TREASURED SCENE for me:
a late-middle-aged Bill
Murray, in Sofia Coppola’s
Lost in Translation,
showing up at Scarlett
Johansson’s hotel room door in an
inappropriately youthful orange cam-
ouflage T-shirt, only for Johansson to
burst out laughing. Murray retreats to
the bathroom, turns the shirt inside
out. And into the Tokyo night they
go, undaunted. What a vision of how
clothing can both reveal and bolster
the soul! Turn a shirt inside out and set
yourself free.
Lost in Translation was Coppola’s
second feature, but by that time she’d
already interned at Chanel, modeled
for X-girl, and befriended a young
Marc Jacobs. Even from an early age,
Coppola understood style as a way
of making sense of the world. As the
daughter of two directors who brought
her to the set of Apocalypse Now, she
was taught from the very beginning
that how the scene looks is inseparable
from what it’s about.
As she grew up and began making
movies herself, this would shape her
way of thinking about the world: What
are people wearing and why? What
dreams are coded into their clothes?
Her films are about the interior lives of
teenage girls and lonely women; they
are about freedom and being trapped,
beauty and the cage. In Coppola’s work,
self-presentation is both art and armor:
It’s a way of setting the exact right dis-
tance between you and everyone else, a
way of saying what you otherwise can’t
or won’t say.
“A kind of uniform helps,” Coppola
once said. Hers, over the years, has been
remarkably consistent. On set, while
directing, she favors men’s Charvet
shirts, tailored to hang loose-ish and out
of mind. O≠ set it’s the occasional blazer
or tuxedo jacket, but mostly sweaters
and jeans, as befits the California girl she
once was. The message is: I am working,
I am self-contained, I am in a world of
my own making.
One more treasured scene, then,
before we’re done: Kirsten Dunst in
Marie Antoinette, as the desperately
isolated and sad Queen of Versailles,
going on a shopping spree set to “I
Want Candy.” You see ravishing Manolo
Blahnik shoes, fizzy Champagne,
Ladurée pastries. The sequence ends
with Dunst exquisitely dressed and
elaborately styled, her hair a teetering,
neck-taxing mountain above her. “It’s
not too much, is it?” she asks.
Well, of course it is, and that’s the
point. The world is a lot. What we wear
is our first defense against it.
zach baron is gq’s senior sta≠ writer.
Los Angeles,
1992
With friend
Keanu Reeves
at the
Independent
Spirit Awards.
New Orleans,
2017
On the set
of her film
The Beguiled.
New York City,
2016
Breakfast in
fur at Sant
Ambroeus, the
stylish NYC
dining staple.
New York City,
2013
Hitting the red
carpet with
Marc Jacobs
for the Met’s
punk-themed
Costume
Institute Gala.
New York City,
2011
Coppola’s
signature look,
modest but
elegant, at a
screening
after-party.
New York City,
2010
At Mr Chow,
a go-to
after-party
venue for the
art-world
glitterati.
A
OPPO
SITE PAGE: AN
DREW
DURH
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IS PAGE, CLO
CKW
ISE FRO
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TO
P LEFT: AN
DREW
DURH
AM
(2); H
EN
RY S. DZIEKAN
III/GETTY IM
AGES;
STEPH
EN
LOVEKIN
/GETTY IM
AGES; RO
N GALELLA, LTD./RO
N GALELLA CO
LLECTIO
N VIA GETTY IM
AGES; AN
DREW
DURH
AM
.
APRIL 2020 GQ.COM 39
