‘Marc By Sofia’ review: Sofia Coppola profiles designer Marc Jacobs in this warm documentary

Dir: Sofia Coppola. US. 2025. 97mins

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola has known Marc Jacobs since the early 1990s, so it is not surprising that her portrait of the renowned fashion designer is a warm, casual affair. Marc By Sofia is light on probing insights, instead offering viewers a chance to see a relaxed Jacobs talk to a close friend about his inspirations and artistic philosophy. Still, the uninitiated may crave a more rigorous, extensive overview of the man’s redoubtable career.

Doesn’t pretend to be objective

This is Coppola’s first documentary, which will be unveiled at Venice in an out of competition slot. Her last film, 2023’s Priscilla, also premiered at the festival, winning Cailee Spaeny the Best Actress prize. (And Coppola’s 2010 drama Somewhere took home the Golden Lion.) Fashion aficionados should clamour, as will fans of the director, whose pictures have often demonstrated a keen eye for decor and costume.

As Marc By Sofia begins, Jacobs, now 62, is a mere 12 weeks away from his highly-anticipated spring 2024 show. In between discussions with his creative team about fabrics and themes, he sits down with Coppola for conversation that eschews a conventional celebrity-doc narrative and instead jumps between different topics, including his early love for clothes shopping and his fascination with Barbra Streisand.

The filmmaker doesn’t pretend to be objective about her subject, showing pictures of the two of them across their lives, as well as archival news footage of their first collaborations back when she was an aspiring director and he wanted to create fashion lines. Coppola, who remains mostly off-camera, asks Jacobs questions, but frequently the two just riff back and forth, creating the impression that we are eavesdropping on a chummy catch-up between old pals.

The Jacobs we encounter is a sweet, modest individual who self-consciously takes regular puffs from his vape. Even with his 2024 show on the horizon, he exudes utter calm as he thoughtfully listens to his colleagues and proposes suggestions. Jacobs seems devoid of ego, which makes the documentary a remarkable snapshot of a confident artist who has faith in himself, his models and his team. Marc By Sofia never comments on his evenkeeled disposition, but that placid exterior belies the energy and ideas he puts into his clothes and his show’s visual strategy. (Among the influences he enthusiastically cites are Bob Fosse, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, singer Diana Ross and sculptor Robert Therrien.) When, at last, Jacobs gets slightly irritable the night of the show when they’re running a few minutes late, it’s a charming glimpse at the nerves that have been there all along.

Coppola doesn’t utilise interviews with fashion critics or fellow designers to help contextualise Jacobs’ legacy, which requires viewers to take for granted his cultural importance. That said, even those uninterested in fashion will be able to glean his impact as he moved from Perry Ellis to Louis Vuitton before starting his own label. Whether bringing grunge music’s aesthetic to the fashion world or daringly transforming Louis Vuitton’s iconic logo into graffiti-style graphics, Jacobs has taken risks, although he never comes across as a wilful provocateur. Indeed, one of Marc By Sofia’s strongest takeaways is that Jacobs prefers his clothes to speak for him.

Jacobs’ forthcoming show gives the documentary the slightest hint of a narrative spine, but Marc By Sofia is noticeably low-stakes as it reaches its finale. Only then, though, does Coppola fully articulate Jacobs’ vision and audacity, filming the show with a flair intentionally missing earlier. And she lands on a bittersweet epilogue, shooting a downbeat Jacobs the day after his latest triumph. Here, Jacobs admits to his inability to know what to do with himself once a show ends — and why certain personal wounds from his past never heal.