It was a fairy-tale wedding with an unconventional cast: Marc Jacobs, the New York designer, and his betrothed, Charly “Char” Defrancesco, a modern-day chandler with the build of a modern-day goliath, danced the night away in the shadow of a cake taller than either. Seven hundred friends and family attended, including a few crashers (not us!) and enough famous fairy godmothers to stock a Disney studio for the next hundred years: Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Bette Midler, Anna Wintour and Lil’ Kim.
On Saturday night, behind the swaying metal curtains of the Grill and the Pool (née the Four Seasons), Philip Johnson’s modernist masterpiece on East 52nd Street, the guests descended. They had come from all over (people in the industry joked about “fashion buses” arriving for the weekend), super-fit per usual, but bloated with anticipation.
Bryanboy, a.k.a. Bryan Grey Yambao, the blogger-turned-fashion influencer whose early adoration of the Marc Jacobs label led Mr. Jacobs to name a bag in his honor, flew from Sweden to attend.
“There was this expectation that it was going to be the wedding of the century,” he said. “And it was.”
A slight hyperbole, perhaps, but fashion is not known for its moderate statements. Neither is Mr. Jacobs. Since his enfant terrible debut in 1984, Mr. Jacobs has been a proponent of more, more, more: more frills and fabulosity (as guests wearing the enormous concoctions from his recent runway shows could attest), more radical honesty (as anyone who can remember the tabloid high jinks around his slips and sexcapades) and more good-natured shrugging about both.
Mr. Jacobs, who turns 56 on April 9, may be showing signs of settling down in the good old-fashioned newlywed tradition — he and Mr. Defrancesco, 37, will be decamping, at least part time, to the suburbs, more specifically to a 1955 Frank Lloyd Wright house in Rye, N.Y., where the actual wedding ceremony was held for a much smaller group of 40 intimates on Friday — but pomp and circumstance still have a place in his heart.
How else to explain the sisters Hadid and the drag queens Miss Fame and Manila Luzon, Rita Ora and Kaia Gerber, Justin Vivian Bond and night-life queen Susanne Bartsch, all a-shimmy? Even Phoebe Philo, the rarely glimpsed, much-lauded former designer of Céline, was there, all smiles. (This isn’t even to mention Mr. Jacobs’s proposal a year ago, delivered with a flash mob in a Chipotle.) No seated dinner, no rubber chicken: just passed sliders and caviar, plus pasta for carbo-loading.
“In my darkest, and loneliest moment you came into my life like some giant happy baby, and made me laugh and smile,” Mr. Jacobs said to Mr. Defrancesco in a video of the ceremony that was played during the party. “What you have given me that I’ve never had before is the dream of a happy forever. And I promise you I will never, ever float away.” (The party favors would include oversized hoodies with pairs of embroidered otters over the words “Don’t Float Away.”)
“I was so amazed and am so humbled that such a remarkable and brilliant man would want to love and be with just a regular guy like me,” said Mr. Defrancesco, who met Mr. Jacobs at a party in 2015 after working as a retailer, a bartender, a closet organizer and an interior designer. “I vow to try my best to make you smile every day.”
The grooms wore the best of Savile Row: Mr. Jacobs in a suit by Huntsman, his usual tailor, and Mr. Defrancesco in a green velvet smoking jacket by the same. For Mr. Jacobs, custom Gucci high-heeled boots; for Mr. Defrancesco, custom Christian Louboutin sneakers. Mr. Jacobs’s wedding band was Cartier and Mr. Defrancesco’s was from Material Good. Each wore a diamond and onyx penguin pin to symbolize fidelity, a gift from the Prada and Miu Miu designer Fabio Zambernardi: “Penguins have only one partner and mate for life,” Mr. Jacobs wrote on Instagram.
Farewell, then, swinging bachelors of Manhattan! At the end of the night, the couple sped off in a 1962 black and silver Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Valeriya Safronova is a reporter for the Style section. She is based in New York. @vsaffron
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