The School of Cool

It was just a store opening, but the festivities taking place behind New York City's Lincoln Center could have rivaled the christening of the new Queen Mary. A giant tent glowed with the image of a logo-laden Louis Vuitton trunk, a beacon for the handbag obsessed. On the ceiling inside, tiny stars shaped like Vuitton's LV logo twinkled above the crowd. Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rudy Giuliani swept in to congratulate LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault on his spectacular four-story Fifth Avenue emporium.

The 150-year-old Vuitton brand may have been the star of the night, but on the ground, the talk was all about Marc Jacobs, the designer who has been widely credited with boosting Vuitton's profile and bottom line ever since he was named creative director in 1997. Rumors were flying around the tents at the New York fashion shows that Jacobs was unhappy with the way LVMH was handling his signature label and that he had been approached by rival Gucci Group N.V. to design the Yves Saint Laurent line. Arnault dismissed the chatter, saying that the relationship was very good and that Jacobs had the potential to become as big as Ralph Lauren or Donna Karan.

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The designer, 40, is perhaps already more influential among fashion's Young Turks than those brands are. The disheveled-1950s-housewife look that stalked runway after runway last week, for example, first appeared in Jacobs' spring 2003 show. And renditions of his brightly colored accessories have recently turned up in mass venues like the Gap (for which a onetime Jacobs accessory designer now works). "He certainly has made it really cool to look back to the past, and now other designers are following him in the way they put together a collection," says Julie Gilhart, vice president and fashion director at Barneys New York, marveling at Jacobs' growing influence. In fashion schools around the world, students reference Jacobs almost exclusively. "They revere him," says Timothy Gunn, chairman of the department of fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. "It's his design innovation and flea-market sensibility but also the fact that there's a little bit of mystery about him."

If Calvin Klein is the icon of minimalism, Ralph Lauren the elegant esquire and Donna Karan the workingwoman's tailor, Jacobs is the eclectic sampler who has ushered in an era of sophisticated charm in fashion. His uncanny ability to give street-wise looks a luxurious twist a thermal undershirt made of cashmere, or cropped cargo pants turned into tuxedo pants has made him one of the most carefully watched and desired designers in the business. The $1,000-plus Murakami bag, a collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, generated more than $300 million in sales for Vuitton last year.

"He has a vision of what people will want tomorrow," says Yves Carcelle, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton. "With the Murakami bag, he came to me and said, 'Look, we've been through such a gray period after Sept. 11, and we need optimism, a fresh, even naive, vision of the world.' And when those bright, colorful bags came out on the runway, it was such a relief, so new, so what people wanted."

But while his products are high profile, Jacobs himself is not. Unlike many of his more media-friendly colleagues Tom Ford and Donatella Versace come to mind the low-key Jacobs would rather cultivate his grunge-kid image than kowtow to Hollywood stars or join the society party circuit. Born in New York City, Jacobs was raised by his grandmother, whom he still cites as a fashion muse, having introduced him to places like Bergdorf Goodman and encouraged him to sketch. He now lives in Paris, works almost 365 days a year and pals around with longtime friends like artist Elizabeth Peyton and director Sofia Coppola. His grunge-meets-glamour aesthetic, often inspired by his friends, has quietly permeated the fashion world, influencing both luxury and mass-market designers. If Ford's louche Gucci Amazons symbolized the excesses and decadence of the '90s, then Jacobs' offhand, sexy thrift-store style is shaping up to be the fashion leitmotif of this decade.

Jacobs is particularly deft at attracting different kinds of customers. At Vuitton he appeals to the consumer's lust for "trading up"--buying something slightly out of her price range because of the status that attends it. And with his less expensive Marc line, he has created high fashion for a younger customer.

It was only seven years ago that Jacobs and his business partner of 20 years, Robert Duffy, were struggling to keep their business afloat, consulting for other design houses and refinancing their personal homes for cash. "The most accurate thing that was ever said about me is that I've had more comebacks than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween," says Jacobs. "Robert and I have a long history of not giving up." The two met in 1983 at a Parsons dinner, at which Jacobs was presenting a collection and Duffy, then employed by the Seventh Avenue manufacturer Ruben Thomas, was looking for new talent. In 1988 Jacobs was named womenswear designer at Perry Ellis and made his mark designing what he now calls uptown clothes with downtown attitude. But after his famous 1993 grunge collection, which featured floral-print dresses over striped T shirts, Jacobs was fired, so he and Duffy teamed up to create a Marc Jacobs line, which they produced on a shoestring until Arnault came calling three years later. Jacobs quickly reprised the LV logo in varnished leather and then, with the first collection of handbags designed under his own name, raised the bar for American accessories, an area usually stronger in Europe.