The Survivor

In his long career,Marc Jacobs has known success and failure. And he takes them both in stride

Call him a genius. Call him a junkie,an original,a shameless copycat,a winsome recluse,a brazen exhibitionist. Marc Jacobs has heard it all. And he has absorbed it all with a hard-won equanimity.

You can live with the love,you can live with the hate, Jacobs said. Weve been bankrupt,we been fired, he said. We didnt hang up our hat. He was talking about a checkered career that has seen the designer,now 48,ejected early on from a prestigious fashion post; undergoing repeated stints in rehab; and dodging,intermittently,the darts of tabloid gossips castigating him,among other things,for his vanity,his choice of sexual partners and his admitted struggles with sobriety. Such experiences would have tested a lesser mans flint. Not him though. It takes a lot these days to shake his confidence or to get a rise out of him. But the announcement that the Council of Fashion Designers of America would give him its Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award soon seems to have done the trick. It should have been a half-lifetime award, he was heard to grouse. He was joshing,right? It wasnt a joke, he replied,Lifetime achievement, he repeated sourly. That seems very final,like Im done. But Im not done.

He has transformed the French fashion house Louis Vuitton,a once-musty purveyor of leather goods,into a cash cow. And,as he likes to remind you,legions of teenagers,aching to own a piece of his brand,snap up his flip-flops,fragrances and trinkets. His inventiveness has earned him the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor,his particular pride,and nine previous awards,among them the coveted womens wear Designer of the Year title last year. Awards generally mean stuff to other people more than they do to me, he said. But,they give me a chance to thank those people publicly who are a part of all this, he added. Despite his much-vaunted associations with celebrities like the singer-turned-designer Victoria Beckham,he has not made much of a splash on the red carpet,that ersatz runway for the masses,which has made stars of designers like Elie Saab and Marchesa. But then,he likes it that way,he said.

He can be thin-skinned. Stung by criticism several seasons ago in the wake of a show that was three hours late,he responded the following season by starting on time. Even then,he recalled,people were angry. Last year,he tweaked his audience once more,starting his spring 2011 in September two minutes early,leaving spectators scrambling for their seats. Branding experts suggest that while consumer awareness of his label remains high,its prestige has diminished. In a survey by the Luxury Institute in 2009 of about 600 high-income women,his label was ranked 11th in value and prestige. The brand plummeted to 25th in 2010. A fashion identity in constant flux has also sown confusion. I feel like hes kind of all over the place, said Jenna Polito,a design student. He is not oblivious to criticism. Im going to be defensive here, he said,People are always going to want newness in fashion,just like they want new pop stars. Yet he conceded a touch wistfully,Maybe theres something Im missing. I dont know.

He is flummoxed as well by the hostile reactions to his radical transformation a couple of years ago from doughy,ponytailed nerd to a tanned gym body given to posing in the buff in magazines and in his advertisements for Bang,his mens fragrance. But he dismissed his former fat guy as the product of a fragile self-esteem. If my unhappiness was creating insecurities,and that is what people miss,Im sorry, he said coolly. But Im the same person,only stronger now,and more positive.Ruth La Ferla