Marc Jacobs is a total city boy. The cult designer, known - nay, revered! - for his fantastical vision of femininity, grew up in Manhattan, where he clubbed at Studio 54 and the Limelight as a teenager. Not for the dowdy debutantes, the Marc by Marc Jacobs collection is, as Jacobs puts it, for cool girls who follow their own rules (and tend to wear brightly colored bobby socks with high heels!).

There is a useful example of Jacobs' method that illustrates how much more closely his technique resembles that of, say, a frankly appropriationist band like The Strokes than a more traditional designer's. "When Venetia went out to get fabrics for a collection we were working on," he explained, "I said, 'Look at fabrics we don't ordinarily like.' I was into richer textures…I got the idea to take the '60s print and do it in a subtle way on the lame," Jacobs said. Editors die for it. Celebrities wear it. And of course we love to buy it.