Designer Isabel Marant Reflects on 30 Years in Fashion

Thirty years after starting her business in Paris, Isabel Marant still has fashion fever.

Case in point, during a visit to Los Angeles this week, on Sunday morning before 10 a.m., she had already hit the Santa Monica Antique and Vintage Market and was headed out with bags full of hand-quilted, upcycled garments.

“For me, what human beings can make with their hands…is as good as listening to a good piece of music. It fills you with joy,” she said of staying inspired and true to her vision all these years to make wearable, everyday clothes with a boho spirit and woman’s point of view.

Marant and her artistic director and right hand Kim Bekker were sitting in the cactus garden in front of her Melrose Avenue boutique Wednesday afternoon, ahead of their 30th anniversary dinner at the Chateau Marmont that night. “L.A. is so Isabel Marant,” she said. “A bit bohemian cool but can also be very dressy.”

“I was dying to come here to feel the vibe and the energy,” Bekker added of her first trip to the city. “We’ve already found a ton of new ideas.”

Marant launched her label and had her first show in 1994. “There was not much press on it. We used to crash venues and most of the audience was my friends,” Marant remembered. “But step by step I started to be noticed. It’s not easy when you start in Paris because the competition was already quite tough. But the first show that really boomed was when we started to work with [French editor] Emmanuelle Alt, and we really created this silhouette that is known now,” she said of how things changed around 2009, with the “tough but sweet” ruffled top and miniskirt, and low studded boots that were the first trend of many that Marant contributed to the wider fashion market, Zara, H&M and more.

“That’s when I joined, and she was the woman to be with,” Bekker said. “The girls were pretty and fresh — everything you wanted to touch it and have it.”

Her footwear had a rapid rise. Launched in 2011, her bestselling $665 high-top Betty sneakers, with a concealed wedge heel, sparked thousands of imitators.

“Footwear is really ending the silhouette and giving attitude,” Marant said of finding the shoe of the season as part of her design process.

Over the years, Marant has made quite a study of the L.A. look, although she did not set foot in the City of Angels until 2010.

When she first came here, it was by accident. She was waylaid in New York by a volcanic eruption in Iceland, and decided to go West for a side trip. She took in the vintage workwear and Americana at stores such as Mister Freedom, immersed herself in the fringy rock ‘n’ roll vibe of Laurel Canyon, and observed the graphic, surf-and-skate sportswear in Venice Beach, Calif.

L.A. returned the favor; in the 2010s, her suede Dicker cowboy booties, Western shirts, skinny jeans, fringy leather jackets and crafty, chunky sweaters were the everyday uniform of Hollywood “It” girls such as Kate Bosworth, Jessica Biel, Emma Roberts and Diane Kruger.

She opened her Melrose Place boutique in 2012.

She’s always been influenced by America and the West, of course, but also global craft. “All the quilting, the Native American textiles, Japanese shibori, Rajasthani embroidery. It’s globetrotter girl who goes all over the world and is interested in art and culture and picks up all sorts of things to mix and match,” she said of her muse.

“Being a woman, I was more attracted to doing things you can wear forever,” she said, acknowledging that her focus on wearability may have cost her some respect from the fashion with a capital “F” industry — and occasionally stoked her own self-doubt. “It’s true that sometimes when I look at shows I say ‘Oh my god that’s so amazing, I’m not as talented.’ And I can be a bit baby bluesy about that…but I always get back to myself saying, ‘OK, each one is a talent.’”

In recent women’s ready-to-wear seasons in Paris, designers have been all about making the ordinary extraordinary, denim and Western looks on the runway and yes, the return of boho-chic — all of which Marant has been doing all along.

She was designing the cowboy look — and cowboy boots — back in 2011, showing a sweatshirt for fall 2012 made to look like an embroidered Western shirt that seems primed for a “Cowboy Carter” revival.

For spring 2014, Marant was already onto the haute Birkenstock trend, showing studded molded footbed sandals with bow details and ankle ties. “I still wear those all the time,” she laughed, looking at the runway photo, in which the earthy sandals are paired with a French lace miniskirt and top, Jane Birkin style.

She’s sampled tribal patterns in many collections, including a nomadic cozy themed one for fall 2014, that paired mukluks with minidresses. That sampling landed her in hot water in 2021, when she had to apologize to the Mexican government for cultural appropriation, for cribbing an Indigenous design for a cape, a mistake she deeply regretted.

Marant has managed to mix boho frills with sportswear seamlessly through the years, as with silver parachute pants paired with a peasant blouse on the runway for spring 2016. And she’s always designed just the right silhouette of jeans for a season, from low and skinny, to high-waist and baggy, or paper-bag waist and cuffed, usually over just the right boot.

“The 1980s I love, disco and Blondie and all those girls who were stylish wearing nothing,” she said, looking at a Memphis color-blocked windbreaker tucked into pink paper bag waist pants from spring 2019.

The big shoulder, big sleeve trend was another one she drove that year, as seen on a puff-sleeve black leather jacket and trousers look from fall 2019 over studded slouchy boots. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the music festival look, with teenie tiny cutoff denim shorts and layered jewelry.

“I was about to go but I’m too tired for it,” Marant said when asked if she might take a detour to Coachella this weekend.

Marant spends summer vacations in Ibiza, and the beach rave culture there is never far from her mind. Recently, she’s been envisioning swimwear as “the new T-shirt,” she said, looking at a bikini top, nylon shorts and strappy heels look from spring 2022, with an iridescent leather butt bag, natch.

For spring 2024, she showed a scooped waist white one-piece halter suit with low-slung cargos that was also beach club ready. “With this body-conscious trend, it’s easy to have an amazing suit top and if you want to end up in the pool at the end of the night, it’s possible,” she laughed.

And for fall 2024, she pivoted back to the ranch, just in time for the Western wear revival.

Marant sold 51 percent of her business to Montefiore Investment in 2016, “because I was looking for a backer to expand the brand all around the world, with help from people who have the knowledge of it,” she said, commenting also on reports the brand is in play once again. “I don’t know what will happen, but it’s an investment fund so of course the aim is to sell again, let’s see.”

Sales are divided equally in thirds between the lower priced Etoile collection, pre-collection and the runway collection, she said, and bags have been a growing category, led by the success of the Osken group and the Skano belt bags. Menswear launched in 2018.

Despite the luxury slowdown, Marant is well positioned, said chief executive officer Anouck Duranteau-loeper. “It’s a succession of crazy years, but business is solid in the U.S. and the brand is moving in moving in the right direction.”

Marant has 85 stores worldwide, including two in L.A., and no plans to open more this year.

“It’s wild, and a bit scary sometimes when I think about it,” the designer said of the size of her business now, compared even to 10 years ago. But the mission is the same: “One of the most important things for me is to always feel good in your clothes, because if you don’t, you’ll always end up in your old sweatshirt. So I try to do that and also make you feel cool.”

Like most designers, Marant was conflicted about celebrating an anniversary, and she isn’t sure if she will continue to have more parties as the year goes on or not. “I didn’t want to think about it,” she said. “I don’t want to rest on it.”