Isabel Marant

Isabel Marant (born 12 April 1967) is a French fashion designer, owner of the eponymous fashion brand. She won the Award de la Mode, the Whirlpool Award for best female designer (1998), Fashion Designer of the Year at British Glamour's Women of the Year Awards (2012). She was named Contemporary Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards in 2014. Her collaboration with H&M in 2013 was so successful that company's website crashed under the demand and the collection was sold out within 45 minutes. Celebrities wearing Marant's designs include Alexa Chung, Katie Holmes, Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, Kate Bosworth and Rachel Weisz. Her parents divorced when Marant was six and she lived with her father who had remarried. In 1982, she asked her father to buy her a sewing machine and she started making clothes out of discarded clothing and fabric, and very soon, her friends asked her to design clothing for them. In 1997 Marant won the Award de la Mode, and in 1998 – the Whirlpool Award for best female designer. The second shop was opened in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1999, followed by the third in the Marais in 2007, and the fourth in the 16th arrondissement in 2012. The line sold out in 45 minutes online and caused the retailer's website to crash. In her collaboration with H&M, Marant said, "The nice thing with H&M is they don't want to try to do a cheap version of your own collection… They really respect the DNA of designers."

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

As of 2019, the company has 13 shops worldwide in cities such as Paris, Rome, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Los Angeles, Beijing, Madrid, Beirut, and London and has retailers in more than 35 countries. Isabel Marant has announced the closure of its Tokyo Omotesando and Newman Shinjuku stores.

Style When Marant studied fashion at Studio Berçot, the director said “You shouldn't want others to wear things that you won't wear yourself”, and this phrase became her motto.

Recognition In 2012, Marant was awarded Fashion Designer of the Year at British Glamour Women of the Year Awards.

Controversies In 2008, Marant won a claim against French fashion chain Naf Naf that was ordered to pay her 75,000 Euros damages for copying a puff-sleeved dress from her autumn-winter 2006 collection. A Twitter storm followed under the hashtag #miBlusadeTlahui, which pointed out the uncanny similarity of some of Marant's recent designs to those of indigenous designers from Tlahuitoltepec, who have been designing and making their original hand-sewn shirts for over 600 years in the style of the Mixe indigenous people. 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. The Mixe people had received no communication of this acknowledgement, according to the report. In 2016, the community again demanded an apology from Marant and Antik Batik at a press conference in Mexico City.

Personal life Marant is married to designer Jérôme Dreyfuss. Their son, Tal, was born in 2003. The family lives in Belleville, Paris. They spend most of their weekends in a countryside cabin with no electricity or hot water in Fontainebleau, 50 km away from Paris.