Marc Jacobs wows New York Fashion week

Marc Jacobs (pictured in kilt) has been welcomed in from the cold by the fashion industry after firing up New York Fashion Week with two consecutive shows. He received a rapturous reception for his Marc Jacobs show on Monday night and served up another medley of ruffled mini-skirts, babydoll dresses and playsuits for his diffusion line Marc by Marc Jacobs on Tuesday afternoon.

America's best-known and most influential designer - he is also creative director of French label Louis Vuitton - had a disastrous 2007, when he went into rehab for the second time after turning up three hours late for a dress rehearsal for a show in London. His Louis Vuitton show last year in New York was also two hours late; Jacobs was reported to have been drinking in the Mercer Hotel. Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, decried the show as derivative and announced that she never wanted to see a Marc Jacobs show again. "A bad, sad show from Marc Jacobs, running two hours late, high on hype and low on delivery, symbolised everything that is wrong with current fashion," she wrote at the time.

By contrast, Jacobs's show on Monday "had the audience on the edge of their seats", wrote Jess Cartner-Morley in the Guardian. "His physical transformation has been almost chilling," she noted. "The overweight, spectacle-wearing geek who used to shuffle onto the catwalk in an old sweatshirt, hiding behind mousy lank hair, has been replaced by a gym-honed, diamond-studded, caramel-tanned, orthodontically perfect hunk."

Among Monday's crowd were Jennifer Lopez, Winona Ryder, Helena Christiansen and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. In the front row of Jacobs's second show yesterday were influential stylist Rachel Zoe and singer Kelly Osbourne. "Jacobs... is the one all the stores look to, to set the style of the season; with this collection he played an absolute blinder," wrote Hilary Alexander the Daily Telegraph.

Jacobs has even won back the approval of Suzy Menkes. "[Jacobs] showed himself in this spring/summer 2009 presentation to be in a class of his own," she wrote, hailing Monday's show as "exceptional".