A Taxonomy of Sofia Coppola and Marc Jacobs’s Friendship, in Honor of Her Upcoming Documentary Marc by Sofia
Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola cozy up at the designer’s 2003 holiday party.Photo: Fairchild Archive/Getty Images
The Venice Film Festival lineup was revealed earlier this week, and among the new projects by Gus Van Sant, Werner Herzog, and Julian Schnabel, one immediately became the most important movie announced this year (category: fashion fans). The movie is Marc by Sofia, Sofia Coppola’s documentary tribute to Marc Jacobs.
Although a terrific Marc Jacobs documentary (Loïc Prigent’s 2007 Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton) already exists, this one feels different—not just because it’s Coppola’s first-ever doc, but because the director and the designer have been friends for almost three decades. The pair first met after Coppola asked to meet Jacobs sometime around his famed “grunge” collection for Perry Ellis. (Coppola and her then-boyfriend, the director Spike Jonze, famously helped stage a guerrilla show for Kim Gordon and Daisy von Furth’s fashion label X-Girl outside Jacobs’s show in New York City—which Chloë Sevigny walked, and which was subsequently turned into the music video for Sonic Youth’s “Sugar Kane.”)
The pair quickly became pals, supporting each other at their most important professional moments and even collaborating—remember the Marc Jacobs ad with the pair peacefully sleeping cuddled on a bed photographed by Juergen Teller? So we thought it would be fun to walk down memory lane—read: do a deep dive on Getty Images—and look at the history of their friendship according to public-facing red-carpet events. It’s a superficial look at something pure and true, but there’s also something really sweet about seeing friends show up for each other for two-plus decades (the first image we found of the pair is from 2000). We can’t wait to see a new side of Marc through the eyes of his BFF Sofia.
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Patrick McMullan/Getty Images1/17Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola enjoy a hot summer day at the Marc Jacobs store, 2000.
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Photo: Mark Mainz/Getty Images2/17Sofia greets Marc, in the iconic neck brace (which he removed to take his customary finale bow), backstage at his spring 2004 show.
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Photo: Fairchild Archive/Getty Images3/17Marc and Sofia cozy up at the designer’s 2003 holiday party.
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Ron Galella/Getty Images4/17Sofia and Marc attend the gala for the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, where she received the Special Filmmaking Achievement award for writing, directing, and producing Lost in Translation.
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Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images5/17Ok, not technically a photo with Marc, but Sofia did wear a blue Marc Jacobs gown when she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation in 2004.
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Evan Agostini/Getty Images6/17Sofia, Marc, and “third amigo” Zoe Cassavetes attended the Met Gala for “Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century” in 2004.
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Patrick McMullan/Getty Images7/17Name a more iconic trio! Sofia, Marc (in legendary Mickey Mouse t-shirt), and Lil’ Kim at the designer’s spring 2007 show.
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Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images8/17Marc and Sofia also attended the Met Gala for 2008’s “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy together.”
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Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images9/17In 2011, Sofia was on hand to present Marc the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award at that year’s CFDA Awards.
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Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images10/17Marc, Kim Gordon, and Sofia, at the after-party for the designer’s spring 2012 collection.
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Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images11/17Sofia, Marc, and a cigarette backstage at the designer’s fall 2013 show.
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Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images12/17In 2014, when Marc ceded the reins of the Marc by Marc Jacobs lines to designers Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier, he watched the show from the front row with Sofia faithfully sitting by his side.
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images13/17Kim, Rachel Feinstein, Sofia, and Marc gather to celebrate DECADENCE, the designer’s new fragrance, 2015.
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Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images14/17Sofia, Marc, Robert Duffy, and Robert’s husband Connor Dodd hang out backstage, 2016.
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Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images15/17At the New York premiere of Sofia’s 2017 film The Beguiled, it was Marc’s turn to show up and support his friend.
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Photo: WWD/Getty Images16/17Sofia and Marc attend the American Ballet Theatre Fall Gala.
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Photo: Jared Siskin/Getty Images17/17Charly Defrancesco, Marc, and Sofia take in a rare Prada show in Manhattan, 2019.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
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Laia Garcia-Furtado
Laia Garcia-Furtado is a writer and editor who currently serves as the senior fashion news editor at Vogue Runway. Prior to this, she held editorial positions at several publications. Her work has been published in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, New York Magazine, WSJ, W Magazine, Ssense, and more. She has also worked as a stylist and collaborated with Hilton Als in 2017 for a portfolio on the Paris Review.