Inside the Designer’s Bold New Makeup Collection and Brand Sale

“I think it could be a better blue, but I really should go,” Marc Jacobs said into his cell phone, perched at a large table surrounded by dozens of colorful handbags in the showroom of his headquarters in SoHo last Friday. 

“OK, important things are out of the way. The new blue color for my nails, maybe,” he joked, his current set of “green plus glass” nails designed by Yulenny Garcia for the Met Gala gleaming in the afternoon light. 

A true beauty lover, Jacobs is gearing up to launch Marc Jacobs Beauty with Coty Inc., which has long held his brand’s fragrance license and co-created the blockbuster Daisy franchise. This will be the second iteration of Jacobs’ makeup brand, which originally debuted with Kendo Brands in 2013, before being shuttered in 2021.

The exclusive interview with Jacobs to discuss his hotly anticipated makeup launch came one day after it was revealed that LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton had reached a definitive agreement to sell Marc Jacobs to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group for an estimated $925 million. (Jacobs and his former business partner Robert Duffy still owned 20 percent of the company, with LVMH owning the remainder.)

Under the deal, Jacobs, who founded the company in 1984 with Duffy, will continue his role as creative director, ensuring continuity for the brand’s vision, runway collections and shows. After the deal is closed, WHP will own the brand with G-III under a separate arrangement, while G-III will own the operating company.

Feeling “Very Positive” About the Sale

“I met with Yehuda [Shmidman, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of WHP] a few months back and I found him to be really nice,” Jacobs said about the acquisition. “I enjoyed meeting him and speaking to him, and he seemed to have a real genuine love and interest in this company. He had just been to Bookmarc and thought it was so great — the energy in the store,” Jacobs continued, referring to his bookstore in the West Village. “He had gotten a bottle of Daisy, and saw the ‘Marc by Sofia’ documentary the night before. I felt very positive about that first meeting, and I still feel very positive. There are no guarantees of anything in life, but I do feel like my instincts are usually pretty good.

“Whether it’s Marc Jacobs or Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs, or whatever version it is — we’ve definitely proven that we can be and love to be a big name in that area of fashion, and we haven’t really been able to be since those days of Marc by Marc,” he continued. “Again, it’s a new world, and it’s a new day, and it doesn’t have to go back in history to go forward, but I feel like they know a lot about that, and I don’t, so maybe being with them will give our business the opportunity to grow in places that we know we can be successful in, and they obviously feel we can be successful.”

On the future of his runway collections, he said: “There was a discussion of it in [which] Yehuda said, ‘We love that, and we believe in that part of the business.’ So part of my feeling so secure about this whole thing is that without me having to convince him, he felt sure that he very much wanted to maintain that, and that he wanted me to continue on as creative director.”

Asked if the new ownership could impact the beauty licensing deal, a representative for Coty responded: “No, change in ownership does not affect Coty’s long-term licensing agreement with Marc Jacobs. In addition, Coty already has a strong partnership with WHP Global on Vera Wang.”

WHP’s timing couldn’t be better. Marc Jacobs Beauty will debut on marcjacobs.com on May 28, followed by a Sephora app exclusive on May 31 and availability on sephora.com in the U.S. and Canada and selfridges.com beginning June 1. The brand will then roll out to Sephora stores across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia starting Sept. 1.

The new makeup collection will launch with an edit of seven essentials across eyes, complexion and lips. This includes Drawn This Way Eyeliner, offered in 21 shades (the eyeliners in Jacobs’s previous brand were a cult favorite) and featuring star-charm caps; Born Star Eyeshadow, a cream-to-powder formula housed in a distinctive star-shaped compact and available in 14 shades; Flashes Mascara; Joystick Blush Stick; Legally Bronze Bronzer; Money Shot Highlighter Gel, and Heart On Lipstick. In the U.S., prices will range from $26 to $42.

