After a lengthy period of speculation, it’s official: LVMH is selling its majority stake in Marc Jacobs to brand management group WHP Global for an undisclosed sum. Jacobs will stay on in his role as founder and creative director of the brand.

G-III Apparel Group, which bought Donna Karan from LVMH in 2016, will co-own the Marc Jacobs brand with WHP Global. WHP will manage the licensing operations, while G-III will acquire and operate the brand’s global direct-to-consumer (DTC) and wholesale businesses. (G-III’s investment is about $500 million, per the company. WHP Global is not disclosing financials.)

LVMH acquired its stake in the Marc Jacobs brand in 1997, the same year Jacobs was appointed creative director of Louis Vuitton, a post he held for 16 years. It’s not the first brand LVMH has parted ways with; it sold its minority stake in Stella McCartney back to the founder in January 2025, and Off-White to another brand management group, Bluestar Alliance, the year prior.

WHP Global, for its part, has taken on more fashion brands of late. In 2024, the group acquired Rag & Bone (a joint acquisition with Guess Inc.), and last year, acquired Vera Wang. The firm positioned the Vera Wang acquisition as a step toward establishing a “new premium fashion vertical”, alongside its fashion portfolio of Rag & Bone, Joe’s Jeans, and G-Star. Crucially, founder and designer Vera Wang stayed on board after the acquisition, as Jacobs is doing. G-III owns brands including DKNY, Karl Lagerfeld, and Vilebrequin.

The Marc Jacobs acquisition is another notch in WHP’s growing fashion portfolio — and by far its most significant yet. “The acquisition of the Marc Jacobs brand from LVMH marks a defining moment for WHP Global, as we welcome one of fashion’s most influential brands into our portfolio,” Yehuda Shmidman, WHP Global founder, chair and CEO, said in a statement. “LVMH has been an exceptional steward of the Marc Jacobs brand over the past three decades. Together, with Marc Jacobs, G-III, and the team, we look forward to expanding the brand’s global reach and building on its strong legacy for years to come.”

WHP Global partnered with G-III, because, as a brand management group, it does not handle the operational side of fashion businesses — meaning it does not operate stores nor handle manufacturing, and thus sought out what it deems a best-in-class retail partner. The Marc Jacobs model now most closely resembles the group’s Rag & Bone acquisition, on which it partnered with Guess Inc. to handle the operational side of the business. This combination will be a strength, says Neil Saunders, managing director of Globaldata’s retail division, noting the added plus of G-III’s more premium and luxury experience. “This transaction underscores our longstanding commitment to building a diversified portfolio of iconic, globally relevant brands,” G-III chair and CEO Morris Goldfarb said in a statement.

WHP isn’t alone in its mission to establish itself as a brand management group that doubles as a serious fashion player. Authentic, which acquired the intellectual property rights to Barneys in 2019, is reportedly considering reinstating the much-missed department store into its former Madison Avenue home. The group has also acquired Dockers, Reebok, Vince, and Eddie Bauer in the last five years. In addition to Off-White, Bluestone Alliance acquired Palm Angels in 2025.

The Marc Jacobs acquisition, however, puts WHP Global squarely ahead of its competitors when it comes to luxury fashion ambitions. “It’s a great opportunity for WHP Global and G-III to capture the heritage and integrity of Marc himself, and all he has done for American fashion and beyond,” says fashion consultant Julie Gilhart, who was SVP and fashion director of Barneys for 18 years. “Yes, his name is global, but his heart is in New York.”

The success of the deal will be contingent on WGP Global’s ability to work with G-III, to marry Marc Jacobs’s commercial potential with the creativity and cultural cachet that has kept the brand at the heart of New York — and global — fashion for so many years.

Bridge the gap

In recent years, there has been a disjuncture between Marc Jacobs’s accessories and licenses (Coty for fragrance; Safilo Group for eyewear), as well as the brand’s ready-to-wear collections, experts say. The Marc Jacobs runway show — always off-schedule, typically at the Park Avenue Armory or the New York Public Library — remains a coveted ticket each February and June (or July). But the brand’s recent runway collections are rarely seen out in the wild, except on the occasional celebrity, or at the Met Gala. (This year, the brand dressed guests including Serena Williams, Cardi B, and Rachel Sennott.) Jacobs’s most recent show, though, signaled a pivot back to the wearable: “What a great show! Clothes we can wear,” Nicole Phelps reported Jacobs’s friend, designer Anna Sui, exclaiming post-show.

Its accessories, meanwhile, are widely distributed, lower priced, and, for the most part, an aesthetic departure from the brand’s runway offering. Fragrance remains an easy (and popular) way in for consumers. Heaven by Marc Jacobs — also at a lower price — was an early hit with young shoppers, but the hype has since quietened down. And for this new era, there’s a new player in the mix. Marc Jacobs Beauty is officially returning after being credited at both the February runway show and across celebrities’ Met Gala looks, the designer confirmed in his Instagram post announcing the sale. To date, though, these categories have been disjointed.

“The top priority is to create a more cohesive brand and proposition,” Saunders says. “The Marc Jacobs brand is too fragmented in terms of the products it offers, its distribution, and its position in the market. That inhibits growth and it reduces impact,” he says. “WHP and G-III need to inject a lot more discipline and come up with an overarching brand vision.” The ready-to-wear should remain the focal point for creativity, which should filter down to the brand’s other areas of business to ensure brand alignment, he adds.

