While walking past one of the decaying Make it Not Suck “art bombs” that have transformed Jasper Ave construction site barrier walls into outdoor art galleries, I found myself pondering the recent fate of American designer Marc Jacobs.
While running my hands across the peeled and pulled remnants of pasted local rockstar portraits and visual requiems of a city now unrecognizable, I remembered how at the height of my revere for Jacobs he embodied everything visceral and refreshing now represented in Make it Not Suck. He was a vitalizing voice from outside the elite circle of tastemakers who had something to say about design, young people and how the two relate and culture in general.
From its roots, Make it Not Suck is a comment and a reclaiming of the city aesthetic while reminding those in power that people inhabit the city, not merely consumers.
While Make it Not Suck has become a call for urban visual vigilantism, Jacobs has become a key and slightly nauseating figure in the Luxury Goods Distraction Complex that plagues the upper classes and all those wishing to join them. Jacobs sadly has become more famous for his newly toned body than for his body of work.
I am not alone in my disillusionment of Jacobs’ transformation from gawky savant to idiot cover boy. Especially among highbrow fashion writers and gay bloggers, his fall from awkward into the quicksand of slick has become something of a dead Kennedy in the blogosphere, none of which I will repeat here. They tend to focus on his physical transformation, which I think is too bad. Jacobs, like anybody else, is allowed to get fit, get off drugs and try on a different persona. As he expressed in his early work—and Make it Not Suck drives home—ugly is often beautiful.
What the bloggers and the writers are really mourning is the loss of an option.
Jacobs, like Make it Not Suck, expressed himself from the core of creativity, working out his curiosities while creating the change he wished to see. Rising above the inherent wrestling match of commodification versus expression that often hampers fashion and art he challenged the idea that clothes should be made for those already in the scene by making clothes for those the other designers neglected to consider.
Similarly, Make it Not Suck is far from an esoteric art project by high-minded artists, but is instead a collective response via staple guns and ingenious inspirations brought together by photographer and DJ Sheri Barclay (who fittingly enough worked as a dresser for designer Daryl K in New York).
In the face of shoulder pads and offensively bleak-looking condos Jacobs (early on) and Make it Not Suck provide a much needed relief to the tear-inducing banality of corporate “creative” expressions.
The legend of Jacobs begins in 1992 when he and his collaborator Robert Duffy were fired from their new jobs at the helm of fashion house Perry Ellis. What got them the axe was their audacious—and ultimately trendy—landmark grunge collection. For many people the collection marked the beginning of the ‘90s and gave a uniform to Generation X. Imagine the newly anointed supermodels of the day as they clomped down the runway in Doc Martens, plaid skirts and oversized Nirvana T-shirts to an assembled audience of thin-lipped ladies in power suits and tightly cravated gentlemen.
It was unglamorous while communicating what was happening in the dull suburban basements of East Coast and Middle America. The press was split, the fashion elite was offended and Jacobs in some circles was crowned “the people’s designer,” who, because of his bravery, was now out of a job.
Within a decade Jacobs more than rebounded, landing the role of creative director at the powerhouse of fashion Louis Vuitton. It has been since then the transformation of Jacobs has begun. Fashion writer Suzy Menkes calls his Spring ‘08 Marc Jacobs collection “a bad, sad show.” Peppered with transparent pants and globs of satin, Jacobs seems to be referencing the early ‘90s fashion he railed against.
For me nothing exemplifies the fall of Jacobs more than his print ads. Consider this slippery slope: Kim Gordon and family, Charlotte Rampling, Meg White, Dakota Fanning, Victoria Beckham.
These women, in chronological order, are the subjects of Jacobs’s ad campaigns, most from the famous white thick-bordered ads as photographed by Juergen Teller. From talented women of substance to a woman who, instead of singing a solo like her girl power mates during the current Spice Girls reunion tour, opted to strut down a nonexistent runway.
Now don’t get me wrong: Posh is my favourite Spice, but compared to Sonic Youth, Rampling and the untapped genius of Sheri Barclay who the hell are the Spice Girls? And what is Marc Jacobs thinking?
In the face of Jacobs and others falling in line with global greed over global need and seemingly detaching themselves from their own creativity, interventions like Make it Not Suck are needed. They are queer responses to the rigidly straight confines we often find ourselves in.
I like to think of what would happen if Jacobs and Barclay met on the corner of 109th and Jasper, a Make it Not Suck installation behind them and a Starbucks straight ahead. Would Sheri say, “Hey, Marc” and rekindle the fire in Jacobs’ once pudgy belly, compelling him to strike up a conversation? Or would they do the hipster stare-down and go their separate ways?
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