March 19, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Culture Representation: Filmed in 2023, the documentary film “Marc by Sofia” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few Asians) discussing the career of Amercian fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who has designed for his eponymous fashion label and for Louis Vuitton.
Culture Clash: Jacob discusses his triumphs, insecurities, influences and criticisms of some of his most notable fashion collections and concepts.
Culture Audience: “Marc by Sofia” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Jacobs, director Sofia Coppola and people who interested in documentaries about famous fashion designers.
“Marc by Sofia” is partly a nostalgia trip about a famous fashion designer and partly an inside look at the making of a 2024 fashion collection runway show from the designer. This tribute-styled documentary is exactly what the title implies: It’s artistically made and intimate but not a very revealing biography of fashion designer Marc Jacobs by his filmmaker friend Sofia Coppola. Unflattering facts about him are omitted.
Coppola (who is one of the producers of “Marc by Sofia”) directed this documentary with the tone of it being a “hangout film” between friends while also being a hinddsight look at Jacobs’ most memorable work. Jacobs and Coppola met at a Perry Ellis fashion show sometime around 1993. In the documentary, Coppola is seen occasionally on camera during these conversations and can sometimes be heard off-camera while she’s talking to Jacobs.
“Marc by Sofia” was filmed in 2023, as Jacobs was preparing to debut the runway show for his Spring/Summer 2024 collection. The movie alternates between this behind-the-scenes footage and archival footage montages of Jacobs and his career. “Marc by Sofia” had its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival. It’s the second documentary feature film about Jacobs. He was also the subject of director Loïc Prigent’s 2007 documentary “Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton,” which chronicled Jacobs and his work when Jacobs was with legendary French fashion house Louis Vuitton, where he was artistic director from 1997 to 2014, and where he launched Louis Vuitton’s clothing brand extension.
Jacobs was born in New York City on April 9, 1963. He spent part of his childhood being raised in Teaneck, New Jersey. In “Marc by Sofia,” Jacobs doesn’t talk much about his personal life, but he shares some childhood memories of experiences and people who had big influences on him. Jacobs’ father (who was a talent agent at the William Morris Agency) died when Jacobs was 6 years old. Jacobs says in the documentary that some of his happiest childhood memories was visiting his father at the William Morris Agency.
When he was 13 or 14 years old, Jacobs began living with his beloved grandmother Rachel Feinstein, who lived in New York City’s Manhattan borough. Jacobs gets a little teary-eyed when he hints that his childhood was very troubled. In other interviews (not in this documentary), he has described having a difficult relationship with his mother. In “Marc by Sofia,” Jacobs mentions having a “not good” stepfather at the time that Jacobs went to live with his grandmother.
Jacobs says his way of coping with unhappiness as a child was to shut himself in his bedroom and have fantasies and make drawings. It was the beginning of him channeling his thoughts and dreams into creative arts. He accompanied grandmother on her regularly scheduled trips to stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller. Jacobs says that his grandmother was his gateway into his love of fashion, particularly women’s fashion.
In the documentary, Jacobs also mentions some other early fashion influences from his childhood. He remembers being in awe of the casual bohemian fashions of the teenage babysitters he had in the 1970s. And he remembers being deeply affected by seeing Barbra Streisand’s Oscar-winning 1969 film “Hello, Dolly!” on opening weekend. Jacobs (who is openly gay) says that Streisand, Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross are icons for gay men because these entertainers bring a certain campiness to their public personas. Jacobs says self-portrait photographer Cindy Sherman is another big inspiration for him.
Jacobs also names the movies of filmmaker/theater director/choreographer Bob Fosse as having a tremendous impact on him. Fosse’s 1972 Oscar-winning classic “Cabaret” (starring Minnelli) and 1980’s semi-autobiographical “All That Jazz” (starring Roy Scheider as a Fosse-like character) were obvious standouts. However, Jacobs also mentions Fosse’s lesser-known 1969 movie “Sweet Charity” (starring Shirley MacLaine), especially the “Big Spender” scene, as making a huge impression on him.
