The Anna Weyant Vanity Fair cover debuts as the painted portrait of designer Marc Jacobs for the magazine’s 2026 Style issue.
The cover story, titled “Marc Jacobs Cannot Tell a Lie,” charts Jacobs’ four decades in fashion and the sale of Marc Jacobs International, his namesake label valued at $850 million, according to the magazine.
Weyant’s intimate likeness shows Jacobs facing the viewer against a dark ground with a composed expression. The work bears the artist’s Dutch Old Master inflection, with subtle flashes of flamboyance in details such as teal flower earrings, the ruffled collar of a Chanel tweed top, and salon hair clips. Absent those hallmarks, the no-nonsense framing would evoke a photo ID in its directness.
That unvarnished quality threads through the feature. “All I’ve ever been is a fashion victim … I don’t think of that as a bad thing,” Jacobs says in the piece. Model Kaia Gerber adds that “Marc has never really tried to be anyone other than himself.”
Jacobs and Weyant have collaborated before. He tapped her to paint Gerber in one of his Fall 2024 looks for a Vogue cover published that December. “I love Anna’s women, and I love the idea of Kaia seen by Anna,” he said at the time. For his September 2025 presentation at New York’s Academy Mansion, Weyant created The Dollhouse, an immersive set through which models walked in dollhouse-themed designs by Jacobs.
Weyant frequently returns to an uncanny dollhouse motif. Her figures, often young women, inhabit dreamlike scenes of what she has called low-stakes trauma, leavened by wit and moments of resilience that contrast with their porcelain-like fragility. Represented by Gagosian, she set an auction benchmark with Falling Woman (2020), which sold for $1.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2020.
Anna Weyant Vanity Fair cover and Jacobs’ industry commentary
The feature also captures Jacobs’ candid views on the business side of fashion. He offers sharp critiques of LVMH, which decided to sell his label, and voices concern about the more commercial orientation of the new owners, G-III Apparel Group in partnership with WHP Global. The magazine reports that G-III is known for operating licenses and carries “a less elegant connotation in the industry.” Jacobs also says, “LVMH has kept us and done the least possible they can in terms of growing our business,” while adding that he does not blame the group.
Speaking about his personal life, including regular visits to art galleries, Jacobs says he is energized by candor. “It excites me to be open, and it excites me to reveal things that somebody else would keep secret,” he says, adding, “I get a good feeling about being honest.”
Her figures, often young women, inhabit dreamlike scenes of what she has called low-stakes trauma, leavened by wit and moments of resilience that contrast with their porcelain-like fragility, echoing themes explored in ‘The Universe Breathes Us’ explores moons, tides and breath.