Marc at the Mercer: Once-Scruffy Designer, Now Buff and Diamond-Studded, Discusses Doc

On Thursday, Jan. 31, the designer Marc Jacobs, his boyfriend, Jason Preston, and the stylist Rachel Zoe were sitting on a wooden bench outside the Mercer Hotel. Inside a party was being held for the new shopumentary, Marc Jacobs and Louis Vitton, directed by Loïc Prigent.

What did Mr. Jacobs think of the film? “I thought it was great,” he said. Giant diamonds twinkled on his ears and cuffs. (“I’ve got a lot of bling, yeah—Harry Winston, Van Cleef and Arpel Bouchon.”) “I had a lot of fun doing it; I mean kind of a lot of fun, ha-ha. No I mean Loïc is really, really cool. He’s such a great guy, he’s got great taste in art, great taste in music. And he’s just a good guy to have around, and Dominque Miceli, who produced it, is sort of like a mom to me. So it was kind of a family-type experience, although I hate my family, so it wouldn’t have been my family but someone else’s family experience. … You know, it was really weird to see—you know, people always tell me that I act a certain way and that I do certain things and I’m always like, ‘No, no, I don’t do that, I don’t do that.’ And then to kind of see it like actually documented and realize they’re not lying.”

Like what?

“Like how panicky I get,” said Mr. Jacobs, whose show, scheduled this season for Friday, Feb. 8, is widely considered the event of Fashion Week. “And how silent I get and how like stupid I act sometimes. Or silly. I don’t know.”

The film chronicled a year in Mr. Jacobs’s professional life. But what about the personal? (Mr. Preston, who was being uncharacteristically silent tonight, flung his head in the other direction.) “I don’t know,” the designer said. “That was my life for that year. I don’t think there was much more.”

Nothing at all?

“It was all really about work, so they didn’t get the like three hours of my personal life that I had in that year.”

Has he noticed all the young male designers trying to follow in his footsteps lately? “Yes,” Ms. Zoe piped up.“Umm, no,” said Mr. Jacobs. “Rachel says yes, I say no.”

How many are there?

“Countless,” Ms. Zoe said.

“They’re not mini-Marcs, they’re who they are,” Mr. Jacobs said. “People who love fashion. They just want to give it a shot and go for it.”

Ms. Zoe: “He’s insanely humble.”

“That’s how I started—I was like a mini-somebody, too,” the designer said “And then somebody once said to me like, ‘No, you’re not the next so-and-so, you’re not a mini so-and-so, you’re you and you’ll be the best you can be, and that’s great.’”

He was wearing not his own label, but a H. Huntsman & Sons tuxedo with a black bow tie. “Which is now too small, because I work out too much and I’ve become huge.”

He flexed. “Rrrrrrr!”