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WWD editor Bridget Foley conducted a very excellent interview with designer Marc Jacobs ahead of his being honored with a CFDA lifetime achievement award next Monday. We love it when major fashion players talk honestly and openly about their foibles and past struggles. Like when Jacobs talks to Foley about being fired from Perry Ellis:
B.F.: What was the hardest time you and Robert ever went through?Foley also asked Jacobs about something we've all been thinking about in the backs of our minds—what's up with Justin Bieber knocking off Jacobs' Lola perfume bottle?M.J.: I think the hardest was when we were fired from Perry Ellis, because we’d had several failures: the Kashiyama thing went wrong, the Seventh Avenue Sketchbook thing went bankrupt, all of these things. At a certain point you think we want to keep going but have we just used up all of our get out of jail free cards? How much can we fight?
B.F.: About fragrance branding, have you seen the Justin Bieber fragrance bottle?· Bridget Foley's Diary: Q&A With Marc Jacobs [WWD]M.J.: Yes.
B.F.: Does it remind you of anything?
M.J.: Yep, yep. We just had a conversation about it. Coty said, “Do we sue them?” and I said, “You know what? Let everyone else say what they want.” I received Google [Alerts] about people saying it was derivative. We’re not going to do anything about it.
B.F.: That bottle is very similar to your Lola.
M.J.: But you know, I look around the room and I look at the work we’ve done and a quote I always bastardize but I really believe in, is something Chanel said: “He who insists on his own creativity has no memory.”