The groundwork

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. Its range covers ready-to-wear, bags, leather goods, shoes, jewelry, eyewear and fragrance, with handbags as its core. Roughly once a year, in early February, it presents a collection, outside the official New York Fashion Week calendar. The brand opened its first store in SoHo in 1997, and its flagship today is at 127–129 Prince Street in Manhattan. This marc www.marcjacob.org jacobs overview covers the designer, the labels, the corporate structure and the range as they stood in late September 2026. Readers arriving from the singular search phrase „marc jacob overview” should note the correct spelling carries a plural, Jacobs.

1. Founder and Creative Director: Marc Jacobs, a native of New York City born in 1963
2. Founding year: 1984, on the brand’s own timeline
3. Headquarters: New York City
4. Owners since 1 September 2026: the pairing of WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group
5. Chief Executive: Eric Marechalle, who has held the post since 2017
6. Labels trading now: Marc Jacobs, The Marc Jacobs, Heaven by Marc Jacobs

The name on the label

Marc Jacobs was born in New York City in 1963 and trained at Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1984. Still a student, he became the youngest ever winner of the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. He arrived at Perry Ellis in 1988 and in November 1992 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” is dated to 1993 and a redux is listed in 2018. In 1997 he became 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. 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 labels under one name

In the history of the Marc Jacobs brand, four names carry weight, and three are still in use. The runway collections and the dearest products belong to the main line, which carries the plain name. For fourteen years a diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, sat below it. That space above the price floor is held by The Marc Jacobs, created to occupy it. Heaven by Marc Jacobs stands separate from them, with its own art direction and price band. The company also operates extensions that are not fashion labels: Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs Beauty and the Bark Jacobs dog line.

Marc Jacobs

The main line is both the runway business and the root of every other label. Its bag categories run to The Tote Bag, The Snapshot and The Scene, with groupings for crossbody, mini, shoulder bags and totes. The Tote Bag is the biggest family, launched in 2019 and reinvented each season. A camera-bag shape, The Snapshot was, the brand says, conceived in a Parisian studio with its design team. The 2022 runway gave The Sack Bag its first outing, and The Scene now has its own place in the site navigation. The company credits Jacobs with 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

Marc by Marc Jacobs arrived in 2001 as the diffusion line, aimed at a younger, cheaper end of the market. Across fourteen years it was how many shoppers first came across the designer. The line came to an end in 2015, after the fall and winter collection, and went back into the main line. That removed a distinct price tier from the business rather than simply renaming it. The label now turns up only on resale pieces from that period, the only place it exists. Because it is routinely confused with the sub-label that replaced it, recognising the name matters.

The Marc Jacobs

An announcement in December 2018 was followed by a launch 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. Look for the online tag „THE collection,” which the company still applies and which is the quickest way to identify one. The definite article is no accident and is capitalized, so it is written The Marc Jacobs. Mixing it up with the main line explains much of the price confusion around the label.

Heaven by Marc Jacobs

Launched in September 2020 under art director Ava Nirui, Heaven by Marc Jacobs was built around youth subculture and a gender-fluid, do-it-yourself sensibility. The company calls it a gateway into what it terms the omniverse of Marc Jacobs subversion, and quotes Jacobs saying that „Heaven is a world within our Marc Jacobs world”. On price it sits well under the main line, with bags around $150 to $250 and tees from about $65 on the US site in September 2026. The catalogue stretched to roughly 153 products, and it runs standalone stores in Los Angeles, New York and London. Collaborations with artists turn up in product names, 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

The question of who owns Marc Jacobs had one answer for nearly thirty years before it changed in 2026. The LVMH majority stake dates to 1997, the year Jacobs took up the Louis Vuitton role, and the exact percentage was never published. On 14 May 2026 LVMH announced a definitive agreement to sell the brand to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group; 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. Business of Fashion and WWD both reported roughly $925 million for the transaction, but LVMH disclosed no value, so that figure 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.

How often it shows

Unlike most houses of its size, the company does not follow the four-season calendar they still use. It shows once a year, in early February, a few days before New York Fashion Week opens and deliberately off schedule. The name runway collections, rather than spring or fall lines, follows from collections that are seasonless and named for the year. Recent 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. Coverage in the trade press 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 today

Commercially the core is handbags, 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. Past the bags come ready-to-wear, shoes, wallets, jewelry, eyewear and children’s products, plus a permanent discount section called MARCDOWN. Fragrance began with Daisy in 2007, named after Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. Marc Jacobs Beauty goes back 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.