You’ve got to hand it to 20th Century Studios: the publicity campaign for The Devil Wears Prada 2 is shaping up to be superb. Persuading Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue magazine, to appoint a woman with such a familiar origin story as its key US edition’s head of editorial content nine months before the film’s release date? No pursed lips here. That’s exceptional work.
Chloe Malle’s inheritance of the magazine’s day-to-day editorship from Anna Wintour – chief inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada’s antagonist, Miranda Priestly – is unrelated to the making of the much-anticipated sequel, of course.
But Malle did admit, some years after joining Vogue as its social editor, in 2011, that she had been hesitant about interviewing for the position because fashion was “not one of the main interests” in her life. That’s absolutely the kind of thing Andy Sachs (played by Anne Hathaway) might have declared before being shushed by her fellow assistant Emily (Emily Blunt) or slapped down by the imperious Miranda (Meryl Streep).
True, Malle is well connected, as Wintour was, while Andy was an outsider to New York with no claims to “nepo baby” status. But just as our heroine embraced the world of Runway magazine – temporarily, at least – Malle was “seduced by the Vogue machine” and became a “fashion girl”.
Her reward for not falling out of Wintour’s inner circle is to be anointed as her successor, of sorts. Strictly speaking, Malle, who is 39, is not the new Anna. She is getting neither her office nor her editor-in-chief title. She will instead report to Wintour, who, at 75, remains Condé Nast’s chief content officer and will continue to oversee all 28 international editions of Vogue.
“I know that some people who were interested in this job were sort of daunted by the idea of Anna being down the hall,” Malle told The New York Times. “I’m very happy she’s down the hall with her Clarice Cliff pottery.”
Okay, but this sounds like the set-up for a comedy laced with wisecracking dialogue, not the glimpse into jolly corporate life that it is presumably intended to be.
[ Chloe Malle profile: Who is Vogue’s new editor?Opens in new window ]
Malle has hinted that US Vogue will in future be published less frequently than its current monthly schedule and that its editions will be printed on thicker, higher-quality paper, so that they “feel like something that shouldn’t be thrown away”.
Such “collectibles” talk sounds glossy, but it’s also, by now, an established dice-throw by late-stage magazine empires, and one typically followed by both job losses and cover-price rises. That’s the unglamorous reality. No one grows up dreaming of working for a company that’s “resourceful and nimble and scrappy”, as Malle described Vogue’s operations today.
When Emily tells Andy that “a million girls would kill” for her job in The Devil Wears Prada, the assertion is based on the reasonable premise that being in the orbit of an editor as powerful as Miranda is a passport to a glorious media career in a booming industry. This seems to pan out well for Andy in 2006. Now the entire concept of a glorious media career seems so much more of a stretch.
The first film featured Filofaxes, printed news clippings, coffee orders that seem straightforward by 2025 standards, a raft of phone calls, a BlackBerry device, an actual fax and 20th Century Fox on the opening credits. It contained no mention of social media, podcasts, algorithms, influencers, AI or any sense that monetising content or maximising engagement might be a struggle.
“Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking” – Miranda’s withering rejection of one subordinate’s idea – is a line conceived in an era when raking over established ground was seen as editorially tired, as opposed to commercially desirable. Hearing Nigel (played by Stanley Tucci) contend that Runway is not just a magazine but “a shining beacon of hope”, meanwhile, feels as dated as Andy’s cerulean jumper.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not expected to slavishly echo Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns, a follow-up published by Lauren Weisberger, author of the original novel, in 2013.
What has been reported so far is that Miranda will be vying to keep her reign intact in a crumbling industry that has left her desperately chasing advertising dollars controlled by Emily, who has become a high-powered executive at a luxury group. Whether Andy is still gainfully employed by a respectable newspaper is unknown, but my money’s on that gig having gone south in the interim.
Hollywood has moved at a glacial pace to come up with this sequel. Now it’s close to unleashing it upon us, my big fear is that I’m going to settle down in the cinema and be battered over the head for two hours by a too-close-to-home narrative about the decline of legacy media. That’s really going to put me off my popcorn.
Luckily, there is one antidote for this predicament: clothes. Lots of lovely on-screen clothes. Might that work for Vogue too?
