LONE STAR OF NEW YORK

Marc Jacobs doesn't jump on style bandwagons but he is still the hippest fashion designer in Manhattan. Edward Helmore talks to the young American whose clothes are so cool they're hot

It's 8pm, and Marc Jacobs, one of America's most highly-regarded fashion designers, has just finished a fitting. His assistant has left for the evening, leaving Marc alone among the scattered objects of his craft - racks of cardboard patterns, coloured fabric stacked up in the corner, an upturned door for a table, Marlboros and an open packet of chocolate. A slim figure in the midst of the chaos, Jacobs is poring over polaroids of the models who are to appear in his new collection. Typically, he rejects those models who strike a camera-conscious, practised pose; those models who look faintly awkward meet with his approval.

Although Marc Jacobs is greeted with coos and kisses by supermodels such as Kate, Amber and Shalom, and is acclaimed by US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, he inhabits a rather different world from that of the usual darlings of the fashion elite. Not for him the grand gesture, the eccentric sweep of vision, the prophetic pronouncement.

"I can't sit here and bullshit my way through why I did a denim shirt because, you know, I was out in Santa Fe and I wanted to bring out the pioneer in every woman," says 33-year-old Jacobs with disarming honesty. "I just can't do it."

It's not that Jacobs is anti-fashion, it's just that he's too pragmatic to be seduced into pigeonholing clothes. "Forget the Twenties, the Sixties, the Eighties. Now, everyone's going on about the Eighties - anyone who subscribes to that kind of thing looks foolish."

Instead, Jacobs tailors his clothes to suit his own, and hopefully his customers', aesthetics. They are inspired primarily by the cloth itself. "I know that every season I'm going to be making shirts, dresses - so I start by looking at fabrics." From there, the clothes are draped into fine beaded evening dresses, informal suits, and intricately-worked knitwear. The problems associated with Jacobs's limited production mean that his clothes aren't cheap, especially by the time they've crossed the Atlantic. For his Spring/ Summer 96 Collection, however, Jacobs has launched a new diffusion line, "Marc Jacobs Look", at relatively affordable prices.

Jacobs admits that the bi-annual cycle of making, showing and selling clothes creates pressures. "I don't sleep," he confides. "After the show I get nightmares, and I think that I've overslept and missed the show. I've gone through the same thing for years."

He needn't worry. Apart from a hiccup in 1994, when he played music by Nirvana and showed a "hippie-punk" collection that prompted discussion about whether thrift-store clothes could technically be called fashion, Jacobs has established himself as a fashion critics' favourite.

A native New Yorker, he nurtured an ambition to make clothes after his grandmother taught him to knit. At 15 he got an after-school job at Charivari, a fashionable Manhattan store. There he met his hero Perry Ellis, the sportswear designer, who advised him to enrol at Parsons School of Design. Eventually, he joined Ellis's company and in 1989, three years after the death of its founder, Jacobs inherited the mantle of in-house designer.

There have been setbacks, though. In 1993, Perry Ellis closed its designer line, stranding Jacobs without a backer and leaving the US fashion firmament to wonder whether the fall of their favourite son was a sinister augury. In a sense, of course, it was: sales of designer clothes have been falling in the US as those with disposable income have turned their attention to home furnishings and other signifiers of maturity.

The ruling triumvirate of US fashion - Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren - are tackling this problem by moving further into the billion- dollar business of accessorising the world with everything from pillowcases to popcorn. And now one of the world's leading accessories giants has hired Jacobs to launch its first-ever clothing collection. Jacobs will create a new line for the luxury luggage company Louis Vuitton, part of LVMH, the huge concern that recently hired Alexander McQueen to design for Givenchy and gave the house of Dior to John Galliano.

But whether the scales of art and commerce balance is not important to Jacobs. For him, clothes always come first. "This is what I want to do. I never thought, `I wish I were a rock star.' I've never considered doing anything else - it's either this or something mindless like working at a video store."

! "Marc Jacobs Look", telephone 0171 487 3314

All Marc Jacobs designs on these pages from his Autumn/Winter 1996 Collection, available from Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge, London SW1 Right: beaded dress, pounds 1,350, by Marc Jacobs, from Harvey Nichols, London SW1; sandals, pounds 270, at Gianni Versace, 34-36 Old Bond Street, W1. Other clothes, all from Jacobs's Autumn/Winter 1996 collection, from Harvey Nichols and A La Mode, 36 Hans Crescent, SW1