At the start of Priscilla, the audience is introduced to a 14-year-old whose pastel pink sweaters, heart-shaped pendant necklace and schoolgirl fringe belie the fact that this is the future Mrs Elvis Presley. But as you might expect from a film that is written and directed by Sofia Coppola – who based the biopic on Elvis And Me, Priscilla Presley’s best-selling autobiography about that period of her life – this isn’t a story about the so-called King.
In fact, Stacey Battat, Priscilla’s costume designer, who has worked on multiple films with Coppola, purposely avoided using scene-stealing colours on Jacob Elordi’s Elvis. Cailee Spaeny’s Priscilla is the one the audience is drawn to. ‘It was important that he was always relegated to the background prior to that because it’s her story. She was the thing that popped,’ explains Battat, who was tasked with visually charting her evolution from 14 to 27 years of age, high school student to pregnant wife to mother.
The couple’s love story (and eventual undoing) is told through their clothes, which start off as complementary before gradually becoming more dissonant. (eBay is already reporting after the film's release yesterday that searches are spiking for certain items that appear in the film like purple trousers (45%), leather gloves (65%) and oversized clutch (20%), calling it the 'Priscilla effect'.) ‘At the beginning, they’re very in tune with each other,’ says Battat. ‘Later, he’s not her sweet boyfriend who wears reading glasses in bed. All of a sudden, he’s also Elvis Presley, the rock star.’
In Germany, where the couple met in 1959, Priscilla’s costumes are childish and made of slightly ‘dusty’ colours as she engages in petulant battles with her parents over Elvis. She was 14 – still at high school and living abroad because of her father’s career in the US Air Force – when she was invited to a party hosted by Elvis, 10 years her senior and serving in the army.
After three years of wistful phone calls, occasional visits and long-distance longing, Priscilla finally gets permission from her reluctant parents to move to Graceland, Elvis’s estate in Tennessee, on the condition she would finish high school and graduate.
Coppola, who gave each department head a mood board at the start of the creative process, explained to Battat, ‘Germany is kind of sad and the sun comes out in Memphis.’ Initially giddy with delight and wearing brighter colours, Priscilla is gradually moulded into his vision. Her mousy brown ponytail is teased into a towering beehive, although it had to be made shorter to suit Spaeny. (For the wedding scene in ’67, Battat also had to modify the dress, made in collaboration with Chanel. ‘We took some volume out so that it didn’t eat her alive,’ she says.)
In a pivotal moment where the couple go shopping, Elvis informs her that blue is her colour, while prints do nothing for her. ‘She does end up wearing a lot of blue in the movie, in part because he likes it,’ says Battat. Then, as cracks in their relationship form as she reads about his latest affair in a magazine, Priscilla wears a splashily printed two-piece to confront him in LA (Battat describes her motivations as ‘I’m going to do it specifically to annoy you.’)
Eventually, Priscilla leads a relatively separate life to Elvis, who by this point has started his residency in Las Vegas – and her wardrobe starts evolving. ‘When she emancipated herself, it was really important to me not to have that be a reaction to him. It’s not about making him angry. It’s about being herself.’ By the end of the film, in the early ’70s, her hair is back to her natural colour and her clothes are relatively low-key, compatible with running after a young Lisa Marie, who was born in 1968.
‘She becomes so pared-down while he gets bigger sideburns and more jewellery and eye make-up,’ says Battat. As she says goodbye to Elvis, having told him she’s leaving soon after he forces himself on her during a break in his show (saying, ‘This is how a real man makes love to his woman’) she’s wearing a suit and a simple button- down. ‘When she left him, I wanted it to be something that felt like she was in control. It’s back to the basics,’ says Battat.