The death of Marc Jacobs’ menswear

American fashion brand Marc Jacobs announced that its menswear business will fold after the 2017-18 Autumn-Winter (AW) season. The LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) group, which owns Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior and other popular brands, has been performing relatively well, but Marc Jacobs has been struggling. A narrower focus on handbags and other womenswear could help to revive the brand’s fortunes.

 

The Marc Jacobs brand has been going since 1986

The Marc Jacobs brand was created by New York-born fashion designer Marc Jacobs. The company was established in 1986, with support from Japanese apparel giant Onward Kashiyama.

Marc Jacobs has worked as a designer for Perry Ellis and, even after launching his own eponymous brand, continued his lengthy career as a designer for Louis Vuitton. He is well known as a Japanophile – while he had sole control of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear design, through the Spring-Summer 2014 season, he developed a line of “kawaii” themed merchandise in collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami as part of the Louis Vuitton Monogram series.

Originally, the Marc Jacobs brand was pitched at the luxury end of the market, with handbags priced in excess of ¥150,000, but in 2001 the company launched a sister line Marc by Marc Jacobs, retailing items priced under ¥50,000 aimed at younger consumers.

The Marc by Marc Jacobs brand gained popularity as a more casual incarnation of the luxury main brand, and it actively grew its customer base in Japan, as elsewhere, by, for example, giving away branded tote bags as a free gift with women’s fashion magazines. However, the Marc by Marc Jacobs brand was discontinued as a standalone brand in 2015, as the brand image had lost its appeal, and its merchandising territory was absorbed back into the mainline Marc Jacobs brand.

 

Focusing on the popular merchandise core

Source: Shutterstock

Now, menswear will be dropped from the Marc Jacobs line-up, making its last appearance in the upcoming AW 2017-18 season. The Marc Jacobs brand has repositioned itself to offer merchandise in a wider range of price brackets, appealing to consumers both young and old, by absorbing the lower-priced Marc by Marc Jacobs range into the original high-priced Marc Jacobs brand, and adding a line of mid-priced merchandise that bridges the gap between them.

The new merchandise line-up includes more low- and mid-priced items than before. Marc Jacobs, which has been struggling despite belonging to the world’s largest fashion group LVMH, hopes to reinvigorate its brand by focusing on its strong-selling core product line, womenswear.

 

(By ZUU)

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