Beauty is not a mask’: Marc Jacobs and Thomas de Kluyver in conversation

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Beauty is not a mask’:Marc Jacobs and Thomas de Kluyver in conversation

Marc Jacobs and Thomas de Kluyver share a club kid past. As a student at Parsons School of Design in the 80s, Jacobs would spend his nights at underground hot spots like The Mudd Club. “My club kid days were pretty epic,” he remembers fondly. Meanwhile, de Kluyver was turning looks so wild at London nights like Boombox and Collapsing New People – where he also manned the door – that he caught the attention of everyone from Pat McGrath to Robbie Spencer, eventually landing his first shoots as a make-up artist. “There was this fire and desire to find different inspiration everywhere, because it wasn’t as accessible as it is now, so you really had to work,” de Kluyver says. “I would spend the whole week while at work designing my make-up look for the weekend in my head.”

That shared history – and a mutual passion for nightlife, beauty and self-expression – has shaped both Jacobs and de Kluyver’s individual careers. It also forms the foundation of their collaboration on the relaunch of Marc Jacobs Beauty, a new iteration of the make-up line that became beloved during its original run from 2013 to 2021. Now, it returns with new products, new packaging and a new manufacturer. What remains is an underlying ethos of joy, fun and self-expression: concepts the designer and make-up artist were closely aligned on from the beginning.

“So much of my work is about gender identity and self-expression, and I think they’re huge things that are part of Marc’s story and Marc’s world,” says de Kluyver, who worked with Jacobs to create the launch advertising campaign for the brand and across the label’s fashion shows. “For me, those things go without saying,” adds Jacobs. “There wasn’t a deliberate decision to [have it be part of the brand] as much as that’s just always the place I’m coming from. It’s just part of who we are. I love Thomas’s work, and his work couldn’t be that without everything he is. Once we made the decision to [work with] Thomas, everything else fell into place.”

Marc Jacobs Beauty launch collection campaign — Courtesy of Marc Jacobs Beauty

The collection itself is playful and vibrant: lipsticks, eyeshadows, pencils, mascaras and bronzers in vivid shades, housed in whimsical packaging decorated with flowers and hearts. The eye compacts are designed to look like pillowy metallic stars, while the blushes come in bright yellow daisy-shaped tubes. The fanciful packaging brings the make-up into the aesthetic world of the brand’s fragrances – think Daisy and Perfect – and away from the sleeker designs of the original collection “We had the knowledge of what people had come to love about the original collection, but we all agreed that it was a new thing, a new line with a new look and new formulas, and a lovely new make-up artist. We wanted to move forward in a different way.”

And it does feel fresh. After years of minimalist packaging and “clean girl” formulas dominating our feeds and beauty aisles, the collection’s bold playfulness arrives right on time for what people are calling the maximalist revival – although Jacobs himself wouldn’t call it that. He says he “really can’t stand” labels and boxes. The products also lend themselves perfectly to experimental, colourful looks: 21 shades of eyeliner range from glittering baby pink to metallic turquoise and silver, while the eyeshadows include multi-chrome iridescents that steal the show. “It’s really important that there’s credibility to things and that we walk the walk,” says Jacobs of the extensive shade range. “You can’t say we’re about colour, we’re about self-expression if you don’t have the palette.”

When it comes to the packaging, Jacobs is unusually candid about a part of the creative process that isn’t often talked about – sometimes a project you’ve been working on for a long time comes out, and you don’t know how to feel about it. While the aesthetics of the products have been widely praised by beauty editors and fans, Jacobs still needs a moment to process everything. “It’s always a little difficult for me to know what I really think about, I need some time and distance. So while I’m very excited, and I feel good finally getting to see what this looks like, I want to understand it in the world a little bit,” he says. “There’s an arc of creativity and then you need to just step back from it in order to be able to see it after two years of working on it.”

MJBeauty_SocialCrop_KV-Marc_16x9-15 — Courtesy of Marc Jacobs Beauty

Every good collection needs an equally good campaign, and de Kluyver was on hand to bring the magic that made his previous work for Gucci and editorials for Dazed and AnOther so special. “The beauty shoot was a really fun day, everyone was having a good time, we were seeing all these interesting, beautiful faces and it just flowed in a really nice way, and I think you can feel that in the pictures,” says de Kulyver. “There’s a joy in them, an expression in them, and they feel really authentic, and they feel really Marc. [When I saw the images] I was like ‘this is going to hit loads of people,’ and Marc was like ‘I don’t care whether it hits loads of people, I like it.’”

De Kluyver’s approach towards beauty on set – leading with spontaneity, not being boxed in by aesthetic labels, and giving each model a focus, whether blush or brows or eyeliner – inspired Jacobs to create the looks for the runway show last season and also how the pair want people to use the make-up at home. For them, it’s about instinct and impulse: going to the counter, seeing something you love or connect with, and then having the products be easy to use. “I like the idea that beauty is authentic and it’s not a mask that you wear but an extension of your personality,” says

While he doesn’t believe in the microtrends and labels that have come to dominate on social media, he and de Kluyver do both enjoy watching the Explore Page on Instagram and seeing people getting excited about putting on and talking about their make-up. “I’m just fascinated by it. I see people who are so enamored, they just love doing their make-up. They love a new product. That’s what I love about fashion and beauty, is that true honest passion for self-expression. I mean, it’s such a cliche, but it’s everything for me,” Jacobs says. “Passion is such a wonderful quality in people. I love to work with people who are passionate. It’s infectious. On all of what we worked on here, everyone really felt very passionate, and I think it really shows itself in what the make-up has become.”