She, the daughter of Hollywood aristocracy, was the cinéaste of restraint, discovering poetry in pauses and the languor of girls leaning against walls. He, who adopted and discarded numerous avatars, was giving shape to what was yet unvoiced. They gravitated towards each other as if characters from the same script, each recognising in the other a similarity amid the noise. Their bond was so rare and resilient that, 30 years on, Coppola would turn her lens on Jacobs with a documentary that also offers an insider’s glance into their unique relationship.
The two officially met when Coppola asked her mother if she could attend the Perry Ellis show that Jacobs was preparing in 1992. Rather than honouring the brand’s roots in practical American elegance, the provocateur chose to pay homage to Seattle’s vibrant grunge scene, sending out models who looked as if they had wandered in from a record store on St Mark’s. Flannel shirts, army boots and slip dresses worn with deliberate indifference unsettled the establishment, even riling Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love who, wary of grunge being co-opted by luxury, reportedly burned the samples Jacobs had sent them. While the industry recoiled and critics railed — British fashion journalist Suzy Menkes among the loudest — high-profile admirers began to emerge in support. Gianni Versace called it “fresh and very New York”. Coppola named it “an epiphany”.
The duo promoting their film at the Venice Film Festival 2025
Those lucky enough to catch Marc by Sofia (cheekily referencing the Marc by Marc Jacobs fashion line) at the recent Venice Film Festival would have found the answer to a perennial question: Did the grunge uproar cause Jacobs’ sacking from Perry Ellis? Coppola puts it to him directly. He says it did not, though he admits he likes that version of the story anyway.
If the visual biography begins as a chronicle about clothes, it soon reveals itself as a study of temperament. Jacobs, now 62, is no longer the enfant terrible who once rattled Perry Ellis but a figure tempered by time, as evidenced by his 16-year tenure as creative director at Louis Vuitton — a reign that established the now-familiar paradox of running a personal label while presiding over the vast machinery of a large European house. The film is loosely framed around the coming together of a collection, as Coppola shadows him through the making of his 2024 spring ready-to-wear line, her camera registering the conviction with which he sketches, edits and refines. “I have faith that it will become something,” he remarks, with the calm of a veteran who has weathered too many storms to panic at the sight of clouds.
What viewers come to realise, too, is that Jacobs is deeply shaped by cinematic epics, particularly The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, the 1972 chamber piece by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder; the Big Spender number from Sweet Charity; and the louche Mrs Robinson, embodied by Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Coppola weaves in clips from Cabaret, All That Jazz and Petra von Kant, as well as footage of Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor opposite Montgomery Clift, and Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly! At one point, she asks Jacobs why all queer men adore Streisand. He replies, unflinchingly, that he is fascinated by women who are caricatures of themselves, who lean into their own trademarks so fully they become both real and theatrical.
Models walking the runway of Marc Jacobs' spring ready-to-wear show in 2024
Geniuses and superheroes tend to be orphans of sorts, and people will learn about Jacobs’ painful childhood. The primal wound inflicted early — a father lost when he was seven and a mother’s struggle with mental illness — left him with a heightened instinct for self-protection. His grandma, with whom he lived as a teenager, became the steadying presence, instilling a reverence for beautiful clothes through knitting and needlepoint. Later, close confidantes helped him navigate the more vulnerable moments of his career. Coppola and her brother would drop by his home, where he lounged in silk pyjamas, to talk him through the uneasy aftermath of a scandal or show. His other close friend, filmmaker Lana Wachowski, calls these sessions a “post-art-um”.
Fashion has long been fertile ground for documentaries: Douglas Keeve’s Unzipped (1995) caught Isaac Mizrahi in the throes of creative panic; The September Issue (2009) staged the forever clash between Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington; and Frédéric Tcheng’s Dior and I (2014) captured Raf Simons’s nerve-wracking debut at Dior. These accounts lay bare the pressure and drama but few move beyond portraiture into something truly personal. Marc by Sofia seeks to be earnest rather than performative, striving to be less an exposé than a conversation carried across decades. Early reviewers have labelled it a perfect manifesto of friendship, a phrase that seems apt not only for its subject but also structure.
The best friends at the designer's 2003 Christmas party
Only a true companion, not a mere observer, could have known where to linger, when to step back and how to draw out truths too fragile for strangers to touch. This stems from a long-standing partnership: Coppola’s heroines, with the studied nonchalance of someone aware of being seen, seemed dressed by Jacobs; and his runways were often haunted by her characters. Over the years, the exchanges multiplied: Coppola accepted her Oscar in a Jacobs gown, directed his Daisy perfume commercial and worked with him on a line of Louis Vuitton handbags. The archive is crowded with proof: backstage snapshots, Met Galas, after-parties, dinners and birthdays. Even Coppola’s daughter Romy has drafted the designer into her TikToks, where he slipped easily into the frame as if part of the family.
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“It’s always scary to make something — you’re figuring it out as you go. I just wanted to show a sincere depiction of Marc — I wanted it to feel personal, never intrusive or prying, but to share things that I know about him,” the director said in a magazine interview last month, reflecting on the approach of probing the inner life of her closest friend.
Coppola may appear in the film sparingly but beneath the fabric, frou-frou and fantasy runs the simplest thread: two artists choosing each other, again and again, through every season of change. Marc by Sofia makes its case quietly but unmistakably — that friendship, too, can be a work of art.
This article first appeared on Sept 15 in The Edge Malaysia.
