Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray Hit the Dance Floor to Celebrate Her New Chanel Book

On Wednesday night, tucked away behind a hidden door inside the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue, writer and director Sofia Coppola, was joined by her family, close friends, and collaborators like Bill Murray and Kirsten Dunst at the illustrious Doubles Club to celebrate the launch of her latest, and most glamourous book yet, Chanel Haute Couture.

Downstairs in the dimly lit private club—a place the Oscar winner’s famous parents used to frequent while she slept upstairs—copies of the book, with its shiny gold cover, were scattered throughout the space. As Coppola’s dinner guests arrived and headed to the bar for pre-dinner cocktails, Russian supermodel and a fixture of the Chanel runway, Sasha Pivovarova, took a moment to sit and flip through the oversized monograph, taking in the rich, bespoke visual history of the French fashion house.

“[The book] wasn’t supposed to be so big,” Coppola, who seemed to match the tome, wearing a gold lace Chanel dress with coordinating gold cap-toe heels and a quilted clutch, tells Vanity Fair of the nearly 500-page volume. “But it kept growing and growing.”

Coppola, who spent a year curating the book, made in collaboration with Chanel and Éditions 7L, via her Mack imprint, Important Flowers, likened the experience to digging for treasure, combing through trove of materials.The book spans all eras of Chanel, from its origins with Gabrielle Chanel to its evolution with Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard, and includes exclusive images from the brand’s vault, never-before-seen photographs featuring couture clients, sketches, memorabilia, and private, behind the scenes moments.

“I’ve seen museum exhibits and catalogs, but I thought it would be fun to look at how couture is made and not be academic about it,” she says.

In a toast, Coppola recounted being an awkward 15-year-old with braces when she arrived in Paris for her internship with Chanel. What began as an intimidating but thrilling experience for Coppola has blossomed into a now decades-long collaborative relationship. From being photographed as a teenager by Lagerfeld—a striking portrait of the young artist featured in the book—to working with Chanel to design Priscilla Presley’s iconic wedding dress in her most recent film, Priscilla, the brand has played an instrumental role in her career.

“My mom’s friend Jeanette in San Francisco used to let me come into her closet, and she would give me her Chanel ballet flats when they were worn out,” Coppola says. “I would get hand-me-downs and I was so thrilled.”

Now, experiencing a full-circle moment at Wednesday’s dinner, she completed her remarks by calling their latest collaboration “a dream come true.”

Coppola was also joined by her husband, Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars and their teenage daughters, singer-songwriter (and budding TikTok auteur) Romy Mars, and Cosima Mars, who spotted Thomas from across the room in a sea of models and actors (“Hi, Dad! Miss you!”), making the star-studded affair feel more like a quaint family dinner. Both daughters, Coppola says, often borrow her collection of Chanel shoes and bags, which she subsequently has to track down. “Sometimes [my Chanel] migrates into my daughter’s room,” Coppola says with a laugh.

Fellow mother-daughter duo, Karen Elson and Scarlett White, were also in attendance, chatting with Kirsten Dunst by the bar as Jon Hamm and his wife, Anna Osceola, sipped cocktails and chatted with Lynn Hirschberg nearby. Eventually, all of the young It girls, like Gracie Abrams, Sunday Rose Urban, Chase Sui Wonders, and Havana Rose Liu were joined by Coppola’s daughters, holding hands and catching up, in a scene that could have been an outtake from one of Coppola’s films.

Before dinner began, Murray, the star of two of Coppola’s films, Lost in Translation and On the Rocks, drifted onto the dance floor, with an espresso martini in tow and danced with Coppola, spinning her around under a glimmering disco ball, in what felt reminiscent of a sweet, though unconventional, father-daughter dance. Nearby, at Coppola’s table, Dunst, her longtime muse, who recently told Town & Country, that she read Coppola’s latest script and they are working on it together, looked on, smiling, before posing for photos in a Coppola universe crossover event.

As small white cakes, topped with a cherry, so intricately decorated that they could have come straight off the set of Marie Antoinette, were passed, Coppola’s crew danced the night away while DJ Jean d’Armes played an eclectic mix of disco tunes.

Though thoroughly enjoying her victory lap for the evening, Coppola is already looking ahead to her next book project due out next spring. “It’s so fun. We’re going to do two a year,” she says. “It’s just totally something that I enjoy.”