Fashion Dynamo Marc Jacobs Sells Stylish Manhattan Townhouse

One of fashion’s most compelling and enduring designers, Marc Jacobs, has sold his casually glamorous townhouse at the Superior Ink complex in New York City’s West Village for $10.5 million. The abnormally talented and famously flamboyant former creative director of Louis Vuitton, who now oversees his own, eponymous label, first listed the handsome residence with Sotheby’s Int’l Realty almost a year ago, shortly after he married high-end candlemaker Char Defrancesco in a ceremony attended by scores of supermodels and celebs.

By the end of the year, the entirely too optimistic original price tag of nearly $15 million had dropped to $14.5 million, and not too long after the first of the year the listing was taken over by “Million Dollar Listing New York” star Ryan Serhant and Donna Strugatz, both of Nestseekers, who re-listed the property with a hugely reduced price of $12 million. As was first noted by the property gossips at The Real Deal , the townhouse was almost immediately put into contract but, unfortunately for the sartorial trailblazer’s designer pocketbook, the $10.5 million sale price is only ever so slightly above the $10.495 million he paid for the swank residence about 11 years ago. The as-yet unrevealed buyer’s identity is shielded behind a generically named trust.

The elevator-serviced, five-plus floor townhouse measures in at a comfortably commodious but far short of humongous 4,796 square feet, and floor plans included with marketing materials show there are three ample bedrooms, plus a small study or fourth bedroom, and a total of three full and two half bathrooms. The Superior Ink complex, which includes a 17-story tower and seven adjoining townhouses, was designed by esteemed architect Robert A.M. Stern , while the townhouse’s interiors were customized by architect Andre Tchelistcheff and stylishly dressed for Jacob with the assistance of three top-shelf designers, Thad Hayes , Jon Gachot and Paul Fortune , who did the place up in a decidedly rarefied and impeccably tailored yet unquestionably comfortable fashion with pricy pedigreed furnishings and a museum-quality art collection, much of which was sold off in a series of auctions at Sotheby’s in 2019 and 2020.

The parlor floor includes a 23-foot-wide entrance gallery, a sleek and expensively outfitted if not particularly large galley kitchen and a 400-plus-square-foot combination living and dining room. The ceiling shimmers with silver leafing, the elegantly simple fireplace sits between gigantic mirrored wall panels and a trio of nearly floor-to-ceiling French doors open to a supermodel slender balcony with corkscrew stairs down to the backyard. Downstairs, there’s a second, under-the-stoop entry, a second high-end and also quite compact and unfortunately windowless kitchen and an elegantly proportioned lounge plenty large enough to accommodate two commodious seating areas. A fireplace set into lustrous, smooth wood paneling adds minimalist warmth, and a full wall of windows connects the room to the backyard.

Comprising the entire third floor, the master suite offers a handful of custom-fitted closets and a dressing room, as well as a lavish compartmentalized bathroom, while two more top-floor bedrooms each have a deluxe private bathroom. The finished basement contains a spacious laundry room as well as extensive storage space that includes plenty of room to store out of season clothes in a cedar-lined walk-in closet. Roughly 1,400 square feet of outdoor space includes the serene, courtyard-sized backyard and a landscaped rooftop terrace with outdoor kitchen and trellis-shaded dining area.

According to a 2019 report in The Wall Street Journal , Jacobs plans to downsize in Manhattan and split his time between the city and the tony suburb of Rye, where last year, just days after they tied the knot, he and Defrancesco dropped almost $9.2 million on a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residence.