There's a wonderfully mischievous and at times puerile spirit that runs through Marc Jacobs' secondary line, perhaps none more so than in the Fall men's collection, a collaboration with the multidisciplinary and wholly unorthodox art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus (AVAF). The label's design director, Daniel Salmon, came across a catalog of the artists' psychedelic street pop and knew immediately that the duo—a Brazilian and a Frenchman who split their time between São Paulo, Paris, and mostly New York—was a natural fit with Jacobs' playful, puckish anti-hero.
Art observers may make a connection between AVAF's Whitney Biennial contribution a few years back, a faux-vandalized pavement-scape, and the brand's own skate-rat tendencies. But no. The colorful eccentrics that figure prominently in this collaboration are based on four decidedly drag-y characters dreamed up by AVAF, their exaggerated lips, hair, and breasts jostling for attention. And if that weren't enough, they are also cyclops, making for highly entertaining prints to say the least. Not just prints (some in subtler gray scale), but also intarsia and needle-punch knits. No one ever said the Brazilians or the French—or, for that matter, Marc Jacobs—were afraid of a little body alteration.
Of course, cornea-searing febrile hues and amply bosomed, one-eyed cartoon characters aren't for everyone. Truth is, as much as the Marc customer is intellectually adventurous and artistically open-minded, he's also athletically inclined. So a range of snowboard-appropriate attire was judiciously added to the mix, replacing the sporty quotient of last season, surf punk. These were pieces unmistakably made for the outdoors: heavy-duty denim jumpsuits, canvas pants with cargo pockets, fake-fur-trimmed Velcro parkas, a nylon Harrington, no-fuss ski jackets (some that could turn into a backpack), an après-ski striped mohair sweater, and one eye-popping Fair Isle hoodie in neon—surely AVAF's influence.
