"Sofia is so active, and she made The Virgin Suicides, which I thought was great - all these things are inspiring to me, not in terms of creating a particular dress, but just in terms of knowing that there is this type of woman out there"
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Jacobs is doing something more interesting than name-dropping Sofia Coppola: he’s locating fashion inspiration in authorship, not aesthetics. Coppola’s “activity” isn’t about being busy; it’s about being self-directed. He’s praising a woman who builds worlds and gets them made, then admitting that the real fuel for his work isn’t a mood board, it’s the proof-of-concept of female agency.
The careful clause - “not in terms of creating a particular dress” - reads like a defensive maneuver against the way fashion is often expected to translate culture into product. He refuses the straight line from film reference to runway look, and instead frames inspiration as psychological permission. Knowing “there is this type of woman out there” is the key phrase: Coppola becomes a category, an archetype of contemporary womanhood that’s competent, public, and creatively sovereign. It’s admiration, but also a kind of relief.
The Coppola reference matters. The Virgin Suicides is a story about girls trapped inside other people’s narratives, observed and aestheticized to death. Jacobs’s praise, ironically, pivots on the opposite: a woman director who seized the camera and made the gaze her own. In early-2000s fashion culture, where “muse” often meant a beautiful satellite orbiting a male designer, Jacobs is trying to upgrade the muse into a maker. Still, the line can’t fully escape the old dynamic: “this type of woman” is empowering, but it’s also a taxonomy - a way to turn a person into a usable idea.
The careful clause - “not in terms of creating a particular dress” - reads like a defensive maneuver against the way fashion is often expected to translate culture into product. He refuses the straight line from film reference to runway look, and instead frames inspiration as psychological permission. Knowing “there is this type of woman out there” is the key phrase: Coppola becomes a category, an archetype of contemporary womanhood that’s competent, public, and creatively sovereign. It’s admiration, but also a kind of relief.
The Coppola reference matters. The Virgin Suicides is a story about girls trapped inside other people’s narratives, observed and aestheticized to death. Jacobs’s praise, ironically, pivots on the opposite: a woman director who seized the camera and made the gaze her own. In early-2000s fashion culture, where “muse” often meant a beautiful satellite orbiting a male designer, Jacobs is trying to upgrade the muse into a maker. Still, the line can’t fully escape the old dynamic: “this type of woman” is empowering, but it’s also a taxonomy - a way to turn a person into a usable idea.
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| Topic | Movie |
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