Does fashion really dress like ‘The Devil Wears Prada’?
By Rachel Tashjian, CNN
When “The Devil Wears Prada” was released in 2006, it won over countless fans: critics adored how it spikily satirized the sudsy but serious business of fashion magazine publishing; Meryl Streep, playing formidable magazine editor Miranda Priestly, and costume designer Patricia Field (who also masterminded the looks on “Sex and the City”) earned Academy Award nominations; and the film grossed over $300 million.
But fashion insiders were not among the reverent. Not only did Anna Wintour, upon whom Miranda is based, ignore the 2003 book — “I cannot remember who that girl is,” she said to a colleague upon learning that her former assistant, Lauren Weisberger, was publishing a novel based on her time as the Vogue editor’s underling, according to Amy Odell’s 2022 biography “Anna” — but she glided above the film’s existence while nonetheless benefitting from its chilly portrait. (She eventually attended a screening — wearing Prada.)
The clothes, though, were a particular pain point for the industry. In 2006, The New York Times interviewed fashion figures who griped about the costumes, which comprised head-to-toe Chanel outfits and ladylike coats for Anne Hathaway as Miranda’s hapless assistant Andy, and several enormous furs and aviator frames for Miranda. Elle magazine’s then-fashion news director Anne Slowey deemed the clothes “a caricature of what people who don’t work in fashion think fashion people look like.”
Those inside Vogue’s office recall feeling the same: “We were terribly snobbish and disparaging about everyone else’s clothes, and particularly about anyone who attempted to portray the fashion industry,” said Plum Sykes, a longtime Vogue contributing editor.
“The Chanel boots that Andy wore, we all thought — this is a very English phrase — gopping error!” she added, referring to the over-the-knee shoes that Andy dons post-makeover, which inspired one of the film’s most quoted exchanges: “Are you wearing the…” her baffled rival, assistant Emily (played by Emily Blunt), sputters. “The Chanel boots?” purrs a victoriously coiffed Andy. “Yeah, I am.”
“We never would have worn a Chanel jacket, with the Chanel boots with the Chanel skirt,” Sykes said. “American Vogue at that time was really in the moment of personal style — capital P, capital S — where you broke up all the designers. So: the boot was a Manolo (Blahnik). Long, skinny Manolo, very high heel. The skirt was Prada. And then you might have thrown a Chanel jacket, with not too many logo buttons, over that. And then you might have put a vintage fur stole around the collar.”
The sequel’s costume designer Molly Rogers, who also worked on the first film as Field’s protége, described the costumes of the first film as “timeless,” adding that Field thought of them as “heightened reality.” The characters “only needed the framework of the fashion world. They weren’t loaded up with things.”
But in the two decades between “The Devil Wears Prada” and its sequel, which releases this Friday, fashion editors have come to look fondly on director David Frankel’s funhouse vision. Vogue has gone on a marketing bonanza for the sequel, with Wintour posing alongside Streep on the magazine’s May cover and attending the New York premiere. Odell, Wintour’s biographer, reported in her newsletter “Back Row” that the Vogue maverick even visited the set and suggested a change to the color of floral bouquets.
A spokesperson for Vogue clarified that there is no financial relationship between Disney (20th Century Studios produced the film) and Conde Nast (Vogue’s publisher), and that Vogue and Wintour are not incentivized to promote the film.
The success of the sequel (which is projected to make a nearly $200 million debut globally, according to The Hollywood Reporter) and the enduring appeal of the beloved original is all down to good timing, said Odell.
The 2006 movie arrived during the final high-flying days of the magazine business, cementing a picture of a seemingly untouchable era of lavish authority for Vogue and Wintour. “People were so afraid of Anna. She was so intimidating and so mysterious and very powerful. Magazine publishing was really rocking. She was at her peak: Apex Anna. (The film) squeaked in just before the recession, and obviously Condé Nast and the magazine industry never recovered from that.”
Now, both the fashion and publishing industries are struggling. “That gives brands more of an incentive to take part in this cultural phenomenon,” Odell said. “They’re glomming onto it because it’s guaranteed to be huge.”
Labels from Starbucks to Google Shopping have launched promotional tie-ins with the film; Old Navy is even selling a capsule collection that includes a replica of the saggy cable knit sweater Miranda degrades in her famous “cerulean” monologue. (When an industry is encouraging you to buy what it once made fun of — for $49.99! — you know it’s in trouble).
And fashion fanatics now consider the clothes iconic. Those “gopping” Chanel boots? According to The Cut, they retailed for $1,500 in 2006, and now sell for over $4,000 on resale site 1stdibs. The film’s aesthetic of maximalist opulence has also spread to other movies, with Field consulting on the costumes of Netflix’s “Emily in Paris,” and Rogers spreading the gospel of extravagance with the polarizing “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That.”
