Robert Duffy's heart led at first to a job in retail. A cousin, something of a mentor, got him a job at Kaufmann's Department Store - but in furniture. When the family summered in Truro on Cape Cod, Robert Jr. worked as a clerk in a nearby Provincetown store. Robert Sr. urged his son to leave Pittsburgh for New York - to find his own community in fashion. After several false starts, he became the first male sales clerk in women's clothing at Bergdorf Goodman. There, he gained a reputation for being able to sell almost anything, which he attributes simply to his passion for clothes.
(Above and Left) Dapper, dashing man-about-town Robert Duffy is often seen in the company of celebrities, such as actress Selma Blair, pictured here. Photos courtesy of Marc Jacobs International
"I was endlessly curious about the business," says Duffy. In those days, the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Goodman lived above their "little" shop on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. On their assistant's day off, Duffy brought up their lunch from the café. He soaked up their wisdom, and "they were very nurturing." As a peon in the store's makeshift training program, Duffy ended up in the buyer's office. Staff turnover forced him into the role of decision-maker. As the young, handsome whippersnapper that he undoubtedly was, Duffy had a knack for drawing the attention of those in power in the rag trade - Givenchy and Perry Ellis, among them. "Those four years [at Bergdorf Goodman] were magical," Duffy remembers.
Quietly, Robert Sr. had been helping his son financially, unbeknownst to his mother. After his father's death in 1980, the path got rockier. Reluctantly, Duffy left Bergdorf's for a "real" job at Reuben Thomas, a conservative, privately owned Seventh Avenue clothier. He spent long hours with pattern makers and cutters, learning the finer points of manufacturing and production. In an effort to keep Duffy interested, Thomas offered to back a new line. And that's when fate took an interesting turn and brought his future business partner into his life.
Duffy caught Marc Jacobs' senior-class group fashion show at Parsons School of Design in 1984 - whimsical cashmere sweaters that, incidentally, featured holes. It was fashion's equivalent of coup de foudre. Duffy was a goner. "I fell in love with what he did, and to this day I am so comfortable with it," Duffy explains. "We had the same dream. He gave me someone to work with, to hope with, to cry with. When I didn't have energy, he did, and when he didn't, I did. I think Marc and I coming together was God's will."
Neither Jacobs nor Duffy remembers exactly how their partnership was struck. Jacobs had received Parsons' highest honors, including "The Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award" and "Design Student of the Year." Needless to say, he was inundated with job offers. But Duffy's proposal struck a chord. "It was just a very flattering thing that he was pushing for me, an unknown entity, to come and do this hypothetical job," Jacobs remembers.
Jacobs, who is nine years younger than Duffy, recognized this meeting as a huge opportunity, but worried that he had no experience. "In typical Robert fashion, it was an idea of his that he believed in, and that was all that mattered. We would take it to the end until it worked or it didn't." Yet, within the year, Reuben Thomas had decided to retire, leaving them hanging. But not for long.
On their own, they launched a line, called Sketchbook, in a small show at a Charivari store, where Jacobs had worked as a teenager. Duffy cold-called fashion's movers-and-shakers - "I learned to start at the top," he boasts - to get them interested. WWD's highly respected editor Etta Froio became an early supporter. Fashion director Ellin Saltzman snapped up Jacobs' happy-face sweaters for Saks Fifth Avenue. After "bouncing around" financially, Kashiyama USA agreed to bankroll Jacobs to get Duffy's sales and distribution expertise on its other lucrative lines. But, as Duffy puts it, "There was no love lost between Marc and Kashiyama."
Much has been made of the ups and downs of the Jacobs-Duffy business partnership, in which Duffy had mortgaged his home to keep them afloat after backers went broke or they both were shown the door. Then there's the ever-present specter of Jacobs' drug issues, which have thrown them some curve balls. Despite the problems, neither partner has truly considered offers to strike out on his own. Both see their destinies as irrevocable entwined.
Yet, in the late-1980s, Perry Ellis began aggressively courting Jacobs to revive its line, which had fallen into the doldrums in the years after the designer's death. And Kashiyama USA pleaded with Duffy to dump Jacobs, offering the carrot of a glittering title and a fat salary. "It was the only time I was tempted," says Duffy, "because if Perry Ellis didn't want me, I wasn't going to hold Marc back." Ultimately, though, executives at Perry Ellis understood that Duffy and Jacobs were like Siamese twins.
At Perry Ellis, Jacobs played it safe - or at least didn't raise any hackles at first. Duffy urged him out on the high wire. In 1992, always influenced by music, Jacobs was seized by the dissonant chords of Seattle's "grunge" movement and its effect on fashion consciousness. The 1993 spring collection featured aggressive music by Sonic Youth, Nirvana and L7. Patterns were deliberately mismatched. Gorgeous floaty dresses, silk "flannel" shirts and shrunken tweed jackets were paired with combat boots.
The look was all very consciously off-center, but, as ever, the clothes were delicious. "We did a collection we absolutely loved, and I just thought the whole world was going to be thrilled," says Duffy. He remembers walking backstage smiling after the show, only to have a big, creamy pie of corporate disapproval thrown into his face. Jacobs and Duffy were fired. A week later, Jacobs won the "Council of Fashion Designers of America Womenswear Designer of the Year Award."
"At the time I told Marc that we were either the two biggest morons in the world," says Duffy, "or this is going to be one of those fashion stories that students are going to talk about for the rest of their lives." And Duffy's either/or prediction proved to be the latter.
(Left) A model struts her stuff at a Marc Jacobs fashion show. Photo courtesy of Marc Jacobs International
Key people - such as Vogue's all-powerful editor-in-chief Anna Wintour - were vociferous in their support. As it turned out, young taste-makers across the country felt that Marc Jacobs spoke in a fashion language they understood. Future filmmaker Sofia Coppola tracked them down in New York and ordered up clothes. "I just relate to Marc's sensibilities. I like similar music, films and art," says Coppola, a Jacobs muse, whose watercolor portrait hangs in Marc and Robert's office. "I feel like Marc designs clothes for women like me - who like beautiful things but don't want to show off."
Who exactly is the Marc Jacobs girl? WWD and W magazine Executive Editor Bridget Foley, an early admirer, points out that "there's a little bit of grunge inside every Marc Jacobs collection," and a little bit of grunge in the Marc Jacobs girl. In various magazine and newspaper articles, Duffy has described the Marc Jacobs girl as "not a wallflower, exactly," but almost. "She's the awkward little sister" - yet, her understated cool is indisputable. The style, he says, is "ironic and approachable."
The brand inspires a cult-like following, boosted by celebrity shoppers such as Hilary Swank, Amanda Peet, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chloe Sevigny, Lisa Marie Presley, Zoe Cassavetes and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon - many of whom sit front-and-center at the shows. Winona Ryder, of course, famously shoplifted Marc Jacobs and then wore his clothes defending herself in court.
"His clothes defy easy generalization," wrote Evgenia Peretz in a 2004 Vanity Fair profile of Jacobs. "Over the years he has given his take on prom skirts and prairie skirts, mod dresses and flapper dresses, Mary Janes and short military jackets, drawing on past decades the exact moment before the particular era is officially back."
Foley says that each new collection gives her a "tingly feeling," the possibility of seeing "something extraordinary." She enjoys the unexpected: "This season will look nothing like last season," she says, "and yet it's always quintessentially Marc Jacobs."