The original provocateur of men’s fashion, Calvin Klein, interviews Marc Jacobs about health, life, and his new men’s fragrance Bang, in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
In the candid interview, Jacobs discusses his controversial ad for Bang, his lifestyle change and body image, his design inspiration, and confesses that his fall collection, with its melancholy, sober mood, reflects his personal life.
On choosing to do a nude ad for his fragrance, Bang:
“I’m not Tom Ford in terms of the grooming and the knowledge of clothes and the precision and perfection of getting dressed. There’s nothing I can wear in this ad that isn’t going to look ridiculous. At one point, I tried jeans and a shirt, and it didn’t work. So then Juergen said, “Take off the clothes.” So I did, and that became the ad.” “I did feel good about the way I looked, so it was easy and—well, a guy looks better to me with no clothes on than with clothes! How’s that?”
On his body image, after the lifestyle change:
“When guys started looking at me and asking me out on dates, I felt way better about myself. So it was hard to keep my clothes on, actually. And whenever I was asked to take my clothes off, I was like, “Sure! I haven’t worked out for three years to keep this all under wraps.”
On creating wearable clothes:
“I’m not interested in making stuff for museums; I want the clothes to be worn. I don’t care if the girl sits on a curb in them after a party and they’re destroyed. I have to believe that there’s going to be a life for these things. Otherwise, I wouldn’t send them down the catwalk.”
On his fall collection:
“At one point, I got really into this melancholy mood. The New York collection is really a reflection of my personal life. It’s not literally a reflection, but it definitely permeates. [For fall] we wanted to do something that was quite sober and very pretty in color, with just touches of yellow. It was the most beige and gray collection I’ve ever done in my life, really very little pattern. We looked at old photographs, and it wasn’t the images in the photographs that were interesting; it was the sepia tones, the blacks and whites and grays.”
