It is hard to believe that the first The Devil Wears Prada was made 20 years ago, a year before the first iPhone was released. So much has changed. Social media has democratised narcissism and the sickly sweet smell of a new glossy magazine has been largely lost to digital publishing.
And now Runway, the Vogue-esque mag edited by the Anna Wintour-like Miranda, is losing its soul to uploading and posting instead of designing gorgeously styled double-page spreads.
Still, as Emily, Miranda’s former assistant and now Dior exec, says, “your bag, perfume and umbrella” still tells the world who you are. More crucially writer Lauren Weisberger and Aline Brosh McKenna are still writing the plot and an impeccably imperious Meryl Streep still plays Miranda.
With two films and a musical all having been spawned by her original autobiographical novel, Weisberger is approaching Nora Ephron levels of impact on the wider culture, although without the Jewishness of her original bestselling book of 2003.
In the films there is no hint that Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway, is a Jewish girl, nor that Miranda’s name was originally Miriam Princheck. I haven’t the foggiest if anything has been lost by these omissions. What works for a novel might well feel less of a virtue for a film. And anyway the fictional antagonist being linked to the real life non-Jewish Anna Wintour (Weisberger’s one-time boss) has done the franchise, as we must now call it, no harm.
Fans of the first Prada will be reassured that many of its ingredients are still present. The threshold of Miranda’s office is still a rubicon that is crossed at one’s peril. Stanley Tucci’s wise Nigel is her suave sidekick once again and Emily Blunt wittily reprises her ruthless Emily who has designs on returning to the magazine. It is all very well being in retail where the money is but Runway “tells people what to think” and you don’t get more status than that.
This reputation is under threat when a fashion house that has received a glowing feature in the magazine is revealed to be a sweat shop abuser of human rights. After winning awards for her campaigning journalism Anne Hathaway’s Andy is parachuted into the job of features editor to restore the publication’s reputation.
Trouble is, the publisher has made the appointment over Miranda’s head, who knows nothing about it when Andy walks into her office like a long lost friend. She is met by a scale of indifference that a glacier would find difficult to match.
It is no mean feat that director David Frankel rehashes a lot the conflicts and plot devices without the film feeling reheated. A trail of cameos from Lady Gaga to Donatella Versace adds to the sense that this is not only a movie to be seen, but to be seen in.
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