In 1970 at 30 years of age and a lifetime of unexpressed creativeness inside of her, Shanie learned to crochet. Four years later she took a bundle of original crochet designs to Woman's Day magazine. Her patterns would repeatedly appear in the magazine for more than a decade.
In 1979 some of those designs and their instructions were published in the Shanie Jacobs Crochet Book, which became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
In 1982, Shanie's ongoing, highly visible,
exclusive crocheted designs in Woman's Day were noticed by Cosmopolitan magazine
who asked Shanie to design "The Magical Mandala" T-shirt, which when appearing
in Cosmo was not only sexy, but summed up the soul-searching mood of the era.
Overnight, Jacobs was deluged with thousands of mail orders derived from the Magical Mandala feature. To fill these orders, Shanie set up shop in New York City's SoHo Art Colony, calling her boutique the Mandala Workshop, while still continuing to design and write instructions for Woman's Day.
In 1992 when wearing real fur (from skinned animals) was becoming less popular in America, Allure magazine commissioned Shanie to create a cropped tank in pure long-haired angora. Although Shanie never used angora yarn before, she began experimenting with different stitches and discovered that the lace stitch using angora photographed magnificently.
Immediately after this design appeared in Allure magazine, In Style, Mademoiselle, Glamour, New Woman, Essence, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Ski, McCalls, YM, Paper, Vibe, Elle, Seventeen, Ms. and People all commissioned Shanie to design angora wearables (as well as in other fibers) while continuing to create more designs for Allure...and the aesthetic appreciation of angora grew nationwide.
Shanie works closely, custom-making garments with each client, whether for a magazine shoot, a special occasion or just creating a client's fantasy and conducts a thriving mail-order service to this day.
Some of her private clients have included
Claudia Schiffer, Marla Maples, Helen Gurley Brown, Marlo Thomas, Christie
Brinkley and Madonna.