Sofia Coppola and Stacey Battat have been mates for 20 years. They met when Battat, now Coppola’s go-to costume designer, was working on the Marc Jacobs retailer in New York Metropolis. ‘My neighbour on the Mercer Resort was Sofia,’ she recollects over Zoom. ‘We’d smoke cigarettes outdoors of our respective locations of employment and discuss to one another. She mentioned to me, “After I make my subsequent film, I need you to do the costumes.”’ Three years later, Battat was working as a stylist with no expertise in movie, however true to her phrase, Coppola rang her up and requested her to do the wardrobe for Someplace. ‘I simply preferred it a lot,’ she says of the deep-end plunge in costume design. ‘I like style shoots too, however there’s this subtlety to creating a personality.’
Within the years since, Battat has been the skilful hand behind the costumes of 5 of the cult director’s motion pictures – from the corseted frills of interval psychosexual drama The Beguiled to the cheesy noughties extra of The Bling Ring. She can be the creator of the plush, pastel-shaded sartorial universe of Coppola’s newest function: Priscilla. Tailored from the memoir Elvis and Me, the movie paints a delicate portrait of Elvis and Priscilla’s difficult marriage, starring a shrewdly forged Jacob Elordi as The King, who at 6’5 towers over his petite, baby-faced co-star, Cailee Spaeny.
Stacey Battat on her costumes for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla
The movie additionally stars Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley
(Picture credit score: Images by Ken Woroner)
Tracing Priscilla’s journey from wide-eyed teen fan to spouse of probably the most desired man in Sixties America, the movie is about between the years of her first encounter with Elvis – they met when she was simply 15 and dwelling together with her household on a military base in Germany – to when she finally leaves him in 1979. By no means falling into the trite caricatures so many biopics are responsible of, Coppola’s story as a substitute unfolds in a extra gestural, woozy method, laying out evocative scenes of romance, loneliness and abuses of energy from behind the gilded doorways of Graceland.
The film was shot over a whirlwind 30 days on a shoestring funds, however regardless of restricted time and assets, Battat describes a heat and inventive vitality on set. ‘I feel I heard Invoice Murray describe Sofia like this as soon as: she’s very candy, very delicate, however she’s manufactured from metal,’ she says. ‘She usually begins with a temper board and it is actually a temper board. There aren’t any photographs of units, or of particular costumes, or something like that. For Priscilla, the temper is multifaceted. There was a photograph of them on their wedding ceremony day, which is loving, after which there was this [William] Eggleston picture that had this ennui. She lets all of the division heads develop from there.’
Remarkably, Battat had nearly 90 per cent of the wardrobe – together with a staggering 120 costumes for the principle characters – specifically made for the movie. ‘We had been making garments until the final shoot day,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve a tremendous crew – Ahmed, Julian, Yulia and Kat – who actually labored so exhausting and made so many superb garments. They had been stitching until the final second.’ Battat and Coppola additionally referred to as upon designers like Chanel and Anna Sui, in addition to impartial labels like Eòlas, to assist create the character’s distinctive appears to be like. Maybe probably the most particular of those commissions was Priscilla’s lace wedding ceremony robe, which was made by Chanel underneath the shut consideration of Virginie Viard utilizing photographs of the couple on their wedding ceremony day.
Whereas one problem was to indicate the altering fashions of the Sixties and 70s, Battat was additionally tasked with Priscilla’s visible transformation from an adolescent to a lady – and certainly, her waking from the teenage dream of Elvis to enterprise right into a actuality of her personal. ‘I did a variety of analysis,’ Battat says. ‘Tons. As a variety of this story is about behind closed doorways, I additionally did a variety of analysis simply into the style and colors of the period. For our Priscilla, we completely used a type of fuller skirt. As she bought older, I took somewhat quantity out of the crinoline. Then we moved into 60s silhouettes, after which from there into the 70s and pants, which I do assume helped her discover herself.’
‘I did a variety of analysis simply into the style and colors of the period,’ says Battat
(Picture credit score: Movie nonetheless, courtesy of A24)
In Coppola’s movies, typically it’s the visible textures of her scenes, somewhat than the dialogue, which converse the loudest. By way of Priscilla’s heavy champagne carpets and gauche furnishings; lavish procuring journeys and decadent outfits Elvis decides she ought to put on – in a single scene, laid out on the mattress with kitschy matching handguns – it’s instructed that in some ways Priscilla is simply one other of his shiny possessions. ‘After I give it some thought, I don’t know if he ever noticed her,’ says Battat. ‘I feel he was like, “That is what I need my ideally suited girl to be and I’ll assist you to turn out to be her”. And she or he needed to be that ideally suited girl.’
Regardless of this, Battat is conscious of the nuanced gray of their story – the great and the unhealthy. ‘I needed to be sure that [Elvis] was to be any individual that’s accessible to Priscilla,’ she says of his wardrobe, which was softer and extra home than his public persona. ‘I needed to indicate his humanity as a result of the truth is, he wasn’t an ideal particular person. She cherished him, he was loving, he was horrible. He was all of this stuff, which I really feel may be very human.’
Virginie Viard of Chanel recreated the marriage gown worn by Spaeny within the movie
(Picture credit score: Images by Philippe Le Sourd)
Whereas Coppola’s favorite look within the movie was a romantic blue satin gown worn by Spaney in a Vegas on line casino, for Battat, of all of the appears to be like, it’s this softer, human Elvis that she retains coming again to – specifically, a suave Valentino shawl-collar look Elordi wears on the couple’s first date. ‘He simply appears to be like so elegant,’ she says. ‘He appeared cosy, such as you needed to hug him or one thing. I cherished that look.’
Like the opposite dreamlike worlds Coppola and her crew are so expert at creating, beneath the saccharine great thing about all of it, Priscilla can be a story about womanhood in extraordinary circumstances. ’I simply assume it was extremely courageous of her to stroll away,’ Battat says. ’I used to be simply actually fascinated by that. It was a really totally different world, she grew up in a time when your largest aspiration to your daughter was to marry nicely. I used to be simply actually surprised by how courageous she was.’
Priscilla (A24 movies) opens in UK and Irish cinemas on 1 January 2024, with particular 35mm previews from at present (26 December 2023).
a24films.com
Coppola’s favorite costume from the movie, a romantic blue satin gown worn by Spaney in a Vegas on line casino
(Picture credit score: Movie nonetheless, courtesy of A24)
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