Reading about Sofia Coppola’s young-girl life, we learn just how much time the entire Francis Ford Coppola family spent away from their home in California’s Napa Valley.

Coppola is styled by Karl Templer in an abundance of Chanel Haute Couture in images by Steven Meisel [IG]. Additional luxury names include Dries Van Noten, Hermes, Prada, Schiaparelli and more. Spectacular jewelry is from Cartier.

After the first few paragraph’s of the director’s W Magazine Originals 2023 interview with Lynn Hirschberg in New York, Anne muttered “she sounds like an army brat”.

That’s exactly how Sofia Coppola described herself a few words later:

“I was like an Army brat—always going to different schools in different towns. All that moving around has helped me: I’m good at being in new situations all the time. And it’s one of the reasons why I can relate to Priscilla. She actually was an Army brat.”

Priscilla Presley is the focus of the younger Coppola’s new film Priscilla, in theaters November 3.

Presley’s memoir, Elvis and Me, with ‘me’ played by American actor Cailee Spaeny, tells the story of Elvis and Priscilla Presley from their first meeting on a military base in Germany to the end of the marriage 14 years latter. The tabloid-making, divorce-decision headline was Priscilla’s decision.

Nothing about the marriage was ordinary. Priscilla was age 14 when she met Elvis and age 17 when her parents agreed to let her live at Elvis’ home Graceland.

“By day, Priscilla went to Catholic school in Memphis for her senior year, and at night she would party with Elvis,” Coppola continued with Hirschberg.

Today the Memphis Graceland ‘home’ is a 200,000 square foot entertainment complex with museums, restaurants, gift shops and more. For under $20, you can buy both a Graceland picture frame and a set of coasters.

Millions of women can relate to the director’s reflection about her own young woman’s life. Pining for a young man who wasn’t interested in her, Coppola says she can relate to Priscilla’s short-term lack of need to develop her own self-identity because it was so much easier to be the girlfriend of some guy and assume his identity.

Coppola says that Priscilla lost her identity in Elvis’ persona for those 14 years. In reality, having met him at such a young age, she never worked internally to understand her own value in her own eyes.

We should underscore the reality that woman as helpmate is exactly how most institutions, including monotheistic religions with a male God, have defined women’s roles.

No offence is intended to the LGBTQIA community, but women’s roles have been since monotheism to bear his children, run the household, support the church and be active in related civic communnities that support that hierarchy.

AOC skips over much more interview dialogue about the film to Sofia’s fashion world choices. In addition to Priscilla, there’s her book Sofia Coppola Archive 1999–2023, which is a collection of photos taken on the sets of all her films. Note that Chanel cohosted the book publication party with W Magazine on September 24.

Coppola also has her capsule collection for Barrie, the Scottish cashmere company owned by Chanel. WWD announced the collab in June, but didn’t note that Barrie is owned by Chanel since 2012.

Writing about about Bruno Cucinelli’s humanism philosophy this week, I noted in my research that his significant investment in Cariaggi Lanificio SpA and Cucinelli’s supplier of the finest cashmere was extended to 49% ownership with additional investment by Chanel.

Sofia Coppola is a Chanel ambassador, so of course she is creating a cashmere capsule for Barrie, a brand she says she has long loved. WWD reminded readers that Chanel has invested in over 40 suppliers for years — a trend they share with LVMH and probably Kering.

Closing out the Lynn Hirschberg interview with Sofia Coppola, the director shares that she visited Graceland when her father was filming The Rainmaker in Memphis.

“Truthfully, I was never that interested in Elvis,” she said. “I liked that he was committed to style, but his personality didn’t intrigue me at the time.”

Sofia Coppola was far more interested in Priscilla Presley.

“I was so impressed that Priscilla left Elvis,” Coppola explained. “She was always trying to be his fantasy, his ideal woman. I think about my mom’s generation and how hard it was to be independent. Women without any power or money at that time had nothing when they left their husbands. Priscilla had courage, and that seemed, to me, to be a universal theme.”