It seems like only five minutes ago that “quiet luxury” was à la mode.
But The Devil Wears Prada 2, the wonderful and weirdly poignant sequel to the 2006 original film, did not get that memo.
The film, which is being devoured by audiences worldwide, is as loud as it pleases in its celebration of high fashion, luxury labels and the beautiful things that are made when creative visionaries are funded by people who appreciate them.
The film is a fightback against the barbarism of the tech bros who wear baseball caps to meetings and who want to optimise the unoptimiseable; it is a paean to working women, and it is a lament for print journalism.
Our protagonist, the ever-eager Andy Sachs, has long since moved on from her ill-fated stint as assistant to fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly.
Priestly is modelled, of course, on the icy and iconic former US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who is now Global Chief Content Officer for Vogue’s parent company Condé Nast.
Andy is now an investigative journalist at a quality newspaper, and in an early scene she is at a journalism awards event, where the carpet is shabby and the guests are shabbier.
It is the anti-fashion crowd: there is an over-representation of men wearing polyester-infused vests over button-down shirts, and one of Andy’s colleagues is wearing a New York Yankees hat at the dinner table.
Andy is announced as an award-winner at the same moment her phone, along with the phones of her colleagues, pings with a text message.
They have all been fired via text – victims of the relentless “lay-offs, consolidation and downsizing” that have defined legacy journalism since the disruptions of the internet began.
It is a case of art initiating life – in February, the executive editor of the storied, 148-year-old Washington Post, now owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, laid off over 300 journalists in one company-wide call. Some were sacked via email.
Now that Andy is jobless and financially insecure, the story starts to feel very 2026.
One of her colleagues is reduced to ghostwriting the memoir of Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.
Andy ponders writing a tell-all book about her former boss Priestly, one of many self-referential “meta” moments in the film (the original film was based on the roman à clef of a former Wintour assistant, Lauren Weisberger).
Then Andy’s former employer, Runway, comes knocking, and she gets a new job at double her previous salary. She moves to a much nicer apartment with functional plumbing – every journalist’s dream – only to find that Runway is subjected to the same cost crunch as the rest of the media.
The magazine’s creative director, Nigel, says drily that while he once had a budget to shoot for weeks in Africa with (renowned fashion photographer) Richard Avedon, now he gets two days to put together “content” that “people scroll past as they pee”.
As a working journalist in the digital age, that one hurt.
The rest of the movie is a caper to save Runway from the clutches of “undertakers” (management consultants) on the one hand, and from the over-muscled paws of the wellness-obsessed billionaire bros on the other.
We all know these bros, by now, Bezos being a prominent member of their club, and the movie, to my surprise, was both sharp and poignant in its depiction of their relentless drive to acquire things.
And the inescapable fact this drive doesn’t mean they will care for the things they acquire.
When the first movie was released,Vogue and Wintour, its infamous editor, pointedly ignored it.
Twenty years later, with the glossy mag industry in a death spiral, Vogue can’t afford to be so snooty.
The magazine, under its new editor Chloe Malle, and Wintour herself, have seized on the film as a high-irony branding opportunity.
Wintour appeared on the May cover of Vogue, along with Meryl Streep, who plays her fictional avatar.
Art has become life and vice versa, and both film and magazine see an opportunity to make money.
The movie is beautiful to watch, a true pleasure for the eyes, with a new scene/new outfit delight-ratio that rivals the good old days of Sex and the City.
Most importantly, it doesn’t punish the unashamedly career-driven working women characters by depicting them as lonely cat ladies in their personal lives.
Andy and Miranda both have romantic side-plots, but these male characters exist to be supportive of the power-women in their lives.
The original Devil Wears Prada was a Cinderella story about a young woman’s first adult job, and how she grappled with her identity within it.
This one is a decidedly mid-career affair.
Now, Andy knows that credibility must be balanced with financial viability. She knows the axe can fall at any moment. High ideals will be hobbled by forces beyond your control. Pragmatism lights the way for compromise.
But beauty can be salvaged and the satisfactions of work will prevail.
In one scene, when Priestly urges Andy to write the tell-all memoir about her, the older woman instructs Andy not to leave anything out, including the time she sacrificed with her children.
“People should know there’s a cost,” she tells Andy.
And then, after a beat: “Boy, I love working!”
Rarely has a film been so honest about the guilt and delight of the working mother.
A few days after the film’s global premiere, came the Met Gala in New York, the apotheosis of silly, luxury fashion, and a symbol of the American love affair between mega-wealth and celebrity.
The gala, as it exists today, is Wintour’s great legacy.
This year it raised a record $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, in large part due to the “sponsorship” of the tech bros.
It was controversially co-chaired by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez-Bezos, who are the walking models for the don’t-care-billionaires The Devil Wears Prada 2 seeks to satirise.
Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest man, has been criticised for cosying up to US President Donald Trump, for alleged exploitative work practices at Amazon and for the company’s alleged links to immigration enforcement policy.
The couple reportedly gave $10 million to the event. Sanchez-Bezos stood next to Wintour, wearing couture Schiaparelli, greeting guests as they arrived, like an updated version of an arriviste character from an Edith Wharton novel.
Bezos skipped the red carpet, possibly because his involvement sparked protests around New York.
The recent election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani on a strong economic inequality agenda has re-focused attention on the city’s – and the country’s – enormous wealth divide.
Many celebrities boycotted the event, which was ringed by protesters.
The actress who plays Wintour’s fictional avatar, Meryl Streep, didn’t attend the Gala, but then, she never does.
It “has never quite been her scene”, according to a statement from her media representative.
The coolness of quietly sticking to your values: that never goes out of fashion.
Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.
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