If you are trying to make elders out of just one or multiple villagers I use a system that helped me out.

I dress all the men in white and the ladies in red (the short outfit) and the ones I plan on making Esteemed Elders are dressed just the opposite.

This saves time in tracking them down (they stand out) when they are not at their stations and does help in getting them quickly to another station when they've mastered one.

You could dress all the regular villagers (males and females) in the same color, and dress all the elder-candidates (male and female) in a contrasting color.

There are several clothing combinations that people can use. It all boils down to what works for them.

The white (males) and red (females) clothing works for me.

Some on this forum dress all their doctors up in all-white, to make them easy to spot.

I use a system to denote what skills the villagers have mastered - got sick of trying to read the progress bars! - so now i change their name so that they have a "surname" which is made of the initial letters of the skills they have mastered.

It works for me!

Then when they get to be Elders I change their surname to Elder so I know!

I dress my elder hopefuls in green and once they become an elder i dress them in white.
My doctors I put in white and black. hmmm,,, I just realized that all my doctors are men!! I will have to change that real quick!