Introduction
Take a walk a long a clothe line street or shopping malls and you are bound to encounter numerous of super-cute and fashionable clothes. But have you ever imagined the people behind these admirable products? Its fashion designers’ brilliance that makes the products you see on the clothing lines. Other than clothes, they design other things like shoes, caps, swimsuits, jewelry and a whole range of designer products. Although different designers have different styles, it must be acknowledged that the passion behind such creativity is the same for all.
In fact, fashion designers are not merely artists, but creators who toil with good and crude ideas everyday, to come up with fresh products (Jones 21). For them to keep up with expectations of the market and maintain sustainable and fresh ideas, they look for inspiration (Miron 3). Such inspirations can come from their backgrounds (e.g. culture, politics, education, affinity with the past artworks, and their socio-economic level). Notably, fashion is a cycle, i.e. trends that were so popular in the past years often come back with redesigned style (Miron 23). This indicates how designers highly depend on past designs to come up with what becomes a fashion hit in the contemporary world. This paper analyzes two contemporary designers: one international designer, Marc Jacobs and the renowned Canadian designer, Judy Cornish. The analyses involve how their backgrounds influenced their success in the design industry.
Marc Jacobs
Early Life and Schooling
Marc Jacobs is an internationally acclaimed American fashion designer, recognized for his scintillating design works at Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs, where he is the lead designer (The Vogue 1). He is also the Creative director of Louis Vuitton, a giant and internationally acclaimed French-based design house (The Vogue 1). Born in 1963 in New York, Marc went to the prestigious school of arts, The New York High School and later went on to join The University of Art and Design, Parsons, to further his career in design (The Vogue 2). Marc’s environment at young age influenced his passion for art and design in a big way. His early life was spent in a humble background at Teaneck, New Jersey, together with his mother and two younger siblings. Marc got employed at a tender age of 15 as a stock boy in a clothing boutique in the City of New York, where his passion for fashion design developed (Trebay 2). The desire to pursue fashion design as a career was boosted when he was admitted at The New School and later at Parsons, The University of Art and Design, where he later won numerous awards as a budding professional designer. That is, in 1984, he was awarded “Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award”, and “Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award” as well as “Design Student of the Year” (Trebay 3).
His life at Parsons continued to bear more fruits when as a student, he designed a hand-knit sweater, which was later reproduced in mass by the institution’s design department, earning him good income after they were sold out in large numbers (New York Times 2). Continuous excellence in practical design at Parsons saw him get recruited at Perry Ellis, to become the main designer after the death of the founder (New York Times 3).
Post School Design Period
After successful and highly promising school life, Marc involved himself in a series of design activities with several prestigious design houses. His post school journey to successful design life began in 1986, when he broke into limelight after becoming the youngest fashion designer to be awarded the Council of Fashion Design of America (CFDA) Perry Ellis designer of the years at a New York Fashion Talent Show (Jones 76). His ability to diversify his fashion design products ranging from womenswear and menswear, as well as accessories made many people to compare him with Miuccacia Prada of Italy (The New York Times 1). The New York Times described him as “the bellwether label, the mercurial designer who stuns, delights, scares the fashion world” (New York Times 1).
Marc started to venture into design of women clothing category, when he together with Duff, a fellow designer joined Tristan Russo in 1989 (The Vogue 3). Marc was appointed Vice President, deputizing Duffy, who was the President (The Vogue 3). Marc’s successful design of women’s clothing became apparent in 1992 when he won “The Women’s Designer of the Year Award”, an annual award organized and supported by Council of Fashion Designers of America (New York Times 5). This honor came after Marc supervised the design of several women’s licensees between 1990 and 1992, which are believed to have been associated with his skillful and persistent work towards improving design work (New York Times 6). After successful design of womenswear, Marc decided to compile his first ever complete collection of menswear in 1994, after producing a variety of clothes including caps, trousers, blazers and many more (Trebay 17).
