Marc Jacobs Knows He's A Culture Vulture He Just Doesn't Care

So I’ve never watched a single episode of Sex and the City (hold for awkward silence.) I know, me, a writer and similarly to Carrie Bradshaw, a self-proclaimed “fashionista.” How bizarre; however I have yet to feel an ounce of shame on the matter, notably after a Twitter thread I recently came across. A student at NYU and former Vogue employee named Shelby (@bronze_bombSHEL on Twitter) shared a revelation with the otherwise normies and/or SATC fans:

“I’ve been thinking on Carrie Bradshaw’s style. There’s a lot of correlation between her style + what we see in NYC today: gentrifiers, hipsters, + Midwestern folk displacing black ppl but adopting their swag

A lot of her looks had black + black LGBTQ culture allllll over it”

The thread continues with examples of the fictional character biting otherwise black and brown clothing trends, from Kangol hats to sporting John Galliano’s SS 2000 Dior Couture “hobo chic” collection — “inspired by,” aka curated to mock the homeless of Paris.

Shelby also shared a video of Carrie talking about gold jewelry, calling it “ghetto,” when expressing her distaste with a gold engagement ring; she then proceeded to share pictures of Carrie wearing, wait for it, gold jewelry.

There is a multitude of reasons why a white woman wearing a gold nameplate just doesn’t look right. Like Shelby says, they’ve always been a passage of Black and Latina girlhood. The gold necklaces are usually custom made and hold cultural significance, rather than a resemblance of a trend, similarly to larger sized hoop earrings (another “trend” that came out of the white, high-fashion woodwork in the past few years.)

Fast forward to this morning: I routinely clicked through Instagram stories with half-open eyes (a very vital part of my morning ritual) when I held my thumb firm against my screen to get a closer look at what back in 2001 could’ve been mistaken for Carrie Bradshaw’s neckline. My eyes were now fully open as they most likely rolled to the literal back of my head when I read the name written in gold loop-de-loop cursive: Marc Jacobs. I was immediately overcome with a feeling of “here we go again.”

Where do we start, Marc? Likely, the infamous SS16 show when models Kendall Jenner and Bella and Gigi Hadid confidently sashayed down the runway sporting mounds of colorful faux dreadlocks. The instance immediately sparked backlash, and rightfully so. Jacobs responded via Instagram:

“…and all who cry ‘cultural appropriation’ or whatever nonsense [yikes] about any race or skin color wearing their hair in any particular style or manner- funny how you don’t criticize women of color for straightening their hair. [Yikes again.] I respect and am inspired by people and how they look. I don’t see color or race- I see people…”

So before I catapult myself into a potentially thousand word, double spaced, MLA formatted essay on Jacobs’ implication that reverse racism is a thing, (i.e the straight hair comment) let’s move forward to 2017. Jacobs spread the cover of InStyle, meant to showcase his “hip-hop inspired” fall collection.

In his interview with InStyle, Jacobs states his supposed runway regret from what was now almost two years prior:

“What I learned from that whole thing, what caused me to pause after it died down a little bit, was that maybe I just don’t have the language for this.”

I’m not quite sure that attempting to disguise guilt from the dreadlock incident with exploitation and more appropriation was the correct splash to attempt to make here. Actually, I’m 100% sure. More often than not do designers, and everyone for that matter, get tied up in the incapability of comprehending what it looks like to recognize and appreciate black and brown cultures and styles for the massive impact that they impend on the fashion industry.

What does real appreciation look like, while avoiding appropriation? It’s as simple as hiring more black and brown models, designers, photographers, the list goes on and on — but I digress; Marc Jacobs is never going to learn his lesson, as he, much like every other culture biting designer, does not believe there was ever even a lesson to be learned.

It’s a hard pill to swallow: to learn to turn the other cheek to ignorance, but we need not forget that there will always be those that are doing things the right way. These are the designers, models, and photographers we can choose to shift the spotlight towards, naturally allowing those with lessons to (eventually) be learned to fade into the background.