Cards on the table. I’m one of those people content to update my wardrobe from time to time according to what I need and what looks nice on me in the changing room, and if the salesgirl (they usually are girls in Ladies’ Wear) tells me flared jeans are back in I say yeh naah, they don’t suit me, I’ll stick with skinny.
But I did go and see The Devil Wears Prada, and I did enjoy it. In fact I loved it, not for the fashion but because it was a well-written character-driven workplace politics story and featured the great Meryl Streep, who I don’t think has made a bad movie yet.
I’d heard that Prada 2 had some serious things to say about the decline of journalism in the digital age, so off I went.
It’s 20 years later both in life and in the movie, and Streep is back as Miranda Priestly, fearsome editor of Runway magazine, a barely disguised version of Anna Wintour, identically fearsome editor of a barely disguised Vogue magazine.*
Anne Hathaway is back as her onetime assistant Andrea ‘Andy’ Sachs. Andy has now become a respected New York journalist after quitting Runway two decades ago. Just as she’s about to receive an award for one of her worthy stories, she and all her colleagues from Vanguard magazine are fired – by text. She unleashes a passionate tirade against the corporate media bosses who prioritise profit over serious reporting.
Her outburst is noted by Irv Ravitz, chairman of the media conglomerate that owns Runway, which is having an image crisis since Miranda inadvisedly published a story praising a brand that is revealed to have employed sweatshop labour. **
Ravitz hires Andy – now in need of a job – to do an image fix. Andy comes back to Runway to find that not only does Miranda not know she’s been hired, she doesn’t even remember her.
Stanley Tucci is back as Nigel Kipling, Runway’s Art Director. He’s grown fatalistic and world-weary because he’s seen the writing on the wall: no one reads print any more and online magazines are struggling in a digital landscape driven by clickbait and short form content. Not to mention the impending horrors of AI and the rise of influencers.
He reminds Miranda that Andy was ‘one of the Emilys’, back in the day when the all-powerful Miranda couldn’t be bothered to remember the names of her assistants.
Emily was played by Emily Blunt, and she’s back as another former assistant now working as a senior executive at Dior. She’s relishing the turning of the tables with the changing media landscape: it’s the fashion powerhouses like Dior that call the shots now, and the fashion mags that have to do the schmoozing. Miranda’s fall from grace means she virtually has to beg for favours. ‘We need our advertisers, the September issue is so thin you could floss with it’.
There’s some nice stuff about generational workplace culture change too. Gone are the days when Miranda would imperiously toss her coat to an Emily to hang up properly. The millennials won’t stand for that; Miranda can (and does) hang up her own coats.
Miranda is as surly and demanding as ever, her demeanour not improved by the advent of a new regime that decrees budget savings: no more private cars or restaurant lunches. The new boss takes her for a working lunch in the cafeteria – ‘we have a cafeteria?’ – to meet The Undertakers: the phalanx of dark-suited young Harvard management consultants who are going to wield the axe.
No more business class flights, either. On the annual foray to Milan, Miranda/Meryl has to struggle with her cabin baggage down through business class to economy where they don’t serve champagne and there are only snack boxes. There’s some nice schadenfreude to be had here, but I’m a bit skeptical: Miranda would surely have upgraded to business from her own pocket rather than endure the horrors of cattle class. And the joke isn’t consistent. When they get to Milan, it turns out the mag has sprung for a very nice stylish apartment, and they’re getting into and out of upmarket cars, not waiting around for ubers.
Prada 2 is at its best when it’s being blackly satirical about the changing media landscape. One writer friend of Andy’s is reduced to ‘editing a memoir by one of Paris Hilton’s chihuahuas.’
It sparkles on the foibles and follies of fashion industry people, such as the crass money man threatening a takeover of the magazine. He used to be big and gross, but since his divorce he’s had a makeover: ‘some cosmetic sculpting, a bit of Ozempic, the extraction of ear hairs and some lawn-mowing on his back.’ ***
His ex-wife comes into the plot as a potential saviour who does actually care about journalism. She’s a post #MeToo heroine, he’s the villain of the piece.
Not all the men are portrayed unsympathetically. Tucci’s character is a seriously creative gay man, and Andy’s love interest is a modest Aussie. He’s the developer of the building renovation project where she buys her tastefully cool new apartment. He’s obviously rich enough, but he’s not toxically masculine like those other rich white Manhattan capitalists. He’s played by Patrick Brammell, who you might remember as the slightly daggy lead in the Aussie sitcom Colin From Accounts.
Prada 2 isn’t as interested in the fashion itself as Prada 1 was, but I could have wished for a sharper critique of the industry. There’s one strong scene where Emily, showing Andy round the showroom, explains how Dior cynically manufactured the market for multi-thousand dollar clutches and totes. Andy the socially-conscious journalist tut-tuts about this exorbitance, but it doesn’t take long before she’s sporting a different high-fashion outfit in every scene herself.
She looks great in this high end designer streetwear of course, but when we get to Nigel’s curated event in Milan we are back in the realm of the grotesque. To the strains of Lady Gaga doing an overblown big ballad, ridiculously skinny scowling models teeter and swagger on dangerously high heels in bikinis and filmy body suits, one topped by a stupid outsize furry hat, another clad in what looks like a cross between a puffer suit and a decompression chamber.
I think it was meant to be serious evening wear, but I don’t reckon even celebrities would wear such stuff except maybe to a charity fundraising OTT costume ball like the Met Gala.
Prada 2 is wittily and sharply written and has serious things to say about the decline of print and the malignant effect of commercial considerations on journalism generally, but it takes too long to get to the denouement, which delivers a too pat happy ending that leaves these serious questions unresolved.
Meryl Streep is a joy to watch as usual. Stanley Tucci is terrific, likewise Emily Blunt. Anne Hathaway ….overacts.
Tip: watch out for the real-life celebrities and famous fashion figures playing themselves. There’s Dolce & Gabbana, Mark Jacobs, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell and more. The credits give the full roll-call, but not having been forewarned I only recognised Lady Gaga and Donatella Versace. You’ll probably do much better.
Art imitating life 1, 2 and 3:
* I liked the cheekiness of the filmmakers having Vogue do a pre-release cover shoot with Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour posing together. Incidentally, how does Wintour manage to remain Queen Bee of the fashion world when she’s worn the same boring bob for eons?
** Just like Amazon, repeatedly under fire over the poor wages and conditions of its workers. Amazon of course is the creation of…
***Jeff Bezos, who’s slimmed down and buffed up considerably since his divorce from the 1st Mrs Bezos, and now co-chairs the Met Gala with the 2nd, much younger one, whose wedding photo appearance on the cover of Vogue gave rise to rumours that Bezos was angling to buy Vogue and its parent company Condé Nast. .