In This Digital Innovator’s Closet, You’ll Find Rick Owens, Issey Miyake & High School Band Jackets

”I've never met a leather jacket I didn’t like,” Marc Duron tells me from inside his L.A. home. It’s a phrase he must enjoy—the words “sequins,” “hats,” and “pleats” each claimed the subject line of that expression at one point or another throughout our hour-long conversation. Obviously, Duron is not a discriminating collector. His closet houses everything from a high school band jacket to a pleated skirt to an army surplus jumpsuit. The one thing he doesn’t care much for? Accessories. “Shoes have never really spoken to me the way other articles of clothing do. I don't have a ton of bags either,” he muses. “For me, it's always about the jacket, the shirt, the pants.”

Compared to his outlandish—and at times unpredictable—aesthetic, his footwear skews surprisingly functional, at least in terms of approach. Through clothing, teenage Duron tried on Western wear, hippie-dom, then more obscure aesthetic movements—"I went through this phase where I got really inspired by nomadic tribes of subarctic Siberia”—for size. The shoes, however, remained the same: a pair of 12-inch platform sneakers. Elevated by a mohawk, flat-ironed in place, the budding sartorialist found his first aesthetic love in the post-punk movement. Glam rock icons (Bowie, Blondie, Freddie Mercury) stole his heart and informed his (thrift) shopping habits. “I remember buying these high-waisted pants I loved, but, it was way back, early 2000s, when low rise was the thing,” Duron recounts. “I cut out the part between the actual waistband and where the bottom of the trouser began and safety-pinned it all together to make them low rise.” Growing up in Arizona, Mexico City, and Madrid, the Mexican, queer youth found solace in experimentation, dabbling in gay clubs as a DJ wearing whatever he was into that week. Then, he moved to New York.

“It's like when Dorothy goes to Oz and she all of a sudden lands in Munchkin land and everything's in technicolor,” he reminisces. “I just started to wear whatever the fuck I wanted and I didn't care what people thought or said.” That confidence landed him a job as an assistant to a publicist and, as these fields often work, new opportunities sprung from old. “My whole career path, one door certainly led to another but it wasn't that a door closed and a window opened,” Duron explains. “It was like a shotgun apartment.” He worked with influencers before we knew them as influencers—"we used to call them VIPs”—alongside a client roster including Jaguar Land Rover, MoMa, SoHo House, American Express, AirBnB, and more. He helped transition Playboy into a new, more inclusive era—and has the merch to prove it—putting Bretman Rock on the cover and introducing them to blockchain and the metaverse. Today, he serves as Great Bowery’s Head of Innovation in addition to freelancing as a creative director, marketer, and curator. His latest focus? Digital art.

“I get asked about the viability of NFTs and digital art and all of these things a lot,” Duron explains. He’s admittedly only been in the tech space for a few years. “But the reality of digital art, for me, there has to be something collectible and real about it; NFTs you collect just as you would a physical item.” An amateur photographer since childhood, Duron points to the thousands of mood board-like imagery in his Instagram saved folders in tandem with the row of ostentatious jackets in his wardrobe. “You go in your closet to take out a piece of clothing that you love or you change one picture for another, digital art takes [that idea] a step further. You collect things that you love, and that could be digital or it could be physical,” he says matter-of-factly, “but the physical manifestations of the things you love are just easier to describe sometimes.”

Today, the tangible component of his collector’s habit manifests in a closet full of glittering bomber jackets, fringed suede, and tailored suits passed down from his stylish grandparents (more on that later). Think: embroidered silk sets and garb embroidered with tongue-in-cheek slogans like “Jesus Saves, I Spend”—"a kind of life motto,” he jokes. There’s a hat on the wall for every trip he’s ever taken, a jacket for almost every memory. All grown up, Duron has since traded the 12-inch platform sneakers for lug sole boots but the gist remains the same. And everything, along with dogs Charlie and Henry, is housed in a loudly-decorated home that once belonged to Chaka Khan.