Costume designer dresses teen 'brand' thieves in 'The Bling Ring'


The Bling Ring's costume designer, Stacey Battat, on capturing the look of the movie's brand-crazed teens


The movie is based on the real-life escapades of five teens who break into celebrities' homes and raid their closets.

Photograph by: AP Photo , A24 Films, Merrick Morton

Sofia Coppola's new film The Bling Ring is a dramatization based on the real-life headlines and a Nancy Jo Sales's article in Vanity Fair about a group of five teenagers obsessed with the lifestyle of celebrities.

The teens used information on Internet gossip sites to track the whereabouts of celebrities like Megan Fox, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton so that while they were away from home, they could break into their houses and raid their closets.

The Bling Ring's costume designer, Stacey Battat, who also worked with the director on Somewhere, recently dished on dressing the larcenous Angelenos in Louboutins and luxury bags.

Q: Although the setting is recent, contemporary trends change so fast that The Bling Ring feels almost like a period piece. The costumes capture a moment in celebrity tabloid culture when coverage became 24/7, around 2008.

I think there's truth in that, although I think we were a little ambiguous about the time because we wanted them to wear Juicy (Couture) sweatsuits, but we also wanted them to have iPhones. And they weren't at the same time.

Q: You went to Kitson (an upmarket department store chain), ground zero for celebrity shopping snaps in the weekly tabloids. Did you do any other research?

I watched Pretty Wild, and I think just being in L.A. itself is really inspiring. I had lunch at The Ivy, and did things like, Greystone Manor. That's the inspiration for the girl coming out with the bottle and sparklers in the beginning of the movie. That really happened when we were there. We were all surprised; it was so crazy, none of us had that experience before.

Q: As the movie progresses, many of the clothes are stolen from celebrity closets. How much overlap was there with the costume, prop and production design departments?

There was a lot of overlap. We talked a lot about what kind of designers would be in each closet. Like Megan Fox had Rick Owens - and Miranda Kerr, we put the real Hervé Leger dresses that she wore to certain events because (the company) was very helpful and were able to pull them out of their archives.

That kind of stuff was staged in the closet. But then we also filled it with whatever they could find to fill it - stuff that was peripheral, not in the core plan.

We were really good at sharing between departments. In some movies, the prop guy would have the same dress but we obviously weren't a $50-million movie and didn't have multiples of all those expensive things. So we shared. It was a matter of being very well-organized.

Q: What was the approach to the wardrobe with Sofia?

She's very involved in the look of her movies. Sofia always has opinions about who her characters are going to be and what they're going to look and dress like. Originally, we had started talking and getting more into their psychology, and about how in a way they all kind of want to be the same thing in the end. But being moviemakers kind of outshines that idea and we decided they all should have different character traits and costume design.

Q: You did the Girls pilot and How to Make It in America, which is similar ensemble work.

I create storyboards for each character, with different details. Emma Watson's Valley girl (Nicki) has a very specific taste - we wanted her to feel like the quintessential Paris Hilton L.A. girl that maybe wanted to emulate that. As opposed to say Rebecca (played by Katie Chang), who we felt was maybe the most fashion conscious.

Q: Watson's holy grail is the Hervé Leger bandage dress, while Rebecca is all about Hermès. I'm guessing for that it helped to have some designer fashion connections, through Sofia. Even just all those rare, bygone limited-edition Monogram bags. (Coppola de-signed a Louis Vuitton bag and is close friends with the brand's creative director, Marc Jacobs.)

Those were loans. And I made the prop people a list of all the It bags of the past five or so years. It was kind of fun - I remember us going to dinner, me, Anne (Ross, production designer) and Sofia, and I brought the list and looking at it together thinking, "Oh yeah, remember those YSL bags? Remember when everyone carried a Balenciaga bag?"

It was kind of funny because even though Anne isn't as interested in fashion as Sofia or I would be, she still had that memory. We all knew what bag everyone in New York carried in 2009.

Q: The only guy in the group, Marc, doesn't carry an It bag, but I found his costume evolution the most pronounced. He starts off in baggy plaid shirts and old hood-ies but becomes more tailored - and the hoodies look like they're cashmere.

He is very interesting - he kind of had the most character transition, in terms of clothing. I tried to think of what a kid in L.A. who had all this money would do. I sourced Comme, Lanvin and Balmain shirts. I was saying something about his character arc there. He kind of is the most sympathetic character and I feel like we wanted him to seem like he was more insecure.

When you meet Nicki and Sam and Rebecca and Chloe, they're more confident - they dress a certain way and go hang out at these clubs, even though they're 17 and not old enough to drink, someone will bring them a bottle at the table. They aren't scared.

Before it all started Marc was a boy, and became something else. I don't want to say he became a man, but I guess he did. The thing with him, too, is that what was he getting in all this? When they went to the houses, the girls took clothes and bags they could wear, but what was he getting?

Q: Well he did get a trophy from Paris Hilton's Louboutin-filled closet: a pair of her candy floss, pink stilettos (spoiler) he wears later, in secret.

That's true, he got the shoes.

Q: Was there any kind of delicacy you felt you had to observe about how you were featuring certain brands? While the characters love and celebrate luxury items, the underlying message of the movie doesn't, necessarily.

The way I see it, and have always seen it, is that it's the stuff that girls covet. It's what you would want if you could afford it. And maybe sometimes tacky people like Chanel - but everyone likes Chanel. Chanel is a classy brand, which is why it filters down to someone who is not as classy and has less money.

There's a million ways to look at it, but I don't see it as the brands being portrayed in a bad light, just as something that people want.

The Bling Ring is currently in theatres.


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