Juergen Teller’s Marc Jacobs Ads Are My Fashion Origin Story

Fashion began, for me, as a bribe: When stay-at-home dad had errands to run, he would entice me to come along with the promise of a magazine from the grocery store. At first, I was fixated on the teeny-boppers of the publishing world—the J-14s and Tiger Beats—but in time, inspired by my steady culture diet of Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model, I became a religious Teen Vogue subscriber.

Every month, like clockwork, I would tear through my issue until I came across Juergen Teller’s Marc Jacobs advertisements. In one portrait, a model with frizzy red locks pinned back by an enormous floral hairpiece hid her eyes behind a pair of equally large glasses. Another stood atop a crate of oranges, holding her striped dress out wide. I especially loved the ads for Jacobs’s fragrance, Daisy, and their pastoral scenes: the grinning model reclining in a field of tall grass, dressed in a white lace bralette and panties, or the grungy blonde posing on horseback, cradling a bottle of Daisy Eau So Fresh.

Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau So Fresh, 2010© Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved

Each of Teller’s artfully overexposed photographs told the story of another time or locale—outfitted to perfection by Jacobs, of course. I was particularly taken with his spring 2011 collection, a 1970s-inspired romp through Cannes in shades of ochre, raspberry, and orchid. While I hated to desecrate my magazines with scissors, the thought of those beloved ads landing in the recycling bin (or, more accurately, living under my bed), never to see the light of day again, was just as upsetting—so I painstakingly extracted the pages from the spine, taping them to my closet wall so that I could look at them every day. They stayed there until they were sunbleached.

Jacobs’s Teller images introduced a generation of young people to fashion. When I joined Tumblr in my adolescence, I was delighted to find a treasure trove of other photographs that predated my Teen Vogue subscription: a precocious Dakota Fanning gazing knowingly at the camera; Jamie Bochert balancing a handbag on the sole of her platform sandal; Victoria Beckham’s legs emerging from an oversized shopping bag.

Jamie Bochert, Marc Jacobs Spring Summer 2010 campaign, 2009© Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved

Dakota Fanning, No.2, Marc Jacobs Campaign Spring Summer 2007, Los Angeles, 2006© Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved

Self Portrait with Charlotte Rampling, No.1, Marc Jacobs Campaign Spring Summer 2004, Paris 2003© Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved