Mild spoilers ahead. We hope you’ve watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 by now (or at least stumbled upon some of the stylish chatter on Insta). Still, let’s recap. The 2006 OG movie was a peek into the hallowed, notoriously closed world of fashion magazines. Clueless, naive Andy (Anne Hathaway) lands a job that … all together now … “most girls would kill for”: Being second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the imperious editor at Runway (Vogue) the jewel in the crown of publishing house Elias-Clarke (Conde-Nast).
The movie broke down how fashion actually worked, who decides what’s in fashion and why, and what it means to assist someone whose every move changes the course of fashion. Miranda purses her lips, designers change their entire collection. She dislikes an article about autumn jackets, the publisher coughs up $300,000 to make another shoot happen. She thinks size 6 is fat, Andy (and so many readers) starves herself down a size. That’s all.
So, here we are, 20 years on, trying to recapture that power trip in a sequel. Except, the world has changed. Miranda still purses her lips. But this time the designer pins the flaws of an unflattering fit to a badly thought-out bow. Her second assistant is fat and he seems fine with it. Advertisers wield more power than ever. There’s no soliloquy about cerulean blue trickling down from the runway to bargain bins. There’s no point. In 2026, the algorithm decides the trend. Case in point: That lace-trim slip skirt you see everywhere – from Zendaya on the red carpet to the H&M home page.
Over 20 years, quite a bit of fashion-magazine gloss has dimmed. In the sequel, Miranda is in the middle of a scandal – Runway endorsed a fast-fashion brand that turned out to be built on sweatshop labour. The memes are savage. She might be cancelled. Plus budgets are not what they used to be. Runway can’t get John Legend to perform in Milan because they can’t afford to fly down his piano; they must turn to (gasp!) Lady Gaga instead. Reporters and editors don’t do journalism, they create clickbait for “traction”, “page views”, and “virality”. Miranda seems rattled but still in her bubble.
She’s also angling for a promotion. To Global Head of Content, a designation that doesn’t even include the word Editor. That’s because, 20 years on, the Devil is not the intimidating bosslady, it’s the possibility that the magazine might be handed over to a techbro. That the redpilled oligarch Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux, drawing from Jeff Bezos) might interfere in matters of taste. This is the great conflict in the sequel – that old-world privilege, old-money access and curated artistry is up against a juggernaut of code.
It’s not good-guy vs bad-guy; it’s ivory tower vs democratised media. Sure, Andy writes good copy, but it’s the only one that gets clicks of the many she writes. Even Benji admits that he didn’t read it – he only saw the pictures. He wants to buy Runway as a present for his girlfriend, who plans to turn it into her personal playground. But so what? Why is Andy running across town in high heels, again, to save a magazine that no one’s reading? Miranda couldn’t crack a brand deal in time for the September issue this time around – people have been laid off for less. As for Emily, she was more fun when all she was eating was a cube of cheese.
From HT Brunch, May 09, 2026
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