc by Marc Jacobs |
| 2019 | Launch of The Marc Jacobs and The Tote Bag; watches end after November |
| 2020 | Heaven by Marc Jacobs arrives in September |
| 2026 | WHP Global and G-III complete the LVMH acquisition on 1 September |
The show cadence
The company does not work to 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. Because the collections are seasonless and named for the year, they are called runway collections rather than spring or fall lines. Recent shows fell 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. Trade coverage of the 2026 show, titled “Memory. Loss.”, read it as a turn toward wearability. Whether it also showed during September 2026 fashion week is not confirmed, and on the established pattern the next outing falls in February 2027.
What the brand sells now
Handbags sit at 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. Canvas totes open at about $150 and leather totes climb to 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. The fragrance business dates to Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty dates 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 dominates 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.