In Coppola’s first-ever documentary feature, Marc by Sofia, the Oscar-winning director chronicles the designer’s storied career in the lead-up to the presentation of his spring 2024 collection.
“It’s a tricky thing, talking about the past,” Jacobs tells Vanity Fair. “I know about it, and there were some really beautiful moments and some memories that I hope I hang on to forever, but then you don’t want to get bogged down by it.
” But just like Jacobs himself, the film is about so much more than just clothes. With a blend of archival footage compiled by Coppola, featuring Jacobs as a student at the Parsons School of Design in the ’80s and grainy remnants of a bygone era of downtown New York, Coppola offers up a retrospective of her friend’s storied career and opens a window into his world of wonder and whimsy, something only a close friend could capture. “It was fun because it had a kind of looseness to kind of find my way, sort of like making a collage,” says Coppola, who published a retrospective of her own career in 2023. “I didn’t want to make a conventional TV documentary, with the talking heads, that felt academic. I wanted it to capture Marc’s work and his personality.” Jacobs and Coppola first met in 1992, when he showed his Perry Ellis grunge collection. It would become a defining moment in Jacobs’s career. That controversial fashion show gave way to both Jacobs’s eponymous-label career and a lifelong friendship and collaboration with Coppola. Jacobs, who was the subject of the 2007 documentary Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, directed by Loïc Prigent, was hesitant to go through the process again, and when he was approached to do another documentary, he made it clear to producers that he would only do it with Coppola. “I had faith and trust that if we did this together, there’d be something honest and genuine and kind of personal about it, rather than something that I was going to be stressed over or felt I had to control,” Jacobs says. But even Coppola had her own reservations: It was too much pressure, she thought, as she had never made a documentary film before. “But then it stayed in my mind, and I kept thinking, Oh, it’d be fun to put all the shows together. And I would have loved to see a documentary about Yves Saint Laurent made by one of his friends. So it was so fun to revisit his work and think about making something. I love doing something I’ve never done before. It’s just inspiring.” Thankfully, Jane Cha Cutler, one of the film’s producers, was persistent. “I think the film does justice to both Marc and Sofia’s ways of looking at the world,” she says. “They’ve had this real friendship and creative exchange, from carefree ’90s NYC times through to today…. I think the people whom this doc is for will eat it up.” Inside the A24 library at the studio’s New York City office, Jacobs and Coppola, at first glance and to the untrained fashion eye, seem like an unlikely pairing. Jacobs in his all-black ensemble, tight curls pinned back, gripping a large vape pen with jewel-encrusted nails that resemble sea glass; Coppola, poised in a powder blue cashmere sweater and a gold Cartier watch. But their friendship, which spans more than 30 years now, is bound by a shared creative ethos. With such a similar sensibility, would the two ever work on a narrative feature film together? As Jacobs puts it, “Never say never, right? Keep the doors open. Be flexible. Be curious.” This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Vanity Fair: Were there any topics that were off-limits? Marc Jacobs: No. I don’t think we even discussed that. Sofia Coppola: No, we didn’t! I just came to the office, and he was like, “Okay, what do you want to do? Whatever.” But I think there’s that taste trust too. When I work with Kirsten Dunst, I know she can try anything that’s not going to be cheesy. I’m probably going to like it. I think he knows my sensibility, that I’m not going to make something really heavy-handed. So there’s an easiness. Sofia, when you are in a room where the tensions can be high and it’s a fast-paced environment, how do you navigate that space as a filmmaker? And Marc, as the subject, how does it change things, knowing that you are being filmed? Coppola: You try to be as invisible as you can. But everyone in the studio, they know me and they’re welcoming, so I get to be part of the team. A lot of it was just me with one little camera, so it’s not like a big film crew. The first day I came with my brother , and he’s sitting on the floor filming Marc and he was like, “Get in the shot with Marc.” I wasn’t planning on being in it. It just had a looseness and personal home movie feeling. I wanted people to feel like they got to have a visit with Marc. Jacobs: What just came up for me was when we were talking about the tights and the color of the legs. If I were to overanalyze it, I would think, like, Oh God, how did I allow this kind of ridiculous conversation over the color of a nude tight? That was one of the best parts. I loved