Of Course Marc Jacobs Made a T-Shirt From that Graffiti Incident

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Marc Jacobs has decided to make a $689 T-shirt depicting the graffiti incident at his Soho store. In case you haven't been following this caper, here's the rundown. On Tuesday, the word "art" was painted on the facade of the Marc Jacobs store on Mercer Street. The workers who were cleaning up said that someone had done it as a joke. We suspected that someone was French graffiti artist Kidult, who's also left his markings on the Céline store in Paris, and it turned out we were right.

Naturally, Marc Jacobs started tweeting things like "Art Jacobs @ Marc Jacobs Collection," and now the brand is selling a $689 t-shirt bearing a photo from the incident. The shirts are available in a very limited quantity at the Soho store only, and contrary to other reports, a sales associate told us that they're not signed by the artist. So, yea, it's 700 bucks for a screenprinted image on a pink T-shirt.

So is Kidult is seeing a profit, or is Marc Jacobs just taking advantage of the situation? Jeremiah's Vanishing New York isn't entirely convinced that the whole thing was a marketing stunt from the beginning. Included in his post is an excerpt from an interview with High Snobiety in which Kidult said, "At some point, all these shops have used graffiti culture as a commercial image, riding the trend without being a part in the least and for which the only point is to make some cash."

And nothing says "co-opting graffiti culture" like a $689 T-shirt bearing the image of a hot pink paint job.

Update: The Cut has pulled together some of Kidult's tweets from the past two days, and he seems displeased, to say the least, with Marc Jacobs.
· Marc Jacobs Attack T [Jeremiah's Vanishing New York]
· Marc Jacobs x Kidult ‘Art by Art Jacobs’ T-Shirt [High Snobiety]
· Look What Someone Graffitied on the Marc Jacobs Soho Store [Racked NY]