{"id":123957,"date":"2023-12-15T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T14:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/?p=123957"},"modified":"2023-12-15T12:34:24","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T17:34:24","slug":"interview-costume-designer-stacey-battat-priscilla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/123957-interview-costume-designer-stacey-battat-priscilla\/","title":{"rendered":"Clothes Tell the Story: Costume Designer Stacey Battat on Priscilla<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the wan pastel prairie dresses of The Virgin Suicides <\/i>to the candy-colored 18th century finery of Marie Antoinette <\/i>to the aughts logomania of The Bling Ring<\/i>, the style in Sofia Coppola\u2019s movies is always brilliantly cohesive, capturing a distinct, ultrafeminine vibe like no other. Coppola\u2019s latest, the impressionist biopic Priscilla<\/i>, follows Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) from timid \u201950s teenager to wife of Elvis (Jacob Elordi) to, finally, a liberated woman, using gorgeous midcentury fashions to capture an often painful journey into the heady world of celebrity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Spanning from 1959 to 1972\u2014one of modern fashion\u2019s richest transitional eras\u2014Priscilla\u2019s wardrobe alternately includes prim \u201950s skirts, poppy \u201960s minidresses and swishy \u201970s bell bottoms. These evocative costumes are designed by Stacey Battat, Coppola\u2019s longtime collaborator. Battat and Coppola first worked together on Somewhere<\/i> and went on to do The Bling Ring<\/i>, A Very Murray Christmas<\/i>, The Beguiled<\/i> and On the Rocks<\/i>. When it comes to working with Coppola, \u201c\u200b\u200bThere\u2019s definitely a fluidity to the conversation,\u201d Battat says. \u201cWe share a visual lexicon.\u201d The director\/designer dialogue follows a similar template for every movie: \u201cShe sends the script and a mood board. Based on that, I send her more fine-tuned images of the clothes, and we go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Battat came to the movie without strong feelings about Elvis\u2019s mythology. \u201cI wasn\u2019t that familiar with Elvis and Priscilla,\u201d she says. \u201cMy parents were of the age that they could have liked Elvis, but they were more into The Beatles and Tom Jones.\u201d The film is based on Priscilla\u2019s 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me<\/i>, which, surprisingly, Battat avoided reading. \u201cI know which things came from the book, but I know them from our script,\u201d she says, noting that she prefers reading the script to the original source material so as to preserve Coppola\u2019s distinct vision. While Battat didn\u2019t speak with the real-life Priscilla directly, she was able to communicate with her through Coppola and Spaeny and found her \u201cvery insightful.\u201d Not only did she help Battat learn exactly when she shifted from conservative to daring (\u201cI understood through her when she stopped wearing stockings\u201d), Presley also gave crucial intel on Elvis: \u201cShe helped me understand that Elvis always came downstairs fully dressed. It was really important to see Priscilla\u2019s perspective of Elvis\u2014that he wasn\u2019t just a rock star and that he was someone that she had an intimacy with. He was the guy in bed next to her with his reading glasses. You don\u2019t ever see Elvis in reading glasses in photographs, but he did wear them.\u201d It\u2019s hard to believe there are aspects of Elvis we haven\u2019t seen, but these little details make The King seem more human.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Priscilla\u2019s memoir describes not just her romance with Elvis but also his troubling temper and many infidelities. Elvis\u2019s dark side manifests in the changes he demands in Priscilla\u2019s fashion, as he issues specific rules about how she should look\u2014in one memorable scene, he demands she dye her hair black, apply more eye makeup and not wear patterned dresses. \u201cShe didn\u2019t gain a lot of weight when she was pregnant,\u201d Battat says. \u201cShe ate very little because she wanted to stay Elvis\u2019s ideal, so that was like a costume choice.\u201d Priscilla had a huge wardrobe (Battat says she gave Priscilla around 120 costumes, while Elvis had around 90), but it was a conscious decision to make sure she didn\u2019t have new clothes when she was pregnant. For the most part, Battat chose not to reuse many of the costumes, as the film covers so many years and dramatic changes in Priscilla\u2019s life in just under two hours, but in this instance, outfit recycling became a narrative necessity. \u201cWe had her wear dresses that she had worn earlier,\u201d Battat says, \u201cso, she wore the same dress in the scene where they take LSD and later when she\u2019s pregnant.\u201d The sumptuous green dress captures the paradox of the \u201960s, signifying both the consciousness-expanding psychedelia of the era and the oppressive gender norms that were all too common.<\/p>\n

Elvis and Priscilla were one of the most photographed celebrity couples of their era, so Battat had a wealth of visual references to pull from. \u201cThere are historical things in our story, like when she waves goodbye to Elvis, their wedding and when she gives birth,\u201d Battat says. \u201cThere was an effort to keep those looks pretty consistent and close to what they were.\u201d But with Coppola\u2019s focus on the minutiae of womanhood, there were even more scenes that didn\u2019t<\/i> have corresponding available photos of the real Priscilla. \u201cWhen I think about the rest of it, it\u2019s more about the script and period appropriateness than it is about what she actually wore,\u201d emphasizes Battat. There\u2019s no way to know what she wore every single day, so for intimate scenes involving trips to the hair salon and hours of bedroom lounging (a Coppola signature), the designer took creative liberties, aiming to visually express Priscilla\u2019s emotional state while staying faithful to the distinctive fashions of the era.