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This is how Austin Butler became the King of Rock’n’Roll


      “They ask me why I wear the clothes I wear,” Elvis Presley told the magazine. Elvis Answers Back in 1956. “What can I say? I like nice clothes, that’s all. I like the color and stuff. Is there something wrong with that?”

      Elvis, friend: nothing at all. Needless to say, the task of recreating one of the greatest costumes of the 20th century – and turning Austin Butler into Elvis in Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic of The King – is considerable.

      “It wasn’t enough to make Austin look like a carbon copy of Elvis,” says the production and costume designer for ElvisCatherine Martin. “That tended to absorb the soul of the man Austin was trying to represent.”

      The production had access to the Graceland archives, and although nothing of the original made it to the screen – “they’re like heirlooms” – Martin and his team had the opportunity to color-match the original pieces and take copious notes. Gene Doucette, who embroidered Presley’s original jumpsuits from the Vegas era, was also on hand to recreate his original designs.

      The most moving, however, was the clothes worn by Gladys, Elvis’s mother. “They were put in cardboard archival boxes with tissue paper, but when you opened the boxes you felt an overwhelming sadness come out of them. It was a vision of who she was. And the simplicity and the lack of clothes, as if she had never outgrown the poverty I lived in. It was really moving.”

      Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, capitalized on his protégé’s fame with related products: brooches, pins, medallions and bracelets. For Gladys they were a way of clinging to her son.

      “He kept them and carried them. There’s something very heartbreaking about that.”

      What is your favorite look and what were you trying to communicate with it?
      We are so aware of Elvis’ style that it has become the vernacular of the 1950s. Therefore, he is not so shocking, rebellious or punk [como parecía en aquella época]. Elvis was incredibly impressive. He was incredibly sexual. He connected and caused a youthful earthquake. The way he dressed, moved and represented himself on stage was incredibly shocking and conflicting. There was a brazen sexuality that had never been so exposed to all these young people.

      So Baz focused on finding a translation for all of this in the 1950s that still connects to the story of Elvis and his clothes, and what it felt like to see him at the time. And so, although it’s simple – there are four pieces, two front, two back, pockets, belt loops, zipper and a button – the pants took a long time to work on. He had to find exactly the right fall of the fabric, the width of the leg, the narrowing towards the hem, so that when he did “the wiggle”, that sensuality and sexuality would be evident.

      Those pants more than fulfilled
      Yes, they did, right?

      There’s a lot of Elvis to see, put it that way.
      We spend a lot of time in [los pantalones]. Although it seems quite simple, it is so difficult. I always think that the simplest things, because there is nowhere to hide, are the most complicated.

      Are there any details that you are particularly satisfied with?
      I think my favorite little Easter egg is in the Russwood scene, if you look at all the stock photos you will realize that for some unknown reason both Tom Diskin and Tom Parker are wearing identical shirts. In the film I copied the shirts identically. I found it very strange that this happened. That shows how crazy Colonel Tom Parker is. There are many famous photos of [el fotógrafo Alfred] Wertheimer of them on the New York train after Steve Allen [Presley había cantado ‘Hound Dog’ a un basset hound en la televisión nacional], and Tom Parker is on the train and he’s wearing the same suit on the train as he is in Russwood. And I thought maybe they didn’t have clean clothes and when they got to Memphis they thought, “We’re going to have to go shopping.” And he just bought two shirts in different sizes.

      What were the main challenges in getting the monkeys from Las Vegas? It seems like a huge amount of work.
      We had luck. I saw a copy of the ’68 special white gospel suit in the gift shop [de Graceland] And I thought, “That’s pretty good.” So I looked on the label and it was a company called B&K Enterprises. Anyway, I got to reading about them, but basically it was a couple who over the years had befriended everyone who was interested in the original suits – whether it was Bill Belew who was the designer on NBC’s special from ’68 who worked on Napoleon’s collar with Elvis and went on to design his suits, his assistant Gene Doucette who did the embroidery and designed some of the motifs and did the tacks on the suits, or the belt maker, or the tailor who actually made it – they had many many years of friendship, asked permission, collected this authentic know-how.

      So I finally went to Indiana and met with them and asked if they would be willing to work with us. They were an amazing resource on the monkeys. In fact, they know when everything was put on. In our film we jump around a bit, but we’re not trying to make a documentary, we’re trying to tell a story. Did we change things in terms of fit and in terms of proportion, just to bring that Elvis-Austin synthesis? Yes absolutely. But it was great to be able to get to the roots of the look.

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