Marc Jacobs and the Use of Old Designs
As stated earlier, fashion designers have the tendency to use the past design works to inspire their new innovation, and sometimes goes as far as reinventing design of the past century to attract the present ideas. Marc has not been left out in this category of designers as almost all his artworks can be traced back to past decades of the last century. Some of his critics have alluded to this trend and accused him of being a “mere copyist” of the past fashion designs, without any originality (New York Times 5). However, most of his supporters belief that contrary to most of the brand name fashion designers who hide their inspirational pasts design works, Marc designs and acknowledges that he got inspired by some historical design works and just improve on it through modern skills and creativity (Jones 29). On his part, Marc believes in his design category when he says that “even if some people feel hedonistic, what I adore most is when they fail to look at the products keenly” (Jones 30). He goes further to explain his category when he says that he is not interested in ‘sexy-clothing” but single case of the female and male sexes (Jones 30). His reputation expanded even more when in 2009, he hosted the ‘Model and Mouse’, an event that was organized at Institute Gala (The Vogue 4).
Other Roles in the Fashion Design Career
In his career, Marc Jacobs has held several positions in the fashion industry. His lifeline appointment came in 1997 when he became the Creative Director of Louis Vuitton, a French-based fashion house that specializes in luxury wears, moving forward to become the only person in that capacity to create the first ever “ready-to-wear line of clothing” (Jones 31). To cement his dominance in the industry, Marc adopted a strategy to collaborate with many designers in the industry such as Takashi Murakami, and artists/musicians like Kanye West, which saw him create Louis Vuitton Collections (Jones 31).
Marc’s design works have been applied in many occasions and areas. For instance, his notoriously unique fashion design has been applied in the advertising industry, where the choice of models was considered one of the prerequisite in successful ad campaign (The Vogue 5). It’s possible to connect his aggressive marketing approach to his marriage to Lorenzo Martone, a Brazilia-born marketer in the middle of 2009. In this line, Marc’s 2007 ad production campaign saw him use actress Dakota Fanning to be the main star in his ad products (The Vogue 5). The youthful actress got her shoes made to the size of children’s, accompanied by shrunk clothes (The Vogue 5). He has also worked with some other prominent musicians like Jarvis Cocker and Michael Stipe in the creation of eye catching ads for the marketing purposes. In 2008, apart from the pop-music group t.A.T.u. gracing Marc’s campaign ads, he also managed to get Victoria Beckham featured in his ads (The Vogue 6).
International Networks
Its is noticeable that Marc’s brands of design works has expanded considerably in the recent past all over the world, with wide range of boutiques distributed to several locations and destinations of cities and major towns of the world. In fact, this can be seen in Marc’s ads placed in several cities all over the world, giving a tentative data of the company’s wide network of print advertisements. Although Jones (79) observes that such kinds of observations may not give accurate information or even detailed and complete survey of Marc’s brands in the global markets, it is important to note that the companies associated with Marc such as Marc Jacobs Collection, Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Little Marc have all been seen in most of the major cities in Europe and America, a testimony of how wide range the designer’s works have gone to the global stage. Basically, most of Marc’s brands of boutique are owned by Marc by Marc Jacobs, with visible presence in major cities in the United States, spearheaded by New York, and European cities such as London and Paris.
Canadian Designer: Judy Cornish
Background information to fashion design in Canada is very rare (Palmer 123). The history of the scant history is based on the little bibliographical compilation of the design works in Canada (Palmer 123). According to Miron (132), non-fashion biographies to describe Canadian designers are limited due to the fact that designers like Rose Marie Reid and Elizabeth Arden were never recognized as designers of Canadian origin.
Judy Cornish, one of the renowned Canadian designers was born in 1958 in Toronto, Canada. His childhood was spent in Victoria, BC, where at a tender age of 6, she had won a competition as best prospective designer (Torontoist 2). This feat would later develop into a lifelong passion that would later determine his career as she furthered her studies into fashion design. She went on to attend the University of Victoria, School of Fine Art and Theatre for a period of one academic year, although her interest in fashion drove her back to Toronto where she began her education in fashion design and illustration (Torontoist 3).