Jacobs is excited to be back in the makeup category. “I like working on things where there’s a process, and through that process you figure out the story you want to tell, and I love makeup as an accessory,” he said. “I love going down the rabbit hole of watching tutorials and seeing all these different makeup artists and people who are makeup fanatics, and how they use makeup and express themselves through it. I enjoy being a part of a creative process that I can understand, and there’s a parallel to fashion.”

As for the timing of the brand’s introduction, he said: “It seemed like a very smart partnership, because [Coty] had the fragrances. For everybody here, like our CEO Eric [Marechalle], it felt like a very logical company to do it with.”

From Coty’s perspective, this is something consumers have been asking for. Jean Holtzmann, Coty’s chief brands officer, prestige, told WWD, “It’s really the most requested comeback in beauty.”

The new brand will be linked to Jacobs’ bestselling fragrance franchise in that there is a daisy emblem on complexion packaging, while hearts will represent lips, and stars for eye products. As for its comparison to Jacobs’ first iteration, the designer is definitely not looking back.

“The idea was not to start where the first one ended, but really to start with a completely different proposal,” Holtzmann said. “It’s absolutely not a relaunch. But in the story of Marc Jacobs Beauty, we also have to take into consideration that there were people who were really extremely loyal to some of the products.”

Asked to describe Marc Jacobs Beauty in 2026, Holtzmann answered: “A maximalist manifesto in the minimalism era. This idea of being bold and being joyful.”

Express Yourself

Jacobs said it represents his “ongoing love of fashion and belief that expressing oneself is just the greatest freedom, and we should never ever lose sight or praise for being one’s authentic self and being true to themselves and showing themselves the way they see themselves.”

He’s never heard of the clean girl aesthetic, but after it was explained to him, he responded: “Well, I suppose there’s trends always, and I’m much more about five pairs of lashes than I am no lashes.”

On who his customer is in 2026, Jacobs said: “I have no idea. Whether you ask me about clothes or makeup, I’ll give you the same answer: I’ve never understood those questions about demographics. I don’t think if you ask the people over at Chanel if they feel like they’re dressing a 63-year-old guy, that’s what their intention was, but I’m a good customer there.

“I know more mature people who are very experimental with makeup, and I know younger people who are very conservative,” Jacobs continued, “so I’m always reluctant to say it’s for this age group or it’s for that person, because I’d like to believe that we’ve all moved past that discussion, and it’s not about boys or girls or men or women or them. It’s just makeup, it has no gender, it has no age. It’s makeup. Enjoy it if you want. Period.”

The line was teased at the Met Gala earlier this month when “I Love LA” creator Rachel Sennott paired Marc Jacobs Beauty products with her Marc Jacobs-designed ’80s-inspired geometric gown.

“Rachel is just so cool and clever and smart and beautiful, and so it was exciting,” Jacobs said. “I do remember back in the day with Kendo, where [Lady] Gaga wore something, or somebody wore something, and then all of a sudden it blew up, because so and so wore that particular shade of nude on the red carpet. And it’s one of the things I like most about beauty and fragrance is that it is much more accessible than a giant leg of mutton leather Liberty print jacket.”

Since Marc Jacobs Beauty was last in the market, a lot has changed. For starters, the aisles of Sephora are now filled with a plethora of makeup artist-founded brands like Makeup by Mario, Patrick Ta, Charlotte Tilbury and many more. But Jacobs is confident that his point of view as a designer will differentiate him from the pack.

“We’re unique in the fact that we are a fashion house, and a U.S. fashion house. I’m not a celebrity makeup brand, I’m not a pop star, I’m not married to a pop star, although he might disagree with you,” he quipped about his husband, Char Defrancesco. “I mean, he dresses like one, but no. Who I am, and what we do is unique.”

Another big change is the rise of TikTok. While his brand is active on the app, Jacobs just launched his own account on Friday evening, dropping a video of him dancing with Romy Mars, singer and daughter of Sofia Coppola, with the caption: @marc jacobs welcome to this app.

