‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Is a Smash Hit, but its Success Reflects the Humbling of Luxury Fashion

In the summer of 1981, a letter was published in New York magazine, responding to a gushing article in the previous issue heralding the appointment of their brand new fashion editor, Anna Wintour. “‘It’s apparent that your new fashion editor who ‘spends every spare dollar shopping’ should save a great deal of money quickly and find a hairdresser,” wrote Pat Hornafus of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. The letter serves as a reminder that while, 45 years ago, the fashion and media industries may have been run along simpler lines, with more clearly defined metrics and fewer communication channels, times were no less cutting.Ms. Wintour is still going strong as Vogue’s global editorial director and Condé Nast’s chief content officer, at the age of 76, but given the daunting challenges presently facing legacy magazines and luxury fashion, the condition of her sleek brown bob must be the least of her worries.Recently Ms. Wintour has roared back into wider public consciousness with the release of “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the sequel to the 2006 hit movie, starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a thinly-disguised Anna, and Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, loosely based on the experiences of former Vogue assistant Lauren Weisberger who wrote the bestselling 2003 novel its based on.When we last left Andy at the end of the first “Devil Wears Prada” film, she had quit Runway magazine to become an investigative journalist at the New York Mirror — a scene filmed at the old office’s of the Sun, no less. Indeed Andie Sachs’ new media employer in the first film was originally supposed to have been called “The New York Sun,” not the “Mirror,” but that’s another story.The sequel has been something a smash hit and is close to grossing $100 million after less than a week in release. Only a dedicated hermit could have failed to miss the release of the film given the countless think pieces it has inspired about the state of fashion and media — questions the movie itself lightly examines — and more commercially, the lucrative movie tie-ins with the likes of Starbucks, Diet Coke, Samsung, and even Tweezerman.Unlike for the first film, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” has also been embraced by Vogue, the initial target of its satire, with Ms. Streep and Ms. Wintour even posing on the cover of the magazine. Ms. Wintour filmed a cameo for the picture, which somewhat embarassingly got edited out because according to its director, David Frankel, she missed her cue. Ms. Wintour has therefore not so much changed her tune but remixed an entire repertoire. It’s fair to say she was originally, and understandably, not a fan of the film. Barbara Amiel reported in 2006 for the Telegraph that Ms. Wintour reputedly said “The Devil Wears Prada” would “quickly go into DVD. Mr. Frankel recalled to Entertainment Weekly his awkward encounter with Ms. Wintour some years after its release: “I was at a tennis tournament in Miami…seated behind her, and when it was over, I made the effort to introduce myself. ‘I’m David Frankel, the director of “The Devil Wears Prada,’ and [she took her] hand out of [my handshake]!” Now the trend has sashayed full circle and it is he who has cut her out of the sequel.Yet this time round Ms. Wintour had no choice but to deploy Vogue as a marketing appendage for the picture. Unlike in 2006, this is the age of the fashion influencer, not the fashion editor. Partly accounting for the success of the film is that it recognizes we now live in a world where fashion gets dicatated on Instagram by the masses far more than it does by a coterie of select tastemakers. The stakes are much higher in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” even at times existential. If the first film was a Cinderella story set in a world of crashing snobs, the sequel, in chronicling “Runway”‘s struggles and the digital-driven pressures facing creative industries, questions whether there will still be a ball at all.Anna Wintour. Craig Barritt/Getty Images for The Mark HotelNot only does “The Devil Wears Prada 2” face up to the fact that fashion is more niche in 2026, in more welcome news for us mere mortals, it presents the Fashion Gods as being nicer, owing to their straitened circumstances. For much of my early journalistic career, I covered fashion parties for a UK lifestyle magazine and the rudeness and absurdity of so many fashionistas will be forever engrained in the memory — Post Tramautic Style Disorder, you might say.To take one example; in 2008 I was assigned to cover a Met Gala after-party co-hosted by the late designer Giorgio Armani at the Bungalow 8 nightclub in downtown Manhattan being held for the actor George Clooney’s birthday. I was instructed by Giorgio Armani’s representatives on earth that I should arrive at the venue at ten past midnight. This struck me as being a tad on the late side so I arrived at 11.45 PM and promptly got shouted at by one of his minions for the time lapse, having to wait outside until 12.10 AM. A bonus of being denied entry until after midnight was that it enabled me to see who got into Mr. Clooney’s party and who didn’t: Jared Kushner and Ivana Trump, then dating, were among those unable to get into Mr. Clooney’s shindig. In contrast to the charmlessness of the Armani fashion goons, the pair responded with grace to being turned away, quietly heading into the night.On another occasion, attending a New York theatre opening of “Macbeth” in the summer of 2014, coincidentally starring Kenneth Branagh, who engagingly plays Miranda Priestly’s husband in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” I happened to see Ms. Wintour’s sunglasses fall out of her bag as she walked down the stairs after the opening night performance at the Park Avenue Armory. To say that all hell broke loose among her two assistants, as they scurried on the staircase to pick them up, would be an understatement.Over a decade on, that veneer of aristocratic elitism has been mugged by financial reality, replaced by something approaching humility, as it becomes all too apparent fashion is no longer the omnipotent imperial force its exponents have previously liked to pretend it is. In this “Devil,” there are no snobbish references to working at TV Guide magazine or threats an assistant will be fired if she doesn’t procure an advance copy of a runaway bestseller. In a special magazine edition of “Runway,” produced by “The Devil Wears Prada”‘s backer 20th Century Studios to tie in with the film’s release, “Andrea Sachs” admits, “Luxury retail is the only sector of the fashion business still making money. It’s unattainable or unsustainable for most people, but it has continued to grow.”Instead the mood of the sequel is elegaic wistfulness at the good old days receding into view. Our reviewer Carlos Sousa noted the sequel’s “larger palette and frenzied story also reflect the wider, often muddled times, with several contrasting themes tried on like prospective outfits.” The film’s breezy surface soon gives way to exposing the cracks in the creative industries and credit is due to Mr. Frankel’s assured direction and eye for New York — he is, after all, the son of another media titan, the late New York Times editor Max Frankel — as well as Aline Brosh McKenna’s frenetic screenplay, which in navigating a media industry’s decline, has more in common with her 2010 TV satire “Morning Glory” than it does with the first “Prada” film.In the film’s best scene, Miranda Priestly tells her erstwhile assistant Emily, played by Emily Blunt, “You’re not a visionary, you’re a vendor.” Anna Wintour’s legacy at Vogue will certainly be regarded as visionary. But ironically “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” while ripping several plot points from real-life situations and developments at Vogue in recent years, has adjusted to changing times far better than the magazine that inspired it. The ill-judged recent Met Gala suggests fashionistas remain confused how to chime with the times. Meantime, the ongoing considerable appeal of “The Devil Wears Prada” provides a rare instance of a trend that Ms. Wintour wound up being unfashionably late to adopt.

‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Is a Smash Hit, but its Success Reflects the Humbling of Luxury Fashion

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