[7] While at Parsons in 1984, he won the Perry Ellis & Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award, and Design Student of the Year.

In the same year, he designed a "grunge" collection for Perry Ellis, which was critically well-received but its commercial failure led to his dismissal.

[21] Jacobs collaborated with many popular artists for his Louis Vuitton collections, including Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Kanye West.

[32] In the course of the Mercedes-Benz Berlin Fashion Week in July 2011, Jacobs was the patron of the young talent award "Designer for Tomorrow by Peek & Cloppenburg".

[34] According to The Daily Telegraph, Jacobs "firmly laid to rest rumours that he was to move to Christian Dior" in January 2012,[35] but rumors prevailed.

[36] Jacobs made his feature film acting debut in Disconnect (2012), directed by Henry-Alex Rubin and starring Jason Bateman, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgård and Andrea Riseborough.

[37] His character, Harvey, runs a house of teenage Internet porn performers, which is being investigated by a TV reporter, played by Riseborough.

[43] Previously, Jacobs had dressed and interviewed Lange for Love Magazine's fifth anniversary issue, and had her provide a spoken-word version of "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the soundtrack for his Autumn/Winter 2014 show.

[43] Jacobs decided to rely on social media to cast models for Marc by Marc Jacobs's Autumn/Winter 2014 campaign, and with its success did so again for Spring/Summer 2015 with photographer David Sims, with models including Aaron Whitty, Abigail Lipp, Amy Woodman, Ana Viktoria, Dylan Stevens, Eb Eunbi, Lindsay Lurgin, MacKenzie Cockerill, Nadia Kishlan, and Toks Adewetan.

[44] In February 2018, LVMH confirmed that Baja East co-founder John Targon would join Marc Jacobs as "creative director of contemporary".

[46] In September 2020, Jacobs released Heaven, a polysexual line aimed at a younger audience while blurring gender boundaries.

All of the garments incorporated brand signatures to celebrate its history, while giving new context towards a newer, younger audience, catered to alternative style.

Models included Memphy, Amber Later, Iris Apatow, Mel Ottenberg, Goth Jafar, Anna Sui, Riley Hooker, Gabriette, Dean Kissick, and Richie Shazam.

[54] Guy Trebay, a critic for The New York Times, in response to Oscar de la Renta's comment that a coat designed by Jacobs closely resembled one that de la Renta had designed thirty years earlier, wrote that "unlike the many brand-name designers who promote the illusion that their output results from a single prodigious creativity, Mr. Jacobs makes no pretense that fashion emerges full blown from the head of one solitary genius".

In 2015, Jacobs launched a popular lifestyle campaign that featured artists, celebrities, and cultural icons such as Sofia Coppola, Cher, Willow Smith, Winona Ryder, Daisy Lowe, and Anthony Kiedis.

The Marc Jacobs Spring 2016 advertising campaign featured Lana Wachowski, Sandra Bernhard, Bette Midler, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Sky Ferreira, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Vincent Michaud,[57][58] Oli Burslem, Milk, and several runway models.

[59] Jacobs has an ongoing project entitled "Protect The Skin You're In", which has celebrities pose nude, with their breasts and frontal area covered, for T-shirts to raise awareness about melanoma; all sales benefit research at the NYU Langone Medical Center.

Some of the celebrities who have posed include Miley Cyrus, Eva Mendes, Kate Upton, Victoria Beckham, Heidi Klum, Hilary Swank, Cara Delevingne, Debbie McGee, and Naomi Campbell.