When The Devil Wears Prada opened in 2006, the fashion establishment was not, at first, entirely seduced. In a now-essential New York Times piece published on the eve of the film’s release—Ruth La Ferla’s magnificently tart “The Duds of The Devil Wears Prada”—the clothes were practically put on trial.
Anne Slowey (then fashion news director of Elle), quoted in that article, dismissed Patricia Field’s costumes as “a caricature of what people who don’t work in fashion think fashion people look like.” Hal Rubenstein (then fashion director of InStyle) added that real fashion women “fiercely edit what they wear,” unlike the “abundance for the sake of abundance” on display in the film. Vogue remained mum on the film’s fashion, but in some field reporting from La Ferla outside 4 Times Square, then the real-life headquarters of Condé Nast, she observed that the editors looked far less theatrical than their fictional counterparts—wearing airy dresses and slim pants, with, as she put it, “not a logo or ‘it’ bag in sight.”
And then there was Patricia Field herself, who delivered the perfect rejoinder regarding the film’s fashion accuracy, or lack thereof: “If they want a documentary, they can watch the History Channel.”
Indeed, The Devil Wears Prada was never reportage; it was mythology. It was magazine life lacquered to a high gloss, reality exaggerated for Hollywood. Miranda flings furs across desks like royal decrees. Assistants can nick head-to-toe Chanel looks from the fashion closet without anyone batting a Shu Uemura–curled eyelash. Everything is turned up a few delicious notches.
Rewatching The Devil Wears Prada 20 years later, I found myself less interested in whether Andy’s thigh-high Chanel boots were plausible office wear and more taken by all the looks I suddenly wanted to try for myself.
Below, a handful of trends and objects (with an honorable mention to the @devilwearspradafashion Instagram account, which I heavily referenced) that, this Vogue editor would argue, deserve a second act.
©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Bring Back…High-Kitsch Jewelry
Did you get it at the Chanel boutique or off a blue mover’s blanket unfurled on Canal Street? Patricia Field, in her wisdom, suggests the distinction scarcely matters, but Andy’s baubles were Chanel, Chanel. Here she layers two necklaces, including one from the 2006 Cruise collection that reads as an ode to Paris itself, dangling with Eiffel Towers and charms for 31 Rue Cambon. (In fact, Field was doing some foreshadowing here: Andy wears her Francophile necklace in the pivotal scene when Miranda asks her to go to Paris Fashion Week in Emily’s place. Andy may pretend to hesitate over the offer, but her jewelry is saying—nay, screaming—otherwise.)
