FLANNELS THINKS:

HOW SOFIA COPPOLA HAS KICKSTARTED A YEAR OF GIRLHOOD

WORDS: MARNI ROSE MCFALL, GRAPHICS: HOLLIE MAE HOMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY: JEREMY FRENCH AND GETTY IMAGES

Priscilla. Sofia. Pink. Bows. Julia Fox. And boygenius. Welcome to girlhood.

Over the past few years, the conversation has been dominated with discussions of all things girly. And in 2023, it reached fever pitch. Largely spurred on by the release of the Barbie movie and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, culture got girly. We saw the explosion of trends like girl math and girl dinner across social media, and we became obsessed with reclaiming girly girl style. Women everywhere were putting bows in their hair, re-watching their favourite childhood TV shows and swimming in deep pink pools of nostalgia. And if you thought it stopped in 2023? You thought wrong. Because the girls are just getting started. 2024; it’s girl year. It’s girl world. And if you find yourself wondering, where exactly does girlhood go in a post-Barbie cultural landscape? Don’t worry. Sofia Coppola has all the answers.

There’s a level of icon status that few directors reach. Where merely their name is enough to conjure images of their directorial style. You hear Quentin Tarantino, and you picture bold colours, brash violence and, likely, some feet. You hear Baz Luhrmann, and you picture flashing lights, high-octane glamour and probably, some Prada. You hear Sofia Coppola? You picture pastels, prairie dresses and a fair deal of teenage angst. You picture girlhood.

Her directorial debut, the everlastingly tragic The Virgin Suicides, brought the girlhood discourse to the table back in 1999. Marie Antoinette was a candy-coated, high-femme historical epic that re-centres a woman who is often reduced to a mis-quote. The Bling Ring charts the dissatisfaction of bored, bratty suburban kids obsessed with fame and fashion. Coppola’s films depict a very accurate, albeit stylised, suffocation, of what it means to be a young girl and what it is to come of age. And the stories she tells are never simple.

It's no wonder then that the release of Coppola’s most recent film, Priscilla, has caused such a stir. The biopic, which follows the life of Priscilla Presley, was released in early January to widespread critical acclaim. Charting the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley, who met when Priscilla was fourteen and Elvis was twenty-four, the movie is based off Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. It’s a film about girlhood, about self-discovery, and finding yourself. It’s about the dark side of fame, isolation and loneliness. It's a film that teeters on a tightrope between a teenage dream and an adult’s nightmare.

Starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis, Priscilla is a story about a woman married to the most famous musician of all time who, in the end, chooses herself over him. But at its core it’s a film about girlhood and self-discovery. Speaking to Tavi Gevinson back in 2013 for the now-defunct teen blog Rookie (honestly, the blog, and this interview are sparkling symbols of girlhood in and of themselves), Coppola explained: “I always like characters who are in the midst of a transition and trying to find their place in the world and their identity.” While this article was written a decade before the release of Priscilla, it pinpoints the sense of transience and self-discovery that runs throughout the film.

The real life Elvis and Priscilla, via Getty Images

As so many of Coppola’s films are, Priscilla is a fashion fever dream, and so much of the self-discovery that occurs in the film is explored through fashion. When we’re introduced to Priscilla, she’s a lonely teenage girl in Germany and her youth is clearly cued through her costuming. There’s the pastel scarf, the plaid school skirt and the messy fringe, all of which hint at her naiveté, especially next to the bolshy glamour of how Elvis is dressed.

This sense continues throughout the film. As the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis progresses, we see the development of the style that is now iconic. That all-out ‘60s liner, lashes and big, big hair, is instantly recognisable as being purely Priscilla. But there’s also a prevailing sense of uncertainty, reflecting the character’s interior instability, which is where the favourite accessory of girlypops everywhere comes in: the bow. Throughout the film, Priscilla wears bows in girlish pastel hues and they’re often comically large. She wears them in her school years, and she wears them as she’s pregnant. A clever inclusion from Coppola given fashion’s fascination with the humble bow? Absolutely. But it’s deeper than that. Each bow that sits affixed to the dresses she’s wearing serves as a visual reminder that she’s just a girl. Later there’s a scene of her trying on multiple dresses for Elvis and his ‘Memphis mafia’. The dresses are in different styles: cool blues, loud prints, chic blacks. With each dress she tries on, it’s like she’s trying on a different version of womanhood, a different kind of life. She is being offered a moment to figure out what kind of woman she will become.

As the sixties fades into the seventies, Priscilla returns to herself and the change in her look symbolises this. She tones down: the sharp black beehive gets relaxed into soft wavy looks in a shade of warm brown that’s similar to the natural hair colour we see in the beginning of the movie. It’s lighter and it feels more authentic. Her exterior reflects the development of her character. Her grip on girlhood prevails but she is becoming more of a woman.

