admin “I’ve always loved fashion, but I didn’t even realize about n°5 until I looked it up and realized that Chanel was this unbelievable designer,” Presley offered. “Those were the baby steps I took to fashion. I was never looking for what was on-trend; I wanted something that I felt comfortable in and that was my own style. I kind of got known for that.” Of the film’s sartorial arc, she added, “I learned a lot from Elvis, and what he learned from doing movies, and then I started to become comfortable in my own choices.”
Her wedding gown, too, has a backstory that would be all but impossible to pull off in the era of social media. “We wanted our wedding to be ours, and not a (circus), so I covered up and went on a hunt for a dress and I took Charlie Hodge, one of Elvis’s Memphis mafia, with me as my pretend fiancé,” Presley recalled. “I found one that I loved, that was simple—I didn’t want extravagant. I was so young; I wanted everything to be so perfect, and everything had to be so secret.”
As to coping with celebrity, she offered: “Fame has always been a bit difficult for me because I’m very private. It’s a lot to live by; it’s hard to embrace because the expectations are so high. You wind up going places where no one knows you, or else they are very discreet. I learned that from Elvis, and I do it even now.”
For Coppola, revisiting Sixties-era Memphis was a highlight. “I love all the reference photos of Priscilla, and how people dressed up at the time, with the shoes that matched the bag. A big part of it was the sets and the costumes, and (Spaeny’s) evolution from a 14-year-old to a 29-year-old. (Costume designer) Stacey Battat just did an amazing job with where the characters are, emotionally, with palette changes as she goes from winter in Germany to vibrant Memphis, or when she kind of defiantly wears print.”
The Chanel influence even permeated the set, she added.
“When I started making films, Karl Lagerfeld was really kind and encouraging, and that meant a lot to me because I’d known him since I was a kid,” she said. “He had so many creative people around him, and he did so many things in so many creative outlets—the way his whole team worked together from his drawing to the final show really made an impression on me; Chanel had this real family atmosphere. Virginie continues that today: it’s exciting to walk into the studio and be a part of it, and that’s something I also try to do on my sets.”
To that end, NYFW is set to lift the curtain on Coppola’s world a little more: the filmmaker’s first book, Archive, which retraces her methods, references, and never-before-published behind-the-scenes pictures spanning Virgin Suicides (1999) to Priscilla, will launch officially next week.
