Buoyant ­yet melancholy. Glorious but subdued. Comforting ­but disquieting. If you thought the exact mood of Marc Jacobs’s Fall 2014 show at the 69th Regiment Armory on New York City’s Lexington Avenue was hard to pin down, congratulations: You hit the nail on the head.

The clearest sign of the confusion was the soundtrack: Jessica Lange (with whom Jacobs is working on a new project) somberly intoning the chipper lyrics of “Happy Days Are Here Again” over the hauntingly futuristic score from Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris.

Runway== MARC JACOBS Fall 2014 Fashion Show - Front Row & Backstage== NY State Armory, NYC== February 13, 2014== ©Patrick McMullan== Photo - Nicholas Hunt /PatrickMcMullan.com== Always a highlight of New York Fashion Week, the scene at Marc Jacobs was subdued yet also buoyant, thanks to the inventive sets. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

But the set, which was striking even by Marc Jacobs’s dramatic standards, offered a mixed message as well: some 500 tufted, battleship-gray, extra-large, cloud-shaped pillows were suspended by cables from the armory’s 110-foot ceiling to a low-low stratus of roughly eight feet—just close enough to the ground for the taller audience members to reach up and touch.

“We wanted them to be gray, ­not happy white clouds,” said set designer Stefan Beckman, who met with Jacobs to discuss ideas only a couple of weeks before the show. Beckman quickly worked up several options for the clouds, including making large plywood mobiles, before settling on gray theatrical-use spandex sewn into different shapes and spray-filled with foam insulation. (All 500 pillows were made in one weekend at a factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.)

Runway== MARC JACOBS Fall 2014 Fashion Show== NY State Armory, NYC== February 13, 2014== ©Patrick McMullan== Photo - Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com== The clothes were mostly pastels, a departure from Jacobs’ recent collections, but one that blended beautifully with the setting. Photo: Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com

The clothes were a sharp contrast to the colorful, reality-based clashes seen at Jacob’s spring show, but still surreally Jacobean: harmoniously styled looks in pale neutrals and pastels and a kind of homebody luxury perfect for getting snowed in. Had the recent winter weather influenced Jacobs’s mood?

After the show, Jacobs said he was after a kind of Magic Mountain effect, imagining the welter of emotions one might experience cloistered away in a spa or clinic. “Serenity, insanity, all of that,” he said. “Within the comfort there has to be a lot of discomfort.” If nothing else, it was a masterful way of making inner conflict look seductive.

Runway== MARC JACOBS Fall 2014 Fashion Show - Front Row & Backstage== NY State Armory, NYC== February 13, 2014== ©Patrick McMullan== Photo - Nicholas Hunt /PatrickMcMullan.com== Seen from the side, the typical Fashion Week melange of editors, photographers, and models feels more mellow under Stefan Beckman’s fluffy clouds. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

“I had a conversation with Marc about the collection a couple weeks ago,” said Jacobs’s longtime business partner, Robert Duffy. “He was saying, ‘I don’t know, I feel happy one day, then sad, then dark, then light.’ To me, the set completely describes his mood lately.”

The takeaway from the show? The clothes were gorgeous, full of Jacobs’s always intriguing ideas. And everyone wanted one of those clouds.