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Battat found verisimilitude in an unexpected place: the lingerie drawer. \u201cA big part of getting dressed and having something feel period appropriate is getting the foundations right,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not something you really think about, but a bra in 1959 is very different from a bra in 1970,\u201d she adds, pointing out that a \u201950s bra would be far more structured and padded than a \u201970s one. Battat used historically accurate undergarments to create a visual narrative: \u201cWhen Priscilla was younger and more innocent she always had a petticoat, which is indicative of the time, but it was a choice to have her skirt be puffier and have that silhouette that\u2019s a little more childish than a straight skirt.\u201d As the \u201960s progress, \u201cthe puff of the skirt gets diminished; then, she moves into short shift dresses and then into pants. It\u2019s working with the style of the time but also telling that story of how she was a girl and now she\u2019s independent. The choice to put her in pants, the choice to have her in petticoats in the early part, created that differentiation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even those with little interest in the subject likely have a basic sense of what typical \u201950s, \u201960s and \u201970s fashions look like based on the array of reference points from the time. Given this ubiquity, it can be challenging to create period looks that don\u2019t feel like they came straight out of a sock hop, hippie or disco Halloween costume kit. Battat avoided clich\u00e9 at every turn and learned about quirky new-to-her elements of \u201960s style. \u201cThere\u2019s a scene when she\u2019s leaving Las Vegas with Elvis, and she\u2019s wearing a two-piece polka dot outfit that bares her midriff,\u201d Battat says. In her research looking at \u201960s magazines, \u201cI saw an outfit like that in Vogue<\/i> that had two pieces with a full, more \u201950s-style skirt and a tighter cropped top. I was surprised when I saw that. I thought it was fantastic for a girl trying things out, like she got it in Vegas, and it was risqu\u00e9 for 1962.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Battat found much inspiration in contemporaneous clothing, she chose to mostly use custom-made rather than vintage pieces. \u201cWhen you\u2019re trying to be specific, it\u2019s more efficient to create the clothes as opposed to finding the clothes,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can\u2019t always find the thing that you\u2019re looking for, and sometimes it\u2019s easier financially to just make it.\u201d Getting the color scheme just right was particularly significant. \u201cSofia always said she wanted the sun to come out in Memphis,\u201d Battat explains. \u201cIn Germany at the beginning, you have her in colors like grayish pastel pinks, and when we get to Memphis those colors become more saturated and go from pink to coral to yellow. In the \u201970s you get blues and greens and purples.\u201d These color choices come from a mix of Battat\u2019s research (\u201cI always go to the Met to look at the fabric library if I\u2019m doing a period piece\u201d) and Coppola\u2019s poetic description of a coming-of-age story. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at Priscilla\u2019s inner experience growing up and trying on different identities through clothes,\u201d Battat adds, and the changing colors indicate both the specifics of an era and more ambiguous feelings.<\/p>\n

Collaborating closely with cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd was also key. Given the limited budget, Battat had to do sartorial problem-solving to make sure the outfits would show up on the screen just as she envisioned them. \u201cIn the Vegas scenes, we had only a small part of the room that was Vegas. It wasn\u2019t like Philippe could turn around 360 [degrees],\u201d she says. \u201cI knew he wasn\u2019t going to do a full-length shot because of the nature of what we had to shoot, so I tried to bring visual interest to the top of her outfit to let you see that she was more of an adult at that point.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With such thoughtfully designed outfits and precise cinematography, a budget-conscious shoot hardly feels like a limitation. Each of Battat\u2019s contributions grounds the story with looks that function as both retro eye candy and poignant portraits of a young woman caught between worlds. Priscilla is small and soft-spoken (Elvis pointedly calls her \u201cjust a baby\u201d when they first meet), and in some scenes she looks like a girl playing dress-up. Her outfits speak when she can\u2019t, and while they\u2019re sure to inspire many a social media post and fashion editorial, as is inevitably the case with Coppola and Battat\u2019s creations (her \u201950s choker necklace has already been replicated as high-end A24 merch), they will also make us think of an icon in a new way. By the end of the film, we may be rooting for Priscilla to choose clothes she knows Elvis won\u2019t like, but the decision is ultimately her own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the wan pastel prairie dresses of The Virgin Suicides to the candy-colored 18th century finery of Marie Antoinette to the aughts logomania of The Bling Ring, the style in Sofia Coppola\u2019s movies is always brilliantly cohesive, capturing a distinct, ultrafeminine vibe like no other. Coppola\u2019s latest, the impressionist biopic Priscilla, follows Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) from timid \u201950s teenager to wife of Elvis (Jacob Elordi) to, finally, a liberated woman, using gorgeous midcentury fashions to capture an often painful journey into the heady world of celebrity.\u00a0 Spanning from 1959 to 1972\u2014one of modern fashion\u2019s richest transitional eras\u2014Priscilla\u2019s wardrobe alternately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19682,"featured_media":123959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_column":0},"categories":[22826,4,9285,3407,9282],"tags":[24390,3388,24637,24626],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19682"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123957"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124011,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123957\/revisions\/124011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}