The Sephora Strategy

At Sephora, Marc Jacobs Beauty will return with a two-bay gondola and while Marc Jacobs fragrances will remain in the fragrance area, one will be featured on the makeup gondola.

Priya Venkatesh, global chief merchandising officer for Sephora, said: “It’s been one of our most anticipated relaunches not just at Sephora, but in all of prestige beauty, and it’s really like a full-circle moment, because this was originally born at Sephora via Kendo in 2013 and back then it really made a splash in the way it showed up. It created iconic products with a cult following, and we expect the same level of obsession and fandom and cult following and cultural relevance. I know it sounds, wow, that’s a tall order, and I actually feel good about this tall order being met right now.”

She is confident that it has the recipe for success this time around. “There were business challenges then, but customer demand was pretty strong, so it didn’t have too much to do with customer demand,” she continued. “It was the way things were structured, so we think this is a strong brand with a high customer appeal. The products and packaging are so fun and joyful with the touch of luxury, and this is something so unique to Marc. We feel confident of the innovation and quality of the products as well, that this will succeed, and this time we’re also going with a global launch, so the business plans of it is quite sound. There has been quite a bit of pent-up demand for this brand. Between all these changes, it will definitely be a win second time around.”

For Coty, which has been struggling of late, the hope is to capitalize on the strength of the Daisy franchise as its 20th anniversary fast approaches. The company’s stock price is hovering around $2, down from $17.50 when it went public in 2013 and it is about to soon lose its Gucci license, one of its crown jewels, to L’Oréal.

The Marc Jacobs Beauty license was brokered under former CEO Sue Nabi, and will now be overseen by interim CEO Markus Strobel.

Holtzmann said: “Between fiscal year 2019 and 2025 the [Marc Jacobs] business grew by almost 50 percent so it’s obviously a strategic brand. Going into beauty is just a new chapter of our relationship.”

On the makeup market, which has been underperforming other categories, Holtzmann stressed it was very cyclical. “We are not necessarily in a bad cycle, but we are in the market of innovation, of offer. If you want the market to grow, you have to come with something [that] is different, and you have to be bold, and you have to make a bet. And that’s what we’re trying to do….Marc Jacobs lends itself perfectly to this. He has been a code breaker for as long as he has been in the business and his career is a testimony to breaking codes, to being bold, to doing things that people did not expect.”

On whether he would expand into other categories like skin care, Jacobs said: “I wouldn’t say no to anything. We started in the last round of beauty going into skin care, and I was fine to work on it, and I was open-minded to the possibility of it. My instinct, my gut about it was skin care is a whole other world, and I just feel if you’re really legit into skin care, it needs to be from somebody who’s really doing the work in the science field. As somebody who was into makeup, I would care about my skin care, but I wouldn’t necessarily go to the same person for those two things.”

As for his wider brand expanding into different categories under new ownership, he said: “I don’t know. I can always entertain the idea of something new or different. I might have opinions as to why it doesn’t make sense for us or me, but sometimes I just have to remind myself to keep an open mind, because it’s the only way anything happens. It’s like to give it a chance, and maybe through something that I don’t immediately see, working through it might end up being something that I’m surprised by and delighted with in the end.”

On his involvement in all the various categories of the business, he is very involved in fragrance, beauty and the runway collection. The rest can vary: “Sometimes I’m asked to be more involved in commercial bags, sometimes less, sometimes it goes in and out, and there have definitely been periods where I’ve been more involved. But sometimes my involvement isn’t really that beneficial, because I’m very stubborn and hardheaded, and sometimes it slows down the process, and me being on a calendar, a commercial calendar, is tricky. I feel like I’m here when needed, and I’m going to get on with what I know how to do, and I’m more than happy to weigh in on anything else.”

All in all, he appears to be taking the WHP/G-III acquisition in his stride. “I don’t know what it actually will be. I’m just open to what it will be, or what it can be. And when you say, what are your hopes, it’s like, well, I hope for the best, that’s all you can do.”