Marc Jacobs
Brand History
Marc Jacobs began as a New York fashion house, founded by the eponymous designer (born 1963) with his business partner Robert Duffy: after his early career at Perry Ellis, in 1984 Jacobs launched his own eponymous line, soon joined by the more accessible diffusion line "Marc by Marc Jacobs" (2001-2015, later reabsorbed into the main brand). Since 1997 Bernard Arnault's LVMH group has held a majority stake, backing the brand's growth even while Jacobs simultaneously served as creative director of Louis Vuitton (1997-2013). In May 2026 LVMH announced the sale of Marc Jacobs to WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group, with Jacobs confirmed as Founder and Creative Director: the deal closed on September 1, 2026, with WHP Global steering the brand's global licensing and G-III responsible for retail and wholesale operations.
As with its perfumes and eyewear, Marc Jacobs watches have always been made under license by third parties, never produced directly by the fashion house. The first and longest-running agreement was signed in 2004 with Fossil Group, which launched the "Marc by Marc Jacobs Watches" collection: over fifteen years of licensing, Fossil built a very broad catalog of lines with proper names — Baker, Rivera, Fergus, Henry, Sally, Roxy, Mandy, Courtney, among many others — aimed largely at a female audience, joined in the mid-2010s by a range of hybrid smartwatches, consistent with the strategy Fossil applied in parallel to other licensed fashion brands.
In November 2018 Marc Jacobs ended the agreement with Fossil Group; in February 2019 the new licensee was announced, Bedrock Manufacturing — the company that also controls Shinola and Filson, founded by Tom Kartsotis (the same founder of Fossil) — with the stated goal of a more sophisticated collection and production based in Detroit; the first Bedrock-signed collection reached stores in autumn 2019. As of this writing, this is the last confirmed watch licensing agreement according to available sources: Fossil Group no longer lists Marc Jacobs among its brands, while there are no public announcements of a further change of licensee following the closing of the WHP Global/G-III acquisition in September 2026 — an area to verify in the future, given that WHP Global now manages the brand's licenses globally.
