She may be best known for her chops when it comes to the big screen, but anyone would be hard-pressed to deny Sofia Coppola’s fashion cred. Before she brought to life the sun-soaked suburban melancholy of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides (after an uncredited acting debut as an infant in The Godfather), Coppola was a teenage model turning up in the pages of YM, Seventeen, et al. She briefly dated Anthony Kiedis, and the glossy-haired duo lent their beyond-babely couple’s look to Details for a beatifically downtown short film alongside Debbie Harry in ’93. The following year, having already lent her hand to pal Kim Gordon’s cultish X-Girl line, Coppola debuted her own range, Milk Fed. Brimming over with graphic baby tees (we’d still sport one style with Steve McQueen framed by a girlish heart) and wispy little dresses, she showed the line to the likes of Polly Mellen in a suite at the Sherry-Netherland. “I always wanted to be a designer, but I didn’t think I knew enough,” she confessed to W at the time.
Of course, the superlatively ’90s It girl was acquainted from a tender age with the industry, having spent time as a teen hanging around the Chanel atelier with Karl, and meeting Marc Jacobs for the first time. That introduction—Coppola was an ardent admirer of the young designer’s deliciously grungy vision for Perry Ellis and was photographed for Vogue in one of his floor-skimming floral numbers—yielded a longtime friendship. To date, the Academy Award–winning Coppola has appeared in Jacobs’s fragrance ads, lensed by Juergen Teller; collaborated with him during his stint at Louis Vuitton on a range of still-coveted bags; and accompanied him to the Met Ball on multiple occasions. Today Coppola’s look is synonymous with pared-back polish—but for our money there’s plenty to be said for her earliest days on the scene. Whether effortless in a slip dress and slides in the early aughts, or all brows, lips, and jet black hair for her deliciously nuts turn in the video for Sonic Youth’s “Mildred Pierce” (looking more like a screwball Fellini muse than Ms. Crawford’s titular Pierce), hers is a style evolution that bears revisiting time and time again.
As we close out couture in her adopted City of Light, we’re taking a look back at 11 of Coppola’s best throwback moments.