A Look at Resort 2011: Marc Jacobs

No surprise Marc Jacobs was missing in action from the presentation of his resort collection this morning. Who could blame him, after all: He’s probably still sleeping off last night’s CFDA Fashion Awards, where he was (finally—and deservedly) presented with Womenswear Designer of the Year. Or maybe, just like he acknowledged in his speech last night, Jacobs doesn’t feel he always needs to be front and center with this collection. Instead, he wants to celebrate its collaborative team nature, a little like he does with Louis Vuitton resort, where the French house’s creative director is allowed to step into the limelight. Anyway, if he had made it to his SoHo studio at 8:25 a.m., he could have always fueled himself with one of the many, many Balthazar cappuccinos in the atelier, though the coffee wouldn’t have begun to match the eye-opening jolt that his resort delivered. This was Jacobs at his most joyous, with the designer reclaiming that generally most despised fashion epithet, pretty. The sixties refrain that has been playing throughout these collections was perfect here: a frothy lace dress color-blocked in cream and pink with spangled high heels (as a side note, you might want to absorb the fact that some of his pale, jeweled shoes had square toes—and just as you were getting used to swapping the round for the pointed), and suits like this small jacket and short skirt in a big, blown-up black-and-white tweed.