Before Kim and Kanye, Posh and Becks, or Britney and Justin, there was Elvis and Priscilla.
Sofia Coppola’s Hollywood biopic Priscilla, an official selection of the Venice film festival and soon to be released in the UK, tells the story of 1960s America’s first couple from the perspective of the young Miss Presley. Priscilla Beaulieu, who was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when she met Elvis, spent the first years of their relationship partying with the most famous man in the United States at night and wearing her uniform to attend a Catholic high school during the day.
The sharp cinematic portrait of an unequal marriage shows how Elvis used fashion as a tool to control Priscilla, transforming his wife into a feminine mirror image of himself, shaping his public image as the perfect couple. Priscilla’s light brown hair, first seen in a ponytail, was dyed black at Elvis’ instructions to match his own. He then collapses into a beehive, reflecting the height of his signature plume.
“This dress doesn’t suit you,” Elvis coldly tells Priscilla when she chooses a simple, earth-toned outfit at a boutique. “You’re a little girl. You should stay away from your prints, baby.” He buys her a baby blue, wasp waist dress and tells her she can’t wear brown because it reminds her of the military.
As the wife of a global heartthrob, Priscilla was envied by millions, but the film portrays her as a woman trying to assert her identity. Coppola described Priscilla’s script, based on her 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, as a love story. Priscilla praised the film, describing it as a “spot on”. However, Elvis’ estate, Elvis Presley Enterprises, turned down Coppola’s request for music rights, and as a result, no Elvis songs appeared on the soundtrack.
“The Priscilla you see on screen is Elvis’ fantasy of who he was,” says Stacey Battat, the film’s costume designer. “He had a very clear image of his ideal woman and he reflected that on Priscilla. “She lives like a queen but she has all the power.”
In one memorable scene, Priscilla lays out dresses in a variety of sugary, feminine colors on her bed. Each suit comes equipped with its own jewel-encrusted gun in a matching colour. It’s a beautiful visual metaphor for how clothes became a battlefield in the Presley marriage. Foreshadowing Priscilla’s eventual separation from the marriage is seen onscreen as we see her begin to buck Elvis’ tastes, wearing blouses and trousers instead of his preferred dresses, and swapping her signature beehive hair for Gloria’s straight, loose hair. Steinem-like center separation.
Tamara Deverell, the film’s production designer, called Priscilla “the story of women in North America told through hair and makeup.”
“Clothes are a very important part of storytelling,” adds Battat. “Costume design has historically been underappreciated in Hollywood; This is linked to the fact that it is often women’s work in a men’s industry. But Sofia values what costumes can add to character development.”
“You know the saying; Do you want a whore in your bedroom and a lady in your living room? It was Elvis. Priscilla was his ideal woman and he wanted her to remain intact. Battat says he has been with women who are completely different sexually. One of the ways Elvis establishes control over Priscilla is by repressing her emerging sexuality, insisting that his wife maintain her virginal, doll-like appearance, and refusing to have sex with her after their daughter becomes pregnant.
But Coppola and Battat also wanted to show the romance and affection that coexist with control and gaslighting in the stifling atmosphere of Presley’s mansion, Gracelands. “We know Elvis wore reading glasses, but he never wore them in public,” says Battat. “So we only showed her the way Priscilla saw her: the dapper Southern boy she was in love with, reading a book next to him in bed in a sweater and glasses.”
Battat created 120 looks worn by Priscilla, played by Cailee Spaeny. The film was shot in just 30 days, but the story spans 13 years, and Battat says, “The skyline is very important in giving the feeling of that timeline.” “In the first part of the movie, she wears a crinoline under her pleated skirt. Women still wear pleated skirts now; “What makes the pleated skirt look like it does in the 1950s is the fullness that comes from the crinoline worn underneath.”
Historical accuracy was balanced with “pieces that resonate now so they’re not too jarring to the modern eye,” he says. “So the heart necklace that Priscilla wears on screen is an item that she wears, too, and now it’s an item that girls will wear as well. So we made it more prominent because it’s so relatable and it works.”
A Coppola film is as much a fashion moment as it is cinematic. Her 1999 debut, The Virgin Suicides, portrayed a gaudy, girlish dreamscape that has been reflected in popular culture ever since. Coppola said she wanted Graceland’s interiors to look “like a wedding cake” on screen, and cited William Eggleston’s 1984 photographs of Graceland (with their unsettling close-ups of cool and saccharine velvet curtains and blown-up soft furnishings) as a visual reference.
Most of the costumes were made in-house, but Chanel, for which Coppola is a long-time ambassador, created a special white lace wedding dress for Spaeny based on photographs from the Presleys’ 1967 wedding.
Battat says that the process of making the film, which ends with 28-year-old Priscilla deciding to divorce Elvis, left him “astonished by Priscilla’s strength.”
“I can’t imagine how brave you must be to find it in yourself to walk away from all this.”
Priscilla opens in the UK on January 1st and in Australia on January 18th.