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Aug 27, 2026 3:12pm PT
Jemima Kirke on Her Marc Jacobs Campaign, Fashion Week Chaos and Why Jessa’s Style in ‘Girls’ ‘Doesn’t Appeal’ to Her
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Marc Jacobs is going cinematic this fall.
For its Fall 2026 campaign, the fashion house enlisted Jemima Kirke and Rowan Blanchard to star in “The Swap,” a scripted micro-drama directed by Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder that turns an accidental handbag mix-up into a chase across New York City. Playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris also makes a cameo.
The project is the latest installment of “Question Marc,” Jacobs’ ongoing storytelling series designed to blur the lines between fashion and entertainment. It follows April’s “The Scene,” a Manhattan-set short written by and starring Rachel Sennott.
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“The Swap” picks up moments after a Marc Jacobs runway show, where Kirke and Blanchard — seated near each other and carrying identical Scene Bags — accidentally leave with each other’s belongings. The mistake sends the two actresses on intersecting journeys through New York as they rifle through the bags and begin piecing together imagined versions of their respective owners.
“I’ve always carried the same things with me,” Kirke tells Variety. “What’s changed is that I no longer need most of this stuff. Other than lipstick and candy. There’s nothing that my phone can’t handle, but I do it anyway out of habit and ritual.”
Her usual inventory includes a notebook, plenty of pens, a calendar book, lipstick, a book, hand cream, keys, a “massive wallet” and candy.
That consistency doesn’t extend to Jessa’s wardrobe. Asked whether she ever took style inspiration from her “Girls” character — whose bohemian, vintage-heavy looks became one of the show’s sartorial signatures — Kirke is unequivocal.
“No, not at all,” she says. “Jessa’s look doesn’t appeal to me personally.”
Her real-life Fashion Week experiences, however, could easily have been pulled from one of the show’s more chaotic episodes.
Kirke recalls being in Paris around 2014 for a Chanel fall show. “I wasn’t ‘a model’ per se although still modeling the latest fashions as part of the performance,” she says. “My cousin and I had gone to a party the night before and had helped ourselves to a drink from someone else’s table. Maybe more than one. The people whose table it was caught us I guess and we got in a fight. One of them got dirty and came at me with a broken bottle.
“They were only able to make a scratch, but it was significant enough to get them kicked out,” she adds. “Then we took their table and their booze.”
Kirke’s latest campaign arrives as fashion houses are increasingly pushing into original entertainment, tapping actors, writers and directors for short films, episodic social series and narrative projects that can live independently from the clothes they are selling. Additional installments of “The Swap” are expected to roll out across Marc Jacobs’ social channels throughout the fall, with the Fall 2026 collection available to shop online now.
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