From 1987 to 1995, Jacobs was the Editor in chief of Stagebill, the national performing arts program magazine whose constituents included Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Theater, and orchestras and opera companies around the country. During the late nineties, Jacobs wrote fashion criticism for both Modern Review and The New Republic. She collaborated with the incomparable fashion designer Geoffrey Beene on Beauty and the Beene (Abrams Books, 1999) and edited his last book, Beene by Beene (The Vendome Press, 2005).

Jacobs began writing dance criticism in Chicago at the Chicago Reader. She has written about dance for The Atlantic Monthly, and held dance critic posts at The Boston Phoenix and The New Leader. Since 1994, Jacobs has been the dance critic at The New Criterion. In 2006 a collection of her New Criterion essays was published by Dance & Movement Press: Landscape with Moving Figures, A Decade on Dance. She also contributes to Ballet Review and Opera News.

Jacobs has been a staff Writer at Vanity Fair since 1995 where she has written award-winning pieces on design, fashion, and the performing arts. She has profiled the mid-century American designers Norman Norell, Charles James, Adrian, and Main Bocher, and has made a specialty of writing about iconic American women, including Emily Post, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lilly Pulitzer, Suzy Parker and Julia Child.

She is a member of The Linnaean Society of New York, and a co-tender in the Riverside Park Bird Sanctuary. She is married to the Writer James Wolcott, and lives on New York’s Upper West Side.