July 2, 2025 |
Marc Jacobs returned to the marble corridors of the New York Public Library Monday evening for a swift five-minute show that felt like stepping into a hall of mirrors. His AW25 collection, titled Beauty, opened with a lavender lace bodysuit featuring sleeves so dramatically puffed they resembled inflated orchids, paired with cargo pants whose volume defied practicality.
The collection riffed on the exaggerated proportions Jacobs has toyed with the past few seasons, to surreal effect. Hips jutted at impossible angles, spines curved into question marks and collars became personal fortresses. Models carefully walked in towering curved platforms, as though they were standing on exclamation points.
Some looks featured strategic padding that exaggerated the models’ silhouettes in unexpected ways, turning familiar garments into something altogether more theatrical – like the trompe l’oeil top made to resemble an ample chest and “muffin top” spilling out of a lace brassiere. Oversized bows abounded in models’ hair and affixed to the back of skirts and denim, pressed flat to give the effect of two dimensions rather than three.
True to Marc Jacobs form, there was an element of the gothic, with two finale gowns that wouldn’t be amiss in a fantastical period film. One translucent, catching the library’s dramatic light, the other a full pastel lace – both warped to give the wearer dislocated hips and a slightly hunched back.
Set to the melancholy soundtrack of Nick Cave‘s Song for Jesse, the show possessed an otherworldly quality. In an industry increasingly focused on commercial viability, Jacobs continues charting his own course – one where beauty isn’t about perfection but about the strange pleasure found in deliberate distortion and magnificent excess.
Photography courtesy of Marc Jacobs.
