Marc Jacobs lost a close friend, David Rivers, and watched New York’s fashion world freeze in the days after the September 11 attacks. For Jacobs, the moment that anchors those memories is the spring 2002 show staged the evening of Monday, September 10 on Pier 54, the clear plastic tent giving an unobstructed view of the Twin Towers.
The Story in Pictures
He remembers the show almost being called off because of heavy rain and wind, but that the presentation proceeded and was followed by an after‑party held on the pier to launch a fragrance. Late in the night Jacobs recalls a guest, Ricky Vider Rivers, asking, “Where’s David? Have you seen David?” He only later learned that David Rivers, a writer for the Financial Times, had been in the World Trade Center that morning and was missing.
Jacobs woke the next day at the Mercer Hotel where his Marc by Marc Jacobs runway event had been scheduled. He called the desk and was told planes had struck the towers. Looking out his window he saw columns of smoke and blackness, and he said he did not at first understand the scale and horror of what had happened. Richard Buckley, Tom Ford’s husband, informed Jacobs that David was unaccounted for and that Ricky was devastated. Jacobs went to sit with her.
He describes a short period when much of the industry was immobilised, with editors and other fashion figures stranded at the Mercer trying to arrange travel home even as all flights were canceled. The images of missing people posted around the city, and conversations about the attacks, stayed with him more clearly than the return to routine. “When I think about September 11, I remember walking around the city,” he said.
Even so, some professional rituals resumed quickly. Jacobs was photographed by Irving Penn for Vogue within days; when he expected the shoot to be called off he was told, “No, no. Mr. Penn works every day.” He later went back to work in Paris and staged a Louis Vuitton show, though Jacobs says he cannot now recall which exact collection the schedule referenced without checking. He does remember details from that season, like Julie Verhoeven’s small animal‑creature bags and patchwork pieces.
The fashion community continues to cite the Pier 54 presentation and its after‑party as a reference point for how the industry experienced September 11. For Jacobs, the lasting images are personal: Ricky Vider Rivers in shock, the photographs of those who never returned, and walking through a city where ordinary commerce and conversation had been suspended by grief.
