Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs, and formerly Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, which was produced for approximately 15 years having been discontinued after the 2015 fall/winter collection. At one point there were over 200 retail stores in 80 countries. He was the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2014. Jacobs was on Time magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and was #14 on  magazine's 2012 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".  He was married on 6 April 2019 to his long time partner, Charly Defrancesco.

He attended the High School of Art and Design and studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. While at Parsons in 1984, he won the Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award, Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award, and Design Student of the Year. In 1987 he became the youngest designer ever to receive the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. He also won the Women's Designer of the Year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1993.

Explaining his clothes, Jacobs has said "what I prefer is that even if someone feels hedonistic, they don't look it. Curiosity about sex is much more interesting to me than domination. ... My clothes are not hot. Never. Never." The audience for his fashion shows typically includes celebrities like Kim Gordon and Vincent Gallo. Guy Trebay, a critic for The New York Times, in response to Oscar de la Renta's comment that a coat designed by Jacobs closely resembled one that de la Renta had designed thirty years earlier, wrote that "unlike the many brand-name designers who promote the illusion that their output results from a single prodigious creativity, Mr. Jacobs makes no pretense that fashion emerges full blown from the head of one solitary genius". Jacobs was one of the first fashion designers to establish this "street wise aesthetics – a [mash up of] a little preppie, a little grunge, a little couture."[citation needed] The Marc Jacobs brand is also known for fine arts driven and avante garde AD campaigns, often featuring a group of cultural icons and artists in lieu of traditional fashion models in minimally staged settings, and photographed by high-profile photographers. In 2015, Jacobs launched a popular lifestyle campaign that featured artists, celebrities, and cultural icons such as Sofia Coppola, Cher, Willow Smith, Winona Ryder, Daisy Lowe, and Anthony Kiedis.

Jacobs revisited this approach for the Marc Jacobs Spring 2016 advertising campaign, describing the concept as a fashion story representing a "series of connected events; a visual narrative. It is a personal diary of people who have and continue to inspire me and open my mind to different ways of seeing and thinking. The spectrum of individuals photographed in our Spring/Summer 2016 ad campaign represent a celebration of my America." Adding, "The people featured in our campaign personify this collection of fashion through their individuality. Collectively, they embody and celebrate the spirit and beauty of equality." Dena Silver, from The Observer.com, called it "the best campaign of the Spring 2016 season." She then elaborates about what makes this campaign notable: "The designer (Marc Jacobs) has handpicked a star studded cast of his family members to model the Americana gear from this collection." Adding "Technically speaking, none of the people in this series of photographs are related to Mr. Jacobs by blood, but rather, they're people who mean a lot to the Marc Jacobs brand." The Marc Jacobs Spring 2016 advertising campaign featured Lana Wachowski, Sandra Bernhard, Bette Midler, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Sky Ferreira, Bella Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski as well as lesser known artists Vincent Michaud, Oli Burslem, and Milk, a contestant from RuPaul's Drag Race, as well as several runway models.