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There are a million questions I want to ask Marc Jacobs. I would love to ask about his approach to personal style; his infamous and career-launching 1993 grunge collection for Perry Ellis; his Louis Vuitton years; his experience as a guest editor for last December’s Vogue; his ongoing collaboration and friendship with Sofia Coppola; his pet robot, Yoshi. But when I sat down with him at the Instagram Ring Awards last month, I had to do my due diligence as GQ’s social media director: I had to see what was on his Instagram explore page. Jacobs has been an influencer long before the advent of social media. The designer, who was just named one of the 50 Most Stylish People Alive by this very magazine, has been pushing both fashion and the broader culture forward with his playful approach to self-presentation for four decades. While many fashion designers tend to use Instagram mostly as a platform on which to promote their work, Jacobs takes a more personal approach: He shares the books he’s reading with recurring “reading hour” selfies, shows off his very serious and elaborate nail art, and, recently, introduces his followers to the merry band of Labubus he’s adopted into his family. He has become, for me and many others, an essential follow, easily one of the most entertaining and offbeat public figures on the platform. When Instagram was selecting judges to decide who would be the 25 winners of their first-ever “Rings”—Grace Wales Bonner-designed awards from Instagram “celebrating those who aren’t afraid to take creative chances”—Jacobs was an obvious choice. What makes Jacobs’s Instagram so fun to follow, beyond his campy and quirky personal style, is his willingness to share what’s inspiring him; his posts are a window into the way he is seeing and responding to the whims of contemporary culture. Naturally, I wanted to hear from Jacobs how he approached posting, what he seeks out when he’s scrolling, and how he feels about seeing his own legacy and work inspiring others on the platform. GQ: Okay, so I’m a social media director, I’m super online. Are you? Do you spend a lot of time on Instagram? Marc Jacobs: I do spend a lot of time on Instagram. I think I start my day with Instagram and I end my day with Instagram, and I’ve got a good helping of it in the middle of the day as well. What kind of stuff do you find that inspires you there? What’s on your Explore page? I really don’t even know the words or the names or the things that I always say, like, what’s the magnifying glass thing? Like, I don’t, I don’t really know all the language or anything around it, but you think I would at this point, but I don’t. —the Explore feed is, in fact, the magnifying glass thing— Sometimes, I get sucked into makeovers or makeup tutorials or, like gel polish application videos. Or it could be a funny meme thing, or, like campy, sort of drag queens… Or it could be news related. Depending on my mood, I just kind of drift into these Instagram holes or vortexes. Okay, so let’s look at your Explore page. What does my Explore page mean? Like, where? Here, we can do it. Open Instagram, Open Instagram. That’s the magnifying glass, right? Yes, okay. So walk me through what you’re looking at. Well, there’s a lot of nail stuff. There’s “How to mold like Balenciaga,” which is about dress-making. There’s an Hermès crocodile bag on there. There’s glass blowing. There’s Yeah, more Birkins, more nails, some campy dance video. Yeah, that’s the first page. Rei Kawakubo, South Park, dogs. I love animals, so dog pages are really good with me. Squirrel pages—people who own, like, odd animals, like capybaras and things like that. Weird looking birds, I like those. Where is the best place to scroll? Like, physically speaking, where’s the best place to be on your phone? Alright, so I have a lot of downtime in the morning. My first hour of the day is usually in front of the fish pond—I feed the fish in the pond at home, and so I usually have my coffee and Instagram by the fish pond. That’s the morning Instagram. Then I have a commute from home to the office, and part of that drive is spent meditating, and the other part is spent scrolling on Instagram. And then in bed just before I go to sleep. I usually take my medication an hour before bed, and those last few minutes when I’m just drifting off, I usually sort of unwind the very last few minutes of the day in Instagram. What was the last thing you saw on Instagram that really excited you? The thing I send to other people is dog videos, or pet or animal things. I think the thing that’s come across my Instagram page the most recently is that very unflattering picture of Donald Trump [on the cover of Time magazine] with his neck, so that’s what I’ve been getting the most of is commentary on that picture, which you know still amuses me endlessly. When I think of “Marc Jacobs on Instagram,” on top of all your own work as a designer and a creative that you share, a few big content categories come to mind: nail art, book-posting, and cute little creatures. Often in combination. It’s almost like you’ve built a little world on your IG page, with these recurring characters and segments. Do you keep any sort of schedule or strategy for it? I don’t keep a schedule. I use Instagram to have fun. I don’t overthink it. If I get a new haircut, I post it. If I’m reading something interesting, I share it. I love sharing these things: my haircuts, nails, bags, Labubus, whatever. I love the reaction—whether people love it or hate it, and I love reconnecting with old friends and discovering new people who inspire me. Have you ever bought anything off Instagram? No. I don’t really shop for clothes online. Most of the time I like to go to a physical store and experience fashion. I like the ritual of going to a physical store. But I do become interested in things, which may lead me into a store through Instagram. The exposure through Instagram can lead me to the actual act of buying something. There’s this resurgence of interest in archival imagery—Getty Image Archive, vintage fashion, referencing moments from pop culture’s past. Are you coming across a lot of your own history in your algorithm? Well, I do get tagged a lot, by people who have found one of my first sweaters in some vintage store, or a reference or a picture or a video of an old runway show. Yeah, it is fun. You know, it just depends on one’s mood. Like, I can totally go down memory lane and feel good about it, and then on other days, I’m just like, I don’t want to know about the past. I just want to move forward. So it depends where I’m at, really. With this renewed interest in vintage fashion, have you seen people wearing or kind of unearthing your designs via Instagram as well? Yeah, it happens. I think what I see most are because I probably follow a lot of handbag enthusiasts. So some people will tag me with, like, a very old Marc Jacobs bag, or, the bag that was in The Devil Wears Prada. You know that everyone’s like, “Oh, they’ve got this bag and it’s a thing,” and they’re collecting old Marc Jacobs bags because of that. Have any creators or anything you’ve seen on Instagram inspired your own creative work? Not directly, but I do look at a lot of fashion. I mean, fashion designers whose work I know and love, and learning about new designers and their work. What I do get from Instagram is that I find I get excited by seeing things, and that energizes me to continue doing what I do. So, yeah, I think having that constant feed of fashion excites me and it keeps me invigorated, so it can help me to get up and do it again. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
