For Vogue’s December issue, which Jacobs guest-edited, he commissioned a single portrait of his house, taken by photographer Gregory Crewdson. In it, the fashion designer sits in the home’s great room, a muscular stone pillar contrasting against delicate art glass windows behind him. Outside, fog marches from the river across the manicured lawn, on which Defrancesco stands wrapped in a blanket.
Though Jacobs helmed the edition, Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor, shared with The New York Times that she championed the home’s inclusion in the glossy pages. “I kept saying, ‘Let’s do the house, let’s do the house,’” she recalled, later adding that the portrait “was amazing. It did make me think we could take more risks.”
In a behind-the-scenes video, Jacobs said that he didn’t want the feature to be about decoration, but rather his “comfort at home.” And though the fashion designer kept the majority of the residence private, the single image offers subtle clues about his reverence for the architect and period appreciation. The Japanese screen recalls Wright’s admiration for the handicraft of the country (Taliesin, Wright’s midwestern estate, is decorated with a number of Japanese prints); while the Alberto Giacometti lamp firmly roots the home in 20th-century minimalism and functionalism.
However, this doesn’t mean the couple didn’t also make it theirs. According to the Vogue essay, they expanded the kitchen to make it more user-friendly and added smart technology, like phone-controlled lights. The basement, which Jacobs describes as “slightly over the top” perhaps exemplifies the couple’s vibrant interests and personalities best. The “lower level,” as Wright called it, is “now a full-time laundromat, infrared spa, part-time pharmacy, hair salon equipped with a barber chair and rinse sink, nail salon (for my current fixation), gift-wrapping station, office supply center, and the room with the only properly proportioned wooden closets in the entire house for a fashion-obsessed couple.”
Though Jacobs said that the home isn’t done yet, it has been a source of peace for the designer since moving in. “Nothing could take away from my new early mornings with the most beautiful, enigmatic sunrises and a stillness I had never experienced in my life,” he wrote.
