Marc by Marc Jacobs Fall 2009

Previously, we analysed the color schemes of all seasons of Marc by Marc Jacobs and here is a quick revision about how to forecast Marc by Marc Jacobs' color scheme.

So, we cannot find out what’s in Marc Jacobs’ mind, but we might predict the color scheme of the next Marc by Marc Jacobs’ collection, with some seemingly reliable evidence from the past seasons:

Step 1: Achromatic is a must.

Step 2: Red and blue too!

Step 3: Trace back the color scheme at four or five years ago( Remember the cycle of color scheme, huh? ).


Step 4: Check out the lower part of last season’s fashion show to seek implication of the coming collection’s color scheme.

Step 5: Organize the results from the above steps and fit into a color theory in design application, add a few accent colors as you like.

Here I use the Harmony of color theory for my forecast color combo.
-- Agreement of feeling is easier when advancing or receding qualities of hues, values and intensities convey similar moods, giving enough variety for interest but avoiding boredom or conflict.


And here is my color scheme forecast for Marc by Marc Jacobs Fall 2009, base on our research:

Trial-and error:
I tried different colour combinations on each outfit and fine tune the hue, saturation, tints and shades etc. among the whole collection by using the color theories that are commonly applied in Marc by Marc Jacobs, for details please refer to conclusion post.







Here is the final collection that I picked out from the trial version:


To match with Marc Jacobs passion to art, I try to match the color in a more dramatic and artistic way by using patterns, but at the same time keep a balance with the commercial nature of the brand by adding achromatic or neutral color items to the collection.

Marc Jacobs and contemporary art

Left: Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., 1919, one of Jacob's favourite paintings.
Right: detail from Louis Vuitton runway, Fall 2004
Does he inspire by the painting?

Marc Jacobs is known for his sartorial fashion interpretations of trends in contemporary art.

The story begins where there’s one day in 2002, Jacobs was distractedly flipping through a christie’s auction catalog when he came across Kilimnik’s Mary Calling Up a Stone 1996, a portrait of a dark-haired young woman. For some reason, the canvas called out to the designer. Who’d never purchased a work of art before. Soon he’s travelling to international art fairs. Befriending dealers and artists. Quotes of Fashion Statements by Marc: Jacobs isn't looking for deeper resonances to his new Edward Gorey vision. "It's just what turns me on," he says. "I am not waking up, reading The New York Times, and then putting that into my collections. I am not holding up a mirror to the world. I don't believe that's what fashion is about. It's about fantasy." …. "Oh, I always think it's silly to talk about themes and inspirations," said Jacobs with engaging frankness. "The collection's just always about this youthful, angelic, idyllic army. It's comprised of a lot of things—big plaids, layered woolliness, gangly stockings—but really, it's all about how people will break it down and wear it in their own way." Marc Jacobs’ brain is feed on art, fashion, music and encounters. Some Marc Jacobs' favourite Contemporary Artist: American contemporary artists

• Elisabeth Peyton ---who depict people's inner lives with a strange beauty

Portraits of Sofia Coppolar and Marc Jacobs by Elizabeth Peyton, you can see the close relationship between the designer, his friend and the artist.

• Steven Sprouse (graffiti bag)
• Richard Prince
• Rachel Feinstein

• Jeff Koons
• Jeffrey Deitch
• Damien Hirst
• Martin Kippenberger
• video work of T.J. Wilcox
• Edward Gorey

Japanese artists

• Yayoi Kasama草間彌生
• Takashi Murakami村上隆

Teamed up with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami to produce the accessories for the spring–summer 2003 collection of Louis Vuitton.

Together with Murakami, Jacobs produced “eye love,” a collection of handbags that merged Vuitton’s traditional monogrammatic canvas—its beige and brown motif that included shapes of diamonds, stars, and flowers along with the company’s initials, LV—with Murakami’s modern, colourful pop-art graphics.


The “eye love” handbags became instant collector’s items.

