Isabel Marant

[3] She was raised in the Hauts-de-Seine suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, refusing to wear dresses and carrying alternative outfits to school in plastic bags.

[4] She pursued her studies at the Saint-James high school in Neuilly, then at HEC, before quickly changing direction following the success of the brand "Aller Simple," which she co-founded in 1984 with her friend Christophe Lemaire, a young student (later artistic director of Lacoste and Hermès).

Later she also collaborated with Bridget Yorke working on two collections and assisted art director Marc Ascoli on different projects for Chloé, Martine Sitbon, and Yohji Yamamoto.

[6] The same year she started collaborating with French mail catalogue brand La Redoute creating guest collections for it, and launched a new line in Japan called I*M.[1] In 1999 Marant debuted a diffusion line, Étoile by Isabel Marant, at the Paris ready-to-wear shows, and the next year introduced the first full Étoile collection.

In 2020, the label signed a 10-year licensing agreement with Safilo for the design, production and global distribution of sunglasses and optical frames.

[11] In 2021, the brand launched Isabel Marant Vintage, a secondhand site that takes donations of used clothing from the label in exchange for vouchers.

[12] As of 2019, the company has 13 shops worldwide in cities such as Paris, Rome, New York,[13] Tokyo,[14] Hong Kong, Seoul, Los Angeles, Beijing, Madrid, Beirut, and London[15] and has retailers in more than 35 countries.

[4] Marant collections are based around several simple pieces such as tight and straight trousers; soft and unstructured shirts and blouses; as well as tailored jackets and coats.

Marant's typical outfit allows the wearer to be between boho and rock chic with a loose blouse and a pair of cropped leather trousers.

[6] Marant designed hidden heel high-top sneakers that lengthen legs and make feet look tiny remaining comfortable at the same time.

Marant's uncredited appropriation of the designs, virtually stitch-for-stitch, aroused the anger of the Mixe people for whom the handmade manufacture of the shirts, and their sale, is an important economic and cultural factor.

The plagiarism issue continued to dog Marant, being taken up by the UK Guardian newspaper in June 2015 by journalist Naomi Larsson, who reported that yet another design company named Antik Batik had claimed copyright on the disputed garment, and quoted Marant's office as admitting the design was from Tlahuitoltepec as a defence against the claim.