that. Jacobs: So that’s why I’m using it as an example. I think if I were to really think about it, if there were a storyboard and somebody said, “We want to do the filming of the tight selection,” I’d be like, “No, you’re not doing that.” But it’s really a good example of how not self-conscious we were. To be in that meeting and to do that, I mean, there was nothing I was trying to control or manipulate into looking more than or different. Coppola: It didn’t feel like you guys changed when I walked in. But that was fascinating, to see all the details and the 10 shades of beige nail polish. Jacobs: So none of that was manufactured. And nobody in that moment was performing or exaggerating. Coppola: I feel like you guys were in the zone, which was fun to see. Marc, having followed your career and having seen the documentary, I would consider you to be quite a forward-looking person. What was it like to have to step back and do a kind of retrospective of your own career at this point? Coppola: I do consider you to be a forward-looking person—or present, right? Jacobs: I try to be. It wasn’t intentional, but seeing the movie, I realized, through this last process of the last show, how inspired and how excited I was by the past and how it does come up for me repeatedly in whatever my present is. It was great to see them, especially the ’90s, like the X-Girl show. Coppola: I hadn’t thought about that time, so it was fun to revisit. Jacobs: It just took me back to that moment, how different life was then, and there were no smartphones. Coppola: It was just kind of looser and you’d run into people. Jacobs: Just being reminded of those memories feels kind of nice. Marc, there’s a point in the documentary where you talk about the Stephen Sprouse graffiti bags and joining Louis Vuitton. You say that the way you approached that job was to “disrespect” the thing. That made me think of how you two have a similar creative ethos. Setting period pieces to contemporary music. There’s something punk about both of those creative impulses. Coppola: I think you always connect with someone because you have a shared sensibility and that kind of punk approach. I think all creative people look at something, and I’m like, What if you do it upside down? I think it’s just part of being creative. I remember seeing that bag at the time and thinking, This is the coolest thing ever. Jacobs: The complete version of that story, just thinking about it now, it just dawned on me. I was looking for an apartment, my second apartment in Paris, before I moved into that really great one, but I went to look at Charlotte Gainsbourg’s apartment. She just had a child and she was breastfeeding on the bed, and next to the bed as a nightstand was this Vuitton trunk that had been painted black, and I just noticed it in the corner and I said to her, “Oh, that’s so cool. I can’t believe you painted that.” Her dad painted it black. Coppola: That’s so cool. I never heard that story. Jacobs: Taking this monogram and disrespecting it, just saying, like, “No, paint it black or cover it in graffiti.” Coppola: I wish I had one. I do have a cherry Vuitton speedy. It made me think about how you two do a similar thing in your work. Coppola: That’s funny. I’ve never put that together, but it’s cool. Like, why not put Bow Wow Wow in Marie Antoinette? Jacobs: Or a pair of Converse. Coppola: It just comes from having fun with it. And I was inspired by Ken Russell, who didn’t follow any rules. You can’t be creative and be a rule follower. Well, another story that I’m curious about is the Perry Ellis grunge collection, which you bring up in the documentary and say that you like to let people believe that you were fired after that collection. But what actually happened? Jacobs: I mean, it was really exciting to me—that story, that legend, that lore. Also, it’d be too complicated to really explain, or maybe they just wouldn’t believe me anyway. They’d think, like, Yeah, yeah, right. So I really am happy with that version of the story, but the reality is a little bit different. Kind of boring. Not very glamorous or gorgeous. The only thing that wasn’t a licensed thing was the women’s collection. So it was financed by the estate of Perry Ellis. I think, after a certain time, after so much trial and error of what the women’s collection could look like, they finally were like, “We just don’t want to invest in this anymore. We don’t want to continually lose money.” So they decided to bring it to an end. But I did actually work at Perry Ellis for the following season and started to do a new collection when they came to that conclusion. Coppola: Did you finish it under your name, or did it never get made? Jacobs: No. We only got started and never finished it. Coppola: There’s a lost collection. Where is it? Jacobs: There’s only a few pieces that were made in the beginning. They were black and they were knit by this incredible company and the knitwear factory that did all of Azzedine ’s stuff, and I was super excited by working