The Cinema of Sofia Coppola: Fashion, Culture, Celebrity

Sofia Coppola and Cinema provides the first comprehensive analysis of Coppola's oeuvre that situates her work broadly in relation to contemporary artistic, social and cultural currents. Suzanne Ferriss considers the central role of fashion - in its various manifestations - to Coppola's films, exploring fashion's primacy in every cinematic dimension: in film narrative
costuming, production, sound and music design
cinematography
and in branding/marketing. She also explores the theme of celebrity, including Coppola's own celebrity persona.

Ferriss analyzes each of Coppola's six films individually, categorizing them in two groups: films where fashion commands attention (Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled and The Bling Ring) and those where clothing and material goods do not stand out ostentatiously, but are essential in establishing characters' identities and relationships (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Somewhere). Throughout, Ferriss draws on approaches from scholarship on fashion, film, visual culture, art history, celebrity and material culture to capture the complexities of Coppola's engagement with fashion. Sofia Coppola and Cinema is beautifully illustrated with colour images from Sofia Coppola's films, artworks and advertising artefacts.