From Big Wigs to Basic Blue Jeans, ‘Priscilla’ Artisans Talk Transforming Cailee Spaeny Into Priscilla Presley
variety.comCarole Horst In Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” Cailee Spaeny goes from a 14-year-old high schooler courted by Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), the most famous man on Earth, to a liberated woman freeing herself from an oppressive marriage to that same man (whose fame was somewhat eclipsed by that point).
Production designer Tamara Deverell, costume head Stacey Battat, hair department head Cliona Furey and makeup department head Jo-Ann MacNeil created looks that take Spaeny’s Priscilla on that long journey from schoolgirl on a U.S.
army base in Germany to Memphis, Tenn., where Elvis installed his future wife at his Graceland mansion, to her finding independence in early 1970s. “In the beginning, it’s pinks and soft textures, and the fuzzy sweaters,” says Battat, noting that the film spans 1959-1972 in 1 hour and 50 minutes, requiring lots of changes in silhouettes, hair and makeup — it’s an era of revolutionary changes in fashion. “I took the real photos of her and looked at them in a spectrum and then just kind of filled in the gaps and in my mind.
When she was a young girl in Germany, there was like a ’50s silhouette, but it was a younger silhouette with like a slightly fuller skirt.
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