with her. So that was the beginning of that collection, but it never went anywhere. That’s actually a great story. Jacobs: But you have to know about licensing and know that Perry Ellis died and left his estate to his daughter, and she was, like, a teenager, and it was entrusted to Claudia Thomas, who was a friend of Robert McDonald. There’s so much that went into it, and it’s like, who would even care or listen to it? So it’s much better and much more sexy to think, He was fired for being, like, this rebellious punk. And that’s where you two first crossed paths. At that show. Coppola: Yeah, that’s where I met him. I still remember getting the line sheet and ordering dresses. I was so excited when the box showed up. I wish I could find them. I’ve saved so much stuff over the years. We’ve got to see Romy in that collection. Jacobs: I don’t know if it would be her thing. Coppola: No. I tried to get her to wear a plaid dress. It was too long for her. But Cosima, my younger one, is really into clothes, so it’s fun to go in my storage. I’m so glad I had daughters. Another section of the documentary that was so great was when you talk about Winona Ryder and Courtney Love wearing Marc Jacobs to court. It’s such a great part of Marc Jacobs history. Jacobs: Ava , when she was working with us, she came to me with these images. I’ve seen them so many times, but every once in a while they resurface and people are like, “You’ve got to do something with this.” Coppola: Like a fashion story with girls in court with their ladylike clothes. Jacobs: Yeah, they’re demure. Especially Lil’ Kim. I remember her trial, her showing up with a Peter Pan collar, all buttoned up, after being on the MTV Awards with one pasty. I was like, Yeah, that’s believable. The judge and the jury are totally gonna fall for that. I want to discuss your fall 2020 collection you did with the dance collective. Jacobs: With Karole Armitage. You talk about how if that was the last collection you ever did, you’d be happy. Can you speak a little bit more about that—and what it is that keeps you going? Jacobs: I felt like it was so many of the looks and so many of the things that felt like very much my New York experience. It was only much later in the process that I had this thought about asking Karole Armitage to do, like, a dance piece. When she came on board, we cast the dancers and we turned a floor of our office building into a dance studio for her. Once we chose all the dancers, we started making all the clothes for the dancers and styling the dancers the way we would have done the models. I wanted it, like, not to be a fashion show with a dance component, but I wanted the two things to kind of go together, and so the dancers were dressed like the models. Coppola: When you were watching it, you couldn’t tell who was what. It was really cool. I didn’t know about her before. Jacobs: She was considered the punk ballerina. I didn’t know how it was going to come off—like, is this just going to be this pretentious thing of, like, fashion and movement? I had all these little nightmares of how this might be perceived or if it even comes off at all, and at the end of it—I mean, watching it on the monitor and, like, living through it in real time, I was just so emotional. I literally got, like, teary. And I remember turning to Katie , or whoever was backstage in addition to Katie, and I said, like, “I honestly feel like if this is the last show I ever did, I’d be happy.” Coppola: And then the world shut down. Jacobs: I just felt very satisfied, and I don’t typically have that reaction. I kind of feel like I wonder what people will think. I wonder if this was any good; somebody tell me, was it okay? Was it not okay? And I just—I did feel like, probably for the first time, I feel all good about this, which is good. But it’s done, and if it ends like this, then it ends on a high note and I’d feel satisfied. Coppola: I’m so glad I saw that in real life. Jacobs: I just felt very satisfied, which is not typically how I feel. Oddly, the show that Sofia did cover, that doll collection, I did not feel the same way as Karole Armitage, but I did feel a great sense of satisfaction in it. I did feel very proud and happy with that collection. And I was really relieved that that was the show that Sofia captured. Coppola: I feel like I lucked out. Jacobs: I feel like I lucked out. Thank God it was that show and not one of the shows that I felt not so good about. What keeps you going then? Could every show be your last? Jacobs: That’s always the case with anything. Today could be the last day any of us ever see, but I don’t like to think of that. I just think, like, Oh, I don’t know what it’ll be right now, but I’m sure I’ll have a new story to tell or something else will excite me. Then there’ll also be that kind of mini challenge of, like, how do we do this but do it better? Or what can we do differently? Coppola: It’s like doing a puzzle. You’re drawn to something.
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