The brand’s latest campaign, a micro-drama by Sennott titled The Scene, offers a blueprint for how its new stewards might integrate the various facets of the Marc Jacobs brand. In it, Sennott attempts to go viral in a bid to score a Met Gala invite. (There, days later, she’d wear a sculptural, odd-shoed Jacobs look, plus yet-to-be-released Marc Jacobs makeup.) In the campaign, though, she runs through New York City, the brand’s new Scene shoulder bag tucked under her arm, the plot and costuming marrying Marc Jacobs’s accessories with the designer’s more avant-garde looks.

“The solution is not full homogenization so much as stronger narrative alignment through shared design codes, synchronized campaigns, and a clearer aesthetic continuity between runway storytelling and commercial product categories,” Quillin says.

Balancing accessibility

Analyst consensus is that Marc Jacobs should sit at the upper end of accessible luxury. “Marc Jacobs should operate at the accessible luxury price point — and rival brands like Michael Kors,” says Bernstein luxury goods analyst Luca Solca. As consumers tire of still-climbing luxury price points, Marc Jacobs — with the cachet boost that the designer’s name carries — has a chance to relieve this fatigue.

This doesn’t mean simply aligning with successful US accessible luxury brands, which have seen success selling sub-$500 handbags, Saunders cautions. He believes that Marc Jacobs can and should price itself above players like Coach. Quillin agrees, cautioning the brand against building a renaissance off the back of a single hero product. “The mistake would be to overindex toward accessible products at the expense of fashion authority, since Marc Jacobs’s commercial value derives from its creative legitimacy,” he says.

What the brand needs to avoid, Saunders agrees, is ubiquity in both product and distribution. “The commercial opportunity comes not through pumping more random products into the market, but by having a cohesive range so consumers can buy into the brand across different areas,” he says.

Marc Jacobs should go about store openings and wholesale distribution carefully. The brand currently has over 280 stores globally, in over 60 countries, according to the LVMH website. Its runway collections are currently only sold in Bergdorf Goodman, which makes space to extend the brand’s ready-to-wear reach, should Jacobs continue producing clothes aimed for everyday life. Moving forward, the best route is selective standalone openings (to express the full vision), bolstered by premium wholesale placements, experts agree.

Nostalgia play

Much of Marc Jacobs’s value lies in the designer’s immense industry impact; his influence on both fashion and culture, and the ways he’s brought the two together. WHP would be wise to lean into Jacobs’s own clout — and its task is to ensure that the next generation is as across his influence as his OG shoppers. “Despite years of recent struggles, Marc Jacobs remains one of the few American designers with genuine artistic credibility and widespread cultural recognition,” Quillin says.

Sofia Coppola’s Marc By Sofia, which hit theaters in March, illustrates the resonance this storytelling has, as well as the nostalgia people still have for the brand. Its new owners can tap into this, Quillin argues. “If I was WHP management, I would ask myself: ‘What do we need to do to return Marc Jacobs to the cult status that they had in the early 2000s?’” Consumers’ current penchant for nostalgia only adds to the opportunity, says luxury consultant Robert Burke.

Those who were there in the early days believe that this ethos can carry through to today. “I was lucky to know Marc when he was building his business, and those same values he had then are still deeply relevant now,” Gilhart says. “From that foundation, the business side can evolve and develop multiple revenue streams while keeping the quality and creativity high across all price points.”

Next-gen Jacobs

Of course, the brand needs to look forward, too. Though the new management would be wise to lean into the affection shoppers have for the Marc Jacobs of yore, they also need to push the brand into its next iteration — and, in doing so, capture a new generation of consumers. The right social media moments and celebrity tie-ups will help with this. The brand is already adept at this approach to marketing; just look at Sennott’s tongue-in-cheek micro-drama ahead of this year’s Met, in which the Hollywood It-girl attempts to go viral. This next-gen focus in theme and talent is the right direction for the brand, experts agree. “The brand should be youthful and playful, which is true to its heritage,” Saunders says.

To date, Marc Jacobs’s main focus on younger consumers has been via its Heaven sub-brand, which launched in 2020. Heaven has a Y2K look and lower price, and was co-designed by Ava Nirui until she departed for W Magazine’s new W Youth publication earlier this year. The Heaven Instagram account hasn’t posted since Nirui’s departure, and the new owners did not confirm what will happen to Heaven post-sale by the time of publishing. Now, experts are advocating for this youthful edge to seep into the Jacobs main line.

“There’ll be the next generation of fashion consumers that are going to be really attracted to [Marc Jacobs],” Burke says. “It’s a fantastic brand. It’s a fantastic name. He is very front-facing, and he represents a cool factor that you rarely see last for this many years.”

To win, the teams behind Marc Jacobs must work with the designer to evolve the brand into one this next gen will buy into. “In today’s market, it’s not the time to ‘plug and play’, but to do things differently in ways that touch the human spirit of the consumer,” Gilhart says. “This is the great opportunity for Marc Jacobs — and WHP Global and G-III.”

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