“I think the costuming in ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ both the original and the sequel, is more realistic now, because in the intervening years, a handful of stylists and editors have become influencers that have a similarly maximalist approach to getting dressed,” said Chelsea Fairless, who cohosts the “Every Outfit on Sex and the City” podcast (and runs its popular Instagram account) with writer Lauren Garroni. “And now I really think there is an assumption that a large part of the industry does dress like Law Roach (stylist to Zendaya) or Eva Chen (Instagram’s vice president of fashion partnerships) on a regular basis, and the film kind of reinforces that.”
According to Rogers, the rumors that designers and labels were reluctant to appear in the original movie for fear they might be blacklisted by Wintour isn’t quite correct: “There were just a handful of people.” But brands this time around were so eager to have their products included in the sequel that “it could have easily been a commercial.” In a hint that today’s audiences may take sides with Sykes and her old school Vogue colleagues, the first trailer met with controversy when Miranda was pictured wearing a pair of Valentino Rockstud heels, a shoe style that peaked in appeal over a decade ago.
Rogers says that someone from the marketing team put the shoes on Streep while she was off set, acknowledging that while the production was “extremely collaborative,” her creative vision didn’t always align with those “looking for eyeballs in marketing.”
For Rogers, part of her goal was to protect the integrity of what these characters would wear while balancing brands eager to collaborate on their own terms.
“A lot of houses are like, ‘No, you’re not going to get that look unless you do head-to-toe.’ That is not layered and meaningful to an actor or myself. That is a walking advertisement,” Rogers said.
Dior was more open. In the movie, Emily is now an executive at the French luxury house and is dressed throughout the film almost exclusively in its designs.
According to Rogers, the brand recognized Emily as “a character that has been established, she’s gotten this big promotion – mix and match away.” (Many of Emily’s looks, like a pinstripe jumpsuit over a logo blouse, are more in line with former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri’s feminist-goth aesthetic than the opulent pop vibe of Jonathan Anderson, who had only just taken the helm when filming got underway. Whether that’s a costume hiccup or a sartorial manifestation of her character’s villainous turn is up to the viewer).
Sykes, Fairless and Garroni, all of whom had not yet seen the film at the time of writing, remained underwhelmed by the many looks in the sequel’s various trailers. “I think they look exactly the same as they did before, despite the films being twenty years apart,” said Sykes.
It may be that outrageousness is more intelligible to most of us than carefully cultivated taste.
“I think most people in the fashion industry are a bit more pragmatic, and they just want a Charvet shirt and a pair of Prada loafers,” said Fairless.
But of course, audiences aren’t going to buy a ticket to see how fashion editors really dress, which often looks inscrutable, or even boring, to the outside observer. Today, fashion editors like Sykes, Harper’s Bazaar editor Samira Nasr or The Cut’s Jessica Willis are more likely to be seen in the cerebral sexy silhouettes of Alaïa, the quirky quietude of The Row or carefully hunted vintage than they are in Valentino Rockstud heels.
And they are not in the thrall of social media trends like quiet luxury: “I think we were all shocked to hear ‘Toteme’ in that final trailer,” said Garroni. In the closest we get to a makeover montage, Stanley Tucci’s character Nigel says Andy needs a two-piece set from Toteme – a label beloved by influencers for its the-Row-for-less appeal – as he’s pulling looks for her weekend trip to Miranda’s Hamptons house. Andy also convinces Nigel to lend her a stained-glass print dress by the queen of whispering understatement, Gabriela Hearst.
And while Miranda’s Dries Van Noten tassel jacket, which she wears to meet a team of corporate consultants brought in to cut budgets at Runway (the movies’ fictional Vogue-like magazine), seems a bit whimsical for a high-ranking magazine editor, Rogers said it serves as a storytelling device.
“She would wear it to meet pinstripe suits – the enemy,” Rogers reasoned of the costume choice. “It’s art versus commerce in that scene.”
Now, as the fashion world races to embrace the film that it once attempted to take down a peg, it finds itself indulging a vision of fashion that may not jibe with what its own power players deem in style.
The dominance of red carpet and social media, where nostalgia for earlier eras rules, means that fewer people today are learning about fashion from carefully styled magazine spreads that presented runway collections as news and inspiration. “Back then,” said Sykes, “if it’s already been seen, it was over with a capital O, and it’s not a trend unless it’s the next thing. With Anna, it was always, What’s the news?”
Rather than pushing forward an agenda of newness, the industry has eagerly hopped onto the bandwagon of what was once. The question is: who will tell us what to wear next?
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