Here is a video about Jacobs' Craze for contemporary art

Art Auctions:
After fashion show he regenerates his creative strength by watch contemporary art works, go to auctions and building up his art collection and prepare for his next fashion collection.
Encounters, Friends

On the cover of Interview magazine, Marc Jacobs, styled to look like Warhol. So, is Jacobs appropriating popular culture and turning it into fashion, as Warhol turned popular culture into art? Jacobs plays this down: "I'm just me. I do my thing," he says. "Who cares what the references are? I hate references, they're boring. If a girl wants to wear it, then it's valid.

It is said that Marc Jacobs' living room is accented fluffy white life-size sculpture of a sheep (the work of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne) … From where he was sitting on the sofa, Jacobs could see works of art by Andy Warhol, Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, and Richard Prince.



Owing to his craze on Contemporary Art, we can always see his influence from contemporary art on LV, Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs' collections as well!

Classic Excercise 6

Feedback form for collecting customers' opinions on their color preferences:
1. What did you purchase in our store? In what color? Why do you buy this color?
2. What color do you usually wear?
3. What is your favorite brand? Why?
4. (Continue) Why? What color would you use to describe the brand?
5. So, you like (color) very much? For what reasons?
6. What do you consider when choosing the color of you outfits?
7. Is there any color that you hate or would never try to wear? Why?

Schoolmate A

• Lifestyles: Chill out (hea)

• Mass Customization: Bag: Bauhaus, Shoes: Dr. Martens, Puma, Clothes: 2%, Other: 7-11
  

• Color Preference: Brown, black, green

Schoolmate B

• Lifestyles: Read Manga

• Mass Customization: Glass: Empiro Armani, Accessories: Sworwarski, Snoopy, Addidas, Bossini kids

• Color Preference: Colorful things

The colours of Market (The color of Hong Kong?)

Red White Blue

Red for plastic glove, plastic basket
White for polyfoam boxes,
Blue for buckets
Green for all sorts of vegetables
Ginger for ginger, sticky tapes and the owner's cat

The color combination is so familiar to me, since I always follow my mom to the market when I was a child. It seems that the large piece of white, created by polyfoam , only appears in Hong Kong markets.

What do you think when you see this color combination?






Awww, it is the color combo for a little old lady and a pack of six enormous joss sticks, and don't forget a red plastic bag. It is an analogous color combination and very harmony right?

We can tell from the joss sticks that she is a traditional old lady, she wears a red vest is probably for good luck and celebration; and the black long sleeve T-shirt and pants can stand stains and looks tidy even it gets dirty.

Almodova: Boldness in Colour

I love Spain although I've never been there.
It is the movie director Pedro Almodovar introduced me to Spain .
In his movie he gives me the impression that Spain/Barcelona is the country of color (besides a lot of gorgeous and melancholy drag queens, gay guys and women; the innocent young Antonio Banderas and my favourite actress Penelope Cruz...). Each time when I watch his movie at home or in the cinema, it is a challenge to my home's TV set, to the cinema's projector and my visual receptors. I am so excited by his use of color that I promise myself if I save enough money for a trip to Europe, I must first go to Spain. I also attended the Spanish complementary course last year all because of Almodovar's film. However, I still can not pronounce the alphabet 'rr' and I have already given the 'un poco' Spanish that I learnt back to the teacher. Sigh!

Here I listed out sixteen posters of Almodovar's film (I have only watched ten of them):

It shows that primary and secondary colours in high chroma or at least in constant chroma; in medium value without tints, shades and tones. Monochromatic, achromatic and analogic schemes do not exist in his dictionary. Fatiguing to the eye, but exciting to watch.

Actually, not many hues are used in the posters, it is about the high intensity of the colors that give the passionate feeling in Almodovar's films. This is the most fascinating element to me and always makes me feel that Spain is as colorful as in the director's eye.



And definitely, a lot of people love Almodovar's color palette, I found this simple and representative palelette on the internet.

A scene in Volver, the red blouse in contrast with the blue-green wall, it exhibits brilliance; and protrudes the main actress. The color in the scene is also arranged in certain sequence. Turquoise and beige are scattered around red i.e. each color appears in a certain order to succession, keeps the same position in each repeat, and leads the eye in the direction of progression.

