Sunday, January 23, 2011

Marc Jacobs, you are usually my sunshine


Last Christmas, I was reading Tavi Gevinson’s blog, and coveting her request for Juergen Teller’s book of Marc Jacobs ad photography. The book is stunning, but unfortunately, so is the price, so I didn’t even bother putting it on my list… a decision I regret big time. 

The ads that Teller has photographed for Marc Jacobs over the past decade are incredible and ground-breaking. They blur gender, put celebrities in interesting positions, and sometimes cause a little discomfort.


The book, called Juergen Teller: Marc Jacobs Advertising 1998-2009, is a compilation of these ads, and like everything with the Marc Jacobs name on it, I love it. I can’t get enough of the images, and as soon as amazon.ca decides they want to sell it to me or I find it in whatever city I move to next year, I WILL own it.

With these ads being as fabulous as they are, and spring-summer 2011 collections debuting, I figured some kind of equally excellent Marc Jacobs ad campaign was surfacing. So I did some research, and found this:


Disappointing, no? This is awfully drab, considering it is for a spring-summer collection, and Marc Jacobs. Granted, it is the Marc by Marc Jacobs line, but that is no excuse to skimp. The dress on the right is gorgeous, and if I were taller, I’d start selling my soul for it now. And I like the contrast of the outfit on the right with the one on the left. But the atmosphere is all wrong. It’s what I imagine a backyard in a crappy LA suburb looks like. It makes me miss the monochromatic backgrounds of the old campaigns, a method that displayed Jacobs’ pieces beautifully.

Ah well, my February subscriptions should be rolling through the door any day now, and perhaps some redemption in the form of improved Marc Jacobs ad campaigns will arrive with them.