How Legally Blonde Prequel Elle Unveils a Teen Tastemaker

Origin stories aren’t just for superheroes. They’re also for the super fashionable.

Prime Video’s new series Elle introduces viewers to Elle Woods, Reese Witherspoon’s California girl turned Harvard Law student in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde, as a high school junior circa 1995. Played by Lexi Minetree, teen Elle experiences adversity for the first time in her pastel-pink life when her family moves to Seattle, and she struggles to befriend her flannel-clad classmates. While the series plants the seeds for Elle’s future subverting expectations as a lawyer (she exposes corruption in her school district), production designer Laurin Kelsey lays the groundwork for something her counterpart on the film, Missy Stewart, had always felt strongly about: “She loved that Elle, as a character, was not just stylish in her fashion, she was very forward-thinking,” Kelsey says. “Elle was ahead of the trend.”

That notion became the inspiration for Elle’s bedroom, where the “matchy-matchy patterns” of the ’90 were largely avoided, Kelsey says, save for Laura Ashley bedding. “I thought, ‘Oh, she’s brave; she would upholster her bench in a Chanel-esque fabric, or she would only have one or two floral patterns and a little fringe and she would be embracing some of the more bold solids that came in the 2000s,” Kelsey explains. “I wanted her to have a little edge on everyone.”

Kelsey inherited a foundation from her predecessor on the series, Rachel O’Toole, but it was up to her to fill the space. She developed a palette of six pinks, which set helpful boundaries for the set decorating team and ensured that Elle, wearing her signature raspberry, would rarely fade into the background of more subdued shades. “To me, Elle is this little beam of pink glowiness,” Kelsey says. “Part of picking the pinks was making sure that we feel her spread her pink personality around her to her bedroom, her locker, or anywhere else that she’s going, but that she always pops out from it.”

Purple was chosen as the bedroom’s accent color, which meant they jumped on a light lilac Womb chair they spotted on Facebook Marketplace—knowing it’d be a nod to the pink one Elle owns in the movie. “Missy Stewart said that was a really important piece for Elle because it marked the mid-century modern resurgence that was coming,” Kelsey says. “So I thought, ‘Okay, we get to see her in Bel-Air at the start of the series, where it’s more of a frilly princess bedroom. When she moves to Seattle, she’s realizing that individuality is really important. Maybe Seattle is where she starts to embrace vintage finds, and not everything is a brand-new purchase.’”

The team secured a pink Womb chair for Season 2, which has already wrapped filming, she adds. “We imagined she reupholstered it, and then took it to college and eventually Harvard,” Kelsey says. “With things like this, we want to create this evolution so that you can really track who she is: These are the stages of her life, and these are the things she left behind or took when she went to the next one.”

Something else that marks her move to Seattle is the arrival of puppy Bruiser. He has his own set of stairs to Elle’s bed that mimic the main staircase in the home as well as his own upholstered bed in Elle’s room, a second custom bed downstairs that Elle’s mother (played by June Diane Raphael) had made to match her living room sofas, and a scalloped lacquer serving tray from Mark & Graham.

In addition to an open closet where Elle’s wardrobe from costume designers Sophie de Rakoff and Sara Byblow can be the star, the bedroom suite also features the TV/VCR combo and clear phone that teen Kelsey always wanted in her room but never got and a collection of ‘90s CDs (Mariah Carey, Alanis Morrissette, Sarah McLachlan) that the production designer purchased at the Vancouver Flea Market for about $1 each the weekend before shooting began in Canada. Numerous books on fashion adorn the shelves, including one entirely on buttons. Elevated ruched lampshades abound (“Even on a more modern lamp, it just goes ‘90s,” Kelsey and set decorator Kate Marshall agreed.) And a large bulletin board showcases pictures of heartthrobs, trends, and friends.

“Teens back then didn’t have our phones all the time to remind us of the things that mattered,” Kelsey notes. “It was so popular to have a lot up on your walls. For Elle, because she’s really structured, we isolated it to that one space.”

The bedroom wasn’t the only set that needed to feel very Elle. Everyone who’s seen Legally Blonde knows that Miss Woods considers Cosmopolitan her personal Bible. In the Season 1 finale, she gets an internship at the magazine’s fictional Los Angeles headquarters, which were constructed in an empty marketing office. “We had to be very aspirational when thinking what that could look like, and one of the key things you’re supposed to feel when she goes there is, this is where she belongs. She looks right at home. She fits in the palette. It’s glowy like her. It’s got sparkle like her. This is her mothership,” Kelsey says.

A large raspberry pink velvet sectional, rented from Acme Prop Shop, was both reminiscent of a beautiful lipstick sofa and in concert with Elle’s budding MCM taste. “We leaned right into letting it feel one step ahead of where things actually were at the time,” says Kelsey, who paired it with dreamy velvet Designers Guild pillows from Chintz & Company and a hand-hammered gold cocktail table by CB2 that’s covered in some of the many faux Cosmo issues created by the series’ graphics department.

The glass-walled conference room is staged with a custom table that sports a splash of ‘90s color with a metal inlay in Elle’s signature raspberry. An oval Esperilux chandelier purchased off Wayfair hangs above it. In another room that’s lined with floral Blossom accent chairs from Canadian shop Structube and a wall of heels and purses curated as an ode to Cosmo’s cover palette, a tiered chandelier of more cascading K9 crystals illuminates an island full of accessories.

The props team was tasked with selecting the jewelry that Elle and the other Cosmo interns handle as they compete for the chance to help style Melrose Place star Heather Locklear for the 1996 Golden Globes. Spoiler alert: Elle’s idea for a daring slit and side cutouts in a slinky silver number is a winner. “There was a lot of research into what she actually wore with that dress,” Kelsey says, “and then we reverse engineered what was going to be around to make those stand out.”

While it’s not as glamorous as the Cosmo offices, the Rainforest Café set where Elle organizes a memorial is another surprising showstopper. Someone recently told Kelsey that they’d read the sequence was filmed at one of the theme restaurant’s approximately 20 remaining locations. Not so. The crew built an elaborate jungle inside an old, empty dive bar in Vancouver. “No one believed me when I saw it, but it has these beautiful brick arches, and I kept saying, ‘These remind me of trees going up,’” Kelsey says.

The elephants were a 3-D model that was laser-cut, sculpted, and painted by her people, while the majority of the other wildlife was sourced. The animal stools are authentic, ordered from whoever produces them for the chain. Vines were attached to a chicken-wire ceiling grid by a greens team whose efforts would make Elle proud.

“Everyone did an outstanding job in there,” Kelsey says. “We did not just go to a Rainforest Café. I want people to know that. If we had one in Vancouver, we probably would have, but we don’t.”