Sometimes we may use color to tell a story, without clumsy explanations or descriptions, color could have it all. Of course, every bits of color must be used precisely, and the most important thing is that we must let go and can not play safe.

Yellow

I like the yellow luggage.

It belongs to the western lady on the left, by looking at her trousers, every can tell that she really like yellow.

What are the meanings that yellow conveys in this picture? Maybe it means joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy blah, blah, blah... to the lady; but definitely means caution when yellow appears at the door edge.

However, when I was a child, people keep telling me that yellow looks dump, you look like a banana, if you wear yellow; so I thought I didn't like yellow too. But actually I do like yellow and I am not afraid to admit this now. Why bother about what other people think? To me yellow means happiness and looks smart!

Collection-- Class excercise 4

Opps! Don't misunderstand. I am not suffering from OCD. I just filled 30 sets of collections and picked one with the best color combination among each set, here is my best 30.




The six colours that I choose are in advancing or receding qualities of hues, values and intensities convey similar moods, agreement of feeling is easier when giving enough variety for interest but avoiding boredom or conflict, i.e. harmony of colour.

I found yellow does not goes well with brown and an outfit looks weird with large proportion of brown; and my favorite combination is purple, blue and brown.

Marc Jacobs' Inspirations

inside Marc Jacobs' studio

Marc Jacobs’ brain is feed on art, fashion, music and encounters.

Contemporary Art:

American contemporary artists

Elisabeth Peyton

who depict people's inner lives with a strange beauty

Steven Sprouse (graffiti bag)

Richard Prince

Rachel Feinstein

Jeff Koons

Jeffrey Deitch

Damien Hirst

Martin Kippenberger

video work of T.J. Wilcox

Edward Gorey

Japanese artists:

Takashi Murakami村上龍

Marc Jacobs did a collaboration project with Murakami for LV.

Yayoi Kasama草間彌生

Art Auctions:

After fashion show he regenerates his creative strength by watch contemporary art works, go to auctions and building up his art collection and prepare for his next fashion collection.

Encounters, Friends

Sofia Coppolar

Marc Jocob's best friend and muse, Sofia Coppola.
"She is young and sweet and beautiful," Marc Jacobs has said. "The epitome of this girl I fantasize of."
On set, Coppola sports a tomboy's jeans and designer sweaters; off, she wears girlish clothes that perfectly suit her gamine-like frame—baby-doll dresses, ballerina flats, and when the Academy calls, a Marc Jacobs column gown.

Movies

the gothic oeuvre of director Tim Burton

video work of T.J. Wilcox

(This Season)September 2005

the sullen Violet Parr from the Incredibles

Music

Fans

Bryan Boy—Marc designed a handbag name after his super fans called the BB bag.

www.bryanboy.com/

Grunge Look:

Miscellaneous:

He has a habit of asking everything in multiple colours. Thus, every pair of shorts and jackets appear at least in six different colours, but not all would be shown.

Inspired by macaroons, Yayoi Kasama’s polka dots, bottle tops or even plates; he and his design team were laying pastel leather dots on a bag model for hours to examining the design.

Quotes of Fashion Statements by Marc:

Jacobs isn't looking for deeper resonances to his new Edward Gorey vision. "It's just what turns me on," he says. "I am not waking up, reading The New York Times, and then putting that into my collections. I am not holding up a mirror to the world. I don't believe that's what fashion is about. It's about fantasy."

…. "Oh, I always think it's silly to talk about themes and inspirations," said Jacobs with engaging frankness. "The collection's just always about this youthful, angelic, idyllic army. It's comprised of a lot of things—big plaids, layered woolliness, gangly stockings—but really, it's all about how people will break it down and wear it in their own way."

References:

Bibliography for "Marc Jacobs: what's art? What's fashion? A business artist blurs the boundaries"

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_5_38/ai_n25470231

Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton

http://www.amazon.com/Marc-Jacobs-Louis-Vuitton-Full/dp/B00104Z8DO

Style.com

American Vogue September 2005

Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (2007)

http://www.amazon.com/Marc-Jacobs-Louis-Vuitton-Full/dp/B00104Z8DO

Bridget Foley (2004). Marc Jacobs. New York: Absouline.