The influences of cinema and stage shows can be seen in Jacobs’ runway shows and many of his fashion collections. He doesn’t just have models strut his fashion on the runway. He puts a lot of thought into making many of his runway shows a unique production with elaborate sets and themes, which he likes to describe in the documentary as “seven-minute pieces of theater.” Such was the case with his eponymous Spring/Summer 2024 collection, which featured models in beehive hairdos, oversized 1960s-inspired outfits, and a set design of oversized chairs and an oversized table, to make it look like the models were miniature dolls as they walked underneath the chairs and table.
Jacobs didn’t waste any time pursuing a career in fashion. He graduated from the High School of Art and Design and Parsons School of Design. The documentary includes footage from a Parsons runway show in his last year at the school. The collection was a very 1980s parade of oversized sweaters paired with mid-length skirts. At Parsons, his collection was named the best student fashion collection that year.
Jacobs launched the Marc Jacobs fashion brand in 1986 (with financial investor Onward Kashiyama USA, Inc.), and by 1987, he became the youngest designer to receive Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent. In 1988, Jacobs and his longtime creative collaborator Robert Duffy joined the women’s design unit of fashion house Perry Ellis as creative director/vice president and president, respectively. In 1992, Jacobs received another CFDA prize when he won the Women’s Designer of the Year Award.
The award was bittersweet because it was for his notorious Perry Ellis collection inspired by the “grunge” music scene, which had its peak mainstream popularity at the time. The collection received mixed reviews, and Jacobs exited Perry Ellis that year. In the documentary, Jacobs says it’s a “misconception” that he was fired from Perry Ellis because of this grunge collection, but he says it’s a misconception that he doesn’t mind.
However, the criticism that Jacobs received for the Perry Ellis “grunge” collection seems to still sting a little bit all these years later. Jacobs gets a bit emotionally choked up and his eyes glisten with tears when he says he would’ve been frightened and hurt if Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain and his singer wife Courtney Love (whom the media dubbed the “King and Queen of Grunge Rock” at the time) didn’t approve of Jacob’s grunge fashions. The main criticism that Jacobs received for his Perry Ellis grunge collection was that it was opportunistic “culture appropriation” because grunge culture was supposed to be the opposite of the privileged elitism that comes with high-priced fashion.
Jacobs says of his insecurities: “I’m very awkward socially, and I’m very intimidated by people I look up to.” Elsewhere in the documentary, Jacobs describes having imposter syndrome and says he often feels when he’s at his runway shows that he can’t quite believe his success, and he’s an observer watching it. Jacobs also admits he’s a perfectionist who will obsess over flaws and mistakes in his work. He’s sensitive to criticism but is perhaps his own worst critic.
As for his creative process, Jacobs and Coppola (who is also a screenwriter) talk about how a fashion designer having to come up with new ideas is similar to how a writer has to start with a blank page. Jacobs says he draws inspiration from many things, ranging from classical art to pop art and everything in between. Coppola and Jacobs both talk about one of their most-loved trends in fashion was the 1930s/1940s revival in 1970s fashion.
Jacobs also shares a charming story about meeting fashion designer Vivenne Westwood, when they sat next to each other at a dinner party. Jacobs says that considering that she had a reputation for not hiding how she felt about people she disliked, he was afraid that she wouldn’t like him. Instead, Jacobs says that he and Westwood bonded over their shared admiration of luxury designer Yves Saint Laurent. Jacobs says he felt flattered when punk fashion icon Westwood swore him to secrecy that he wouldn’t tell people that she was a fan of Saint Laurent. (Westwood died in 2022, at the age of 81.)
In his interviews for the documentary, Jacobs (often clutching a vaping pen) is charismatic and funny but always a little bit guarded. Coppola doesn’t ask him difficult questions. She doesn’t act like a sycophant, but her friendship with Jacobs obviously affected why she chose not to probe into uncomfortable topics about his life that he might or might not have told her in advance he didn’t want to discuss in this documentary.