Early age influence from renowned international designers drove her into apprentice at Kira Fashions, where she got inspired by Lida Baday (Torontoist 3). It is at Ryerson Polytechnic, Toronto where she came into contact with Gunhouse, with whom they formed design partnership in the design business for many years to come. Through shared passion and vision on fashion design, the two formed Comrags Label in 1983, specializing in women’s sports kits with a touch of romance to spice the products up (Torontoist 3). Currently, the design products are distributed all over Canada and other oversea markets.
In their pursuit of excellence, Judy Cornish and her colleague went back to Ryerson between 1991 and 1993 as instructors, which coincided with the two being awarded the “City of Toronto Designer of the Year Award” (Miron 7). Added to their basket of accolades is the Festival of Canada Fashion’s Gold Award that they won for collecting the “Road to Utopia” videos (Miron 7).
What inspired Judy’s design category
Although the early 20th century saw many Canadians preferring and fancying dresses that did not reveal any part of their body to the public, later years saw an increased interest in ‘sexy’ clothing which hit the market with a lot of vigor (Palmer 71). That is, individual’s choice of display revealed that the public scrutinized so much the kind of clothes public figures and society as a whole put on. However, towards the end of 20th century, the Canadians got influenced from their American and European counterparts through their sexy looking clothing lines (Palmer 73). It was a coincidence that during this period of design revolution in Canada, Judy Cornish ventured into design world, albeit through her early age passion.
The urge to pursue what interests her led to her to venture in a wide range of design products. According to her, one starts designing by seeing the surrounding, “keeping one’s eyes open” to pursue the passion alive and invoke creativity (Torontoist 4). Judy was quoted by Torontoist.com as saying that she gets inspired by a variety of things, ranging from “an old lady on a street or just how a person just misses the correct button hole in the shirt” (Torontoist 5). It is believed Judy and her colleague share great deal of ideas in making the ready to wear sportswear, with feminine look. According to sources, their designs go with what season demands since the world is constantly changing with different moods and passion for what to wear (Torontoist 6). In industry that has seen many budding fashion designers collapse before reaching their peak, Judy Cornish represents an interesting and a unique approach to design that makes her sense of creativity open for alterations.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it is evident to note that contemporary fashion designers have a special connection to past design works, or the need to be different from others that inspired their success. It is through their brilliance and creativity that has set them apart from the rest of the world, and to continuously come up with eye-catching products. Marc Jacobs has his internationally admired design products attached to the past design works, influenced by his childhood difficulty that got him employed at a tender age of 15 at a clothing line. Despite being criticized by some in the industry of plagiarizing many past works with little new ideas, Marc has established himself in the industry that many believe cannot survive without adopting past decades’ design works. That is to say, through reinvention of past decades’ design work, a cycle of new product are produced from the old.
While Marc’s category of clothing is widely considered conservative in nature, a fellow designer Judy Cornish’s works are considered sexy and more of a modern urban wear. Again, Judy’s works were influenced by the change of design perception in Canada, with much influence from Europe and American design houses. Generally, one trait is shared by the two designers: passion for their work that was influenced by their backgrounds.
References
Jones, Jen. Fashion Design: The Art of Style. New York. Sage Publishers. 2007. Print.
Miron, Francois. Revisit Toronto History. NOW magazine, Vol. 27 (5), 2007. Web.
New York Times. Familiar, but Not: Marc Jacobs and the Borrower’s Art. The New York Times Magazine, 2002. Web.
Nymag.com. Marc Jacobs: Spring 2009 RTW shows. Nymag.com, 2009. Web.
Palmer, Alexander. Fashion: A Canadian Perspective. Toronto. University of Toronto Press, 2004. Print.
Realstylenetwork.com. Comrags: Canadian fashion designer profile. Realstylenetwork.com, 2009. Web.
The Vogue. Marc Jacob’s Biography. The Vogue Magazine, 2009. Web.
Torontoist. Exploring Design with Judy Cornish. The Torontoist.com, 2009. Web.
Trebay, Guy. In This Front Row, Downtown Cred. New York Times, 2007. Print.