Linda Evangelista Still Has Her Look From Marc Jacob's First Collection

Supermodel Linda Evangelista and designer Marc Jacobs have been friends since the late ’80s. In the years since, they’ve worked together on countless runway shows and partied at New York City’s most notable nightclubs. But when they first met, Jacobs was working at Perry Ellis, where he famously debuted the grunge collection that turned fashion on its head (and got him fired from the brand) in 1992.

“I had gotten the job at Perry Ellis and I was like, ‘I want Linda Evangelista’ to be in our first campaign,” Jacobs told the audience gathered at the Condé Nast offices for Vogue‘s Forces of Fashion conference on Thursday afternoon, where he was on stage in conversation with the legendary model. “We were on the shoot. I showed up and you were there. They poured a bucket of cold water over your head, and that was the picture.” 

From a printed-out and highlighted sheet in her hands, Evangelista presented a prompt for the pair: “Do (you) both keep an archive of the past? What’s in it?”

Luckily for all fashion enthusiasts, she said she has an entire floor in her mother’s home in Canada dedicated to keeping stacks of magazines, catalogs and plenty of clothing safe.

“I claimed the bottom floor — one might call it a basement, but it has windows, so I don’t think it’s a basement,” she told the audience. “But all of my work — like the actual magazines, catalogs and brochures — are there. Then there’s these cedar closets that I had made in France that move around on wheels. They have the most beautiful clothes. There are some Azzedine’s (Alaïa), Chanel’s and nice things that don’t fit me.”

Though Evangelista has been keeping all of these memories “90 percent organized,” she’s been actively seeking ways to give them the appreciation they deserve: “I would wear them, but they don’t fit me. And instead of sitting there, they really need a home. That’s a project I would like to get to.”

After Jacobs was fired from the Perry Ellis brand in 1993, he promptly set up his own eponymous label, and his supermodel friends followed — regardless of what he could pay, leaving him unable to keep a personal archive of those collections.

“At that time early on in my career, post-Perry Ellis, I couldn’t afford to pay anybody. So I gave you (Evangelista) and the others clothes,” he said. “I didn’t save anything. So, there’s no archive of that period.”

To Jacobs’s surprise, Evangelista immediately responded: “I can give you back those pieces. I think I have the yellow rubber coat — it’s in the cedar closet.”

“Do you? Has it dissolved?,” Jacobs asked. “I wonder if cedar and rubber really (work well together). It might be melted.” 

“Not in Canada. I’ll give you back whatever,” said Evangelista. 

“Okay, I promise I’ll look after it for you,” replied Jacobs. 

What was meant to be a casual “In Conversation” panel between the friends turned out to fulfill Evangelista’s desire to give her clothing the home they deserve and Jacobs’s wish to have an archive of his early work in the industry.

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