Marc Jacobs Fragrance

Marc Jacobs Fragrance is the perfume line of the American fashion house Marc Jacobs, founded in New York City by designer Marc Jacobs and his business partner Robert Duffy. The fragrances are not made by the fashion house itself but produced under a long-running licence by the beauty group Coty. Best known for Daisy, launched in 2007, the line sits in the prestige segment of designer perfume and is sold internationally.

The brand is active. In May 2026, its parent LVMH announced a definitive agreement to sell the Marc Jacobs label to the American brand-management firm WHP Global, with Marc Jacobs himself staying on as founder and creative director; the perfume and cosmetics licence remains with Coty [6].

Marc Jacobs was born in New York City in 1963 and graduated from Parsons School of Design, where, according to the company, he was the youngest designer ever to receive the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent [1]. After presenting a much-discussed grunge collection for Perry Ellis in 1992, he debuted his own label collection in April 1994.

The company's founding date is recorded differently across sources. Coty and the company itself give 1984 as the founding year of Marc Jacobs International, the business Jacobs built with Robert Duffy [4]. Wikipedia instead dates the eponymous Marc Jacobs label to 1986, when it was established with backing from Onward Kashiyama [2]. The two figures describe related but distinct events — the formation of the company versus the establishment of the label — and the first eponymous runway collection followed in 1994, according to the company [1].

LVMH acquired a majority stake in Marc Jacobs in 1997, the same year Jacobs became creative director of Louis Vuitton, a role he held for sixteen years [6]. LVMH remained the controlling owner for nearly three decades.

Under the May 2026 agreement, WHP Global is forming an equally owned joint venture with the apparel group G-III, which is investing about 500 million US dollars and is set to operate parts of the direct-to-consumer and wholesale business [7]. Across the change of ownership, the fragrance and cosmetics licence continues to be managed by Coty.

The perfumes have been produced under licence by Coty for many years. Coty has distributed Marc Jacobs fragrances since the mid-2000s — sources do not agree on an exact start year — and in 2019 Coty described the partnership as spanning "over ten years" when the two companies renewed their long-term fragrance licence [4]. In 2023, Marc Jacobs International and Coty expanded the arrangement to bring the Marc Jacobs Beauty makeup line into Coty's portfolio, reviving a cosmetics range that had originally launched in 2013 and ended a separate partnership in late 2021 [5].

Marc Jacobs describes itself as a New York brand built on "playful defiance, culture-defining creativity and fearless self-expression" [1]. The company frames its fragrances as an extension of that sensibility. The perfumes are positioned in the prestige tier and marketed heavily toward younger women, and their advertising has drawn on a youthful, nostalgic and whimsical aesthetic; Wikipedia notes that the contemporary marketing of Daisy reflects the cottagecore trend.

The line's defining product is Daisy, released in 2007 as an eau de toilette and created with the Spanish perfumer Alberto Morillas of Firmenich [3]. Marie Claire UK calls it a classic and Marc Jacobs's bestselling fragrance, with a flower-topped bottle lid the magazine describes as synonymous with the fashion label [8]. Daisy has expanded into a large family of flankers, including Eau So Fresh, Daisy Dream, Daisy Love and Daisy Sunshine, and its advertising campaigns have featured models such as Kaia Gerber.

Two later pillars round out the core range. Decadence, launched in 2015, won the Fragrance Foundation's 2016 Packaging of the Year award in the women's category [9]. Perfect, launched in 2020, won the Fragrance Foundation's 2021 Packaging of the Year award; according to the foundation it was the biggest prestige fragrance launch across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia that year [10].

Beyond the packaging awards for Decadence and Perfect, Daisy has been the readers' choice in Allure's Best of Beauty awards since 2018, and the Coty renewal release noted that the Daisy franchise was the fastest-growing among the top ten US women's fragrances in 2018.

The brand is fully active and trading globally. Its ownership is in transition: the May 2026 agreement moves the Marc Jacobs label from LVMH to WHP Global and G-III, with the deal expected to close pending regulatory approval, while fragrance and beauty remain licensed to Coty and Marc Jacobs continues as founder and creative director [7].