Marc Jacobs is known for using his local surroundings as inspirations for his collections. His AW17 collection took on the tone of the New York City hip hop culture. The collection explored how music has influenced street style over the years. To further explore his hip hop inspiration, Jacobs was keen to come up with an fresh way of presenting the collection. He hired on New York based film maker Tyler Mitchell and gave him free reign to create.

Mitchell was eager to make sure the cast was a diverse representation of people, he achieved this by hiring on friends, models and even recruiting New York locals. His aim was " “to show that they could all look amazing in the clothes no matter their physical differences.” Casting played an important role for this collection as Marc Jacobs had been previously criticized for his SS17 collection which featured a mostly white model cast wearing dreadlocks. This was a key composite for Mitchell; “I would be lying if I said his statements and the mistake of the runway collection two seasons ago didn’t initially worry me about a collaboration together. But I thought hard about things and the perspective I thought I could bring the to the image of Marc Jacobs.”

In addition to the photography, Mitchell directed a video for the project that was shot by Kyle Keese.

Mitchell hopes that this project will be the start of working with other fashion brands. "Being from Atlanta, high fashion isn’t something I would stereotypically be participating in,this is special. And I want this to be the start of further fashion collaborations.”