No matter when Priscilla was released, it was inevitably going to capture the culture. It’s too important of a story not to. But it’s come at exactly the right moment. Because right now, we are obsessed with the past. Perhaps that’s where the girlhood fascination has its roots: we’re all looking back, remembering what once was, reviling and reliving. And Sofia Coppola is too. At least that’s what the release of the book Sofia Coppola: Archive seems to indicate.

Delving into her iconic catalogue, Sofia Coppola: Archive, comes at a time where Gen Zs are discovering her films for the first time. Nostalgia is to culture what petrol is to cars: a driving force. Nothing feeds creativity like looking back at by-gone eras and forgotten aesthetics. Lately, both Y2K and Indie Sleaze have been hot topic. The two trends span a 13-year period, and young Gen Zs who weren’t around the first time have driven a fully-fledged revival of each era.

Indie Sleaze, specifically, is enjoying a serious moment right now. Brought back into the lexicon by trend forecaster Mandy Lee, who’s better known by her username, @OldLoserInBrooklyn. The term refers to a period of the late aughts and early 2010s where Chloë Sevigny, Sky Ferreira, and Alexa Chung ruled the world, glossy disco pants were the height of fashion and Perfect by Princess Superstar soundtracked every party. And it’s an aesthetic Sofia Coppola has huge ties to. Read: Scarlet Johansen’s pink hair in Lost In Translation as her head tips back against a zebra print wall and the gritty, dirty aesthetic of The Bling Ring. It’s the flip-phone selfies posted to Facebook with a disgracefully glaring flash. It’s Claire Julien’s mugshot with smeared kohl eyeliner and Emma Watson’s oversized sunglasses.

Maybe it’s because both those films follow the messy interior lives of young women, or the fact that young women largely make up their fanbase, but there’s something very girlhood coded about Indie Sleaze. It’s about coming of age against the mess. Those who were there the first time around are romanticising simpler times where they spent their evenings cross-legged, re-blogging stills from Lost In Translation. And those who weren’t? They’re living vicariously through a previous generations experience of girlhood.

Street style image of a girl wearing a dress and ballet flats

Now, if you think we’re overstating the significance of girlhood because of some ribbons and one movie? Just take a look at the key fashion trends of the moments. It’s all about bows, ballet flats and cherry red. They’re trends that feel reminiscent of our childhoods and the fashion world can’t get enough. Fashion’s favourite data source, Data But Make It Fashion, reported that interest in ballet flats has increased steadily by 20 per cent in the past year. According to data from Pinterest, searches for ‘bow outfit’ have increased a 190 per cent in the past year, while searches for ‘bow necklace’ have increased 180 per cent. The hashtag ‘balletcore’ has amassed 1.4 billion views on TikTok and the hashtag ‘bows’ has 1.3 billion views. But higher than both of those? Is the hashtag ‘girlhood’ which has a massive 2.9 billion views.

And as far as reclaiming girlhood in fashion goes, Julia Fox may just be the poster girl. Read: her speaking to Vogue about beauty. “The version of me who wanted to look hot for guys just does not exist anymore… I don’t subscribe to the patriarchal notion that women should try and look beautiful”. She delved further into the topic on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, explaining: “Men hate my outfits. They’re so mad that I’m not like how I was on Uncut Gems. I hear that all the time, but I don’t care… because the girls love it”. Fashion for the girls, by the girls? We’re into it.

Another collective who are re-negotiating the terms of girlhood? boygenius. The indie super ground, which is made up of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, released their debut album, the record last year to widespread critical acclaim. It shot straight to number one in the UK and a slew of Grammy nominations quickly followed. boygenius is an all-female, queer-identifying rock band, and their presence is re-defining the rules of that genre. Read: the band’s Rolling Stone cover, where they referenced a classic 1994 Nirvana shoot. They’re approaching the formally male-saturated industry with a clear message: rock and roll is for the girlies too.

Where boygenius is concerned, there’s clear references to both Coppola and Priscilla. For a photoshoot for the L.A. Times, the boys donned regency-core costumes that felt like they were plucked directly from Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. And then, there’s the Bridgers track, Graceland Too. The song is inspired by Graceland, the iconic home of Priscilla and Elvis Presley. But rather than being an homage to Elvis in any of his forms, it’s a love letter to girlhood and female friendship. It features the following lyrics: “she could do anything she wants to; she could do whatever she wants to do, she could go home, but she’s not going to.” Some 50 years after Priscilla walked the empty halls of that mansion as a young schoolgirl, Bridgers uses the imagery of the Graceland mansion to explore life, freedom and of course, girlhood.

Girlhood is evolving. It’s not just pink. There’s no aesthetic to fit into, no right way of doing it. It’s thoughtful and subjective. It’s reinvention of ourselves, our lives, and a reclaiming of our narratives. It’s re-writing fashion, prioritising playfulness and revelling in the beauty of yourself. In the trailer, we hear Priscilla utter the words: “I want a life of my own”. This is girlhood. Choosing our own lives, the freedom that so often gets lost. It’s choosing the girlhood we were told not to love. It’s about choosing yourself.