For example, Marc by Marc Jacobs was his secondary, lower-priced fashion line that was launched in 2001 and was discontinued in 2015. In 2013, Marc Jacobs’ fashion empire included more than 200 stand-alone Marc Jacobs retail stores worldwide. By the mid-2020s, the number of these stores had dwindled to less than five. Jacobs is not asked in the documentary to reflect on these business failures and what he learned from any mistakes.
In other interviews, Jacobs has been open about his recovery from addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, including stints in rehab in 1999 and 2007. He doesn’t talk about these addictions or rehab in the “Marc by Sofia” documentary. Jacobs also doesn’t discuss his love life. Jacobs and former model Charly Defrancesco have been married since 2019. Defrancesco is not in the documentary.
However, “Marc by Sofia” shows plenty of examples of how Jacobs pushed boundaries and took risks in his career over the years. One of his proudest accomplishments for him seems to be his graffiti-inspired designs for Louis Vuitton bags. He says many people at Louis Vuitton thought it was a huge mistake before these bags were launched, but this type of design turned out to be a massive hit that inspired countless copycats and bootlegs.
Jacobs also says he’s proud of his Louis Vuitton collaborations with music producer Pharrell Williams and pop graphic designer Takashi Murakami, during a time in the early 2000s when European-based luxury brands almost never collaborated with R&B/hip-hop music stars and Japanese pop artists. In 2023, Williams was named men’s creative director for Louis Vuitton. The documentary briefly shows footage of Williams and Jacobs having an interview-styled conversation.
Anna Sui (Jacobs’ longtime friend and fellow fashion designer), Grace Coddington (former Vogue editor-at-large) and Kim Gordon (former Sonic Youth bass player) are seen and mentioned in archival clips as longtime admirers of Jacobs. Sui offers new comments for the documentary in an audio-only interview. Two teenage students of Parsons are shown doing separate interviews with Jacobs, who is kind and gracious in answering questions.
The documentary’s archival footage includes early 1990s footage of Coppola and director Spike Jonze (who was her then-boyfriend/future ex-husband) filming a street runway show of Jacobs’ Perry Ellis fashion; separate 1990s interview with actresses Chloë Sevigny and Ione Skye (who were It Girls at the time) talking about being fans of Jacobs’ fashion designs; a 2010 interview that Jacobs and Vogue editorial chief Anna Wintour did on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”; clips from movies that Jacobs mentions as inspirations; and many video clips and photos from runway shows over the years that featured Jacobs’ designs.
Unlike “Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton,” which featured testimonials and cameos from numerous supermodels and other celebrities, “Marc by Sofia” keeps things low-key and just films Jacobs with his team of employees, such as runway creative director Joseph Carter, hair stylist Duff, stage director Stefan Beckham, senior knitwear designer of runway and contemporary Anna Koehler and designer Ryne Larson. Jacobs has an efficient way of leading, where he is good at articulating his vision while also being open to suggestions and ideas. The only time the documentary shows him getting impatient is when his runway show doesn’t start on time, and he barks at people to start the show now because the show the scheduled start time has already passed.
The documentary’s soundtrack is eclectic, ranging from 1970s disco pop hits (such as Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby”) to 21st century rock (such as The Strokes’ “I’ll Try Anything Once”) to 21st century alternative R&B/indie pop (such as Blood Orange’s “Champagne Coast”). “Marc by Sofia” rolls along at an even pace that might not satisfy viewers who are expecting an edgier “warts and all” documentary where Jacobs dredges up scandalous information about himself. Jacobs has obviously mellowed with age, as seen in his less-hedonistic lifestyle and less-flamboyant personal style that he had in the 1990s and 2000s. His passion for fashion and refusing to play it completely safe still remain two of his core characteristics which have kept him relevant in the fashion industry and make this documentary worth seeing for anyone who likes his work.
A24 will release “Marc by Sofia” in select U.S. cinemas on March 20, 2026, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on March 27, 2026.
