Anna Wintour Dotes On Marc Jacobs While He Admits That His Other Dream Job Was To Be a Video Clerk
Marc Jacobs with Anna Wintour at the Parsons benefit. Photo: Getty Images
On Tuesday night, nearly 1,000 people attended the 67th annual Parsons benefit — the design school that has provided the training for many a successful designer including Donna Karan, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, and Chris Benz. The evening, which raised a whopping $1.7million for the school, honored one of most famous alums, Marc Jacobs.
The designer was presented his award by Anna Wintour, who gave a five-minute long speech honoring her friend. “He’s one of the few designers that you never know what you’re going to get from the runway,” she said. “It’s always a complete surprise. So his clothes project both the shock of the new, and the wonder of the known at the same time. A very difficult thing to pull off. In his years in fashion, Marc seemed to have lived more than most, seen more than most, survived more than most. And he somehow knows what to appropriate, what to sample, and what to draw inspiration from.”
Upon accepting his accolade, a visibly moved Jacobs thanked Wintour for making the time to come (after all the event was running two hours late!) and also explained how his legacy came to be after a chance meeting with Perry Ellis when he was 15. He asked Ellis where a young man would go if he wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a fashion designer. Parsons, was Ellis’ answer. Jacobs, ever determined, made it into the school and the rest, as they say is history. But had he not realized his dream, he had a good backup plan. “I will go to Parsons, or…I will go work in a video store,” a tuxedoed Jacobs told the crowd. “Luckily for me, I got into Parsons. I wouldn’t have had a very long career as a video clerk given the fact that there are no video stores in existence anymore.”
The evening also included a runway show featuring looks from over 30 fashion students. (The most impressive was a womenswear designer named Lucy Jones who created clothing for the handicapped.) One alum in the audience was visbibly impressed with the turnout. Ximon Lee, who graduated from the school last year, has already become his own success story. He won the H&M Menswear Design Award last year and has been shuttling back and forth from Sweden putting the finishing touches on his first collection for the mass retailer which debuts this October. “Yeah this is really great,” he said the night wound down. “I wish it was as big as this last year.”
Related: Ximon Lee Is the Winner of H&M’s 2015 Design Award
Related: The Marc Jacobs Creation That Took a Week to Complete
