Bought dreams, borrowed power

David Frankel’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 presents fashion as a fairy tale and power as its fabric, and is almost prophetic in its portrayal of how capital indulges in taste and views fashion as part of a larger deal.

The first instalment of The Devil Wears Prada 20 years ago was more than just an elegant comedy about the dark underbelly of the fashion industry; it was a cultural phenomenon. A film that reframed our view of work, power and femininity, and in doing so, incidentally, cemented the figure of the personal assistant in the collective imagination. It struck a historic tipping point: the democratisation of haute couture, the moment when ‘what we wear’ finally became a global talking point. And it did so with an iconic central figure whose shadow extends into TV series, politics and pop culture. The fact that Meryl Streep portrayed Miranda Priestly—the Anna Wintour-inspired icon from Lauren Weisberger’s bestseller—not as a caricature but as a precisely calibrated, ambiguous centre of power was crucial.

At the same time, there was always an ambivalence in this success that the film never quite resolved. As gender researcher Andrew Joseph Pegoda has pointed out, the film does not fundamentally question the arbitrariness and injustice of female beauty standards, but ultimately presents them – despite all the ironic subversion – as a given. Even the iconic opening montage, set to ‘Suddenly I See’, celebrated the ideal of female beauty as Andy and the other women get ready for the day; there is no male counterpart. Even Miranda is staged in her first appearance through a fragmenting gaze that initially reduces her to her legs – a classic moment of the ‘male gaze’. And Andy’s rise also seems linked not least to her appropriating these aesthetic codes. The film thus flirts with criticism; but it never quite escapes it. That is precisely where its peculiar tension lay: It was both satire and affirmation. Just as a reminder, a brief recap.

Now, 20 years on, with the sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2 – which, as a passionate admirer of Dries van Noten, I may not be able to view quite as critically as I perhaps should, just as with the first instalment – my judgement is indeed compromised here; I also see fabrics that speak in other areas of life and take them as arguments, so I am more than biased when it comes to a film that not only shows fashion but celebrates it.

For this sequel makes one thing abundantly clear very quickly: there is no longer any ironic subversion here. Whereas the first instalment at least dissected the cult of haute couture with fine-toothed scissors, part two drops the irony like a poorly fitting garment. The world has changed, and with it the tone.

Here, fashion is no longer a subject of reflection, but an economic battleground. “No them, no us” – this phrase serves as the film’s secret guiding principle: without the billionaires, without the patrons, without the new moneyed elite from Silicon Valley, there is no more journalism, no magazines, no runways, no fashion.

The fact that Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, now an award-winning journalist, falls out of precisely this system is as logical as it is brutal. Her return to Miranda is not a nostalgic gesture, but an economic necessity. And Emily Blunt’s Emily, now positioned as a high-ranking Dior executive, perfectly embodies the new elite: cool, efficient, unshakeable. It is a power play in which old glamour and new capital structures lie in wait for one another.

In doing so, the film becomes surprisingly scathing as it depicts the power shifts within this ‘moneyed aristocracy’. The battles for influence, for brands, for cultural capital are unmistakably reminiscent of real-world developments – and at the same time, the film’s almost prophetic dimension unfolds: A tech billionaire modelled on Jeff Bezos, who is also Emily Charlton’s partner, aims to take over the publishing house behind the leading magazine in order to make Emily the boss. Capital no longer appears here as an abstract structure, but as a highly personal instrument, a means of generating power, proximity and control.

What appears in the film as an exaggerated, almost contrived scenario has long since found its echo in reality. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his fashion-loving wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos spent at least ten million dollars on the honorary chairmanship of the Met Gala, which took place on 4 May. People always say you can’t buy style, but that’s a lie, of course, because the lack of style among the rich sets the trend. A new level of escalation in the loss of control suffered by the gatekeepers of high taste, battered by social media, would be if Bezos, as rumoured, were to snap up the ‘Vogue’ publisher Condé Nast as a toy for his wife.

And this is precisely where the almost uncanny loop between film and the present closes: everything just like in real life – or rather the other way round. In retrospect, the film does not seem exaggerated, but precisely observed. The billionaire does not just buy platforms or media houses; he buys the narrative that legitimises him as well. Or, to put it bluntly: just like his ‘bunny’, the right newspaper to go with it.

What happens when a culturally alien Silicon Valley impulse collides with the fragile, historically evolved world of fashion? The film provides a clear answer: there is a threat of impoverishment of expression. A world without these excesses of form, without these splashes of colour, would not be more efficient, but poorer, however egomaniacal the creators of these excesses may be.

However sharp this diagnosis may be, the film resolutely refuses to succumb to the cynicism that the situation would actually warrant, refusing to be entirely of the present. As already mentioned, there are the new economic players cannibalising the media landscape. Yet wars, crises, global upheavals, the new America, and increasing poverty remain nothing more than background noise. Instead, David Frankel stages a deliberately anachronistic, almost eerie universe, a swan song to an era that may no longer exist in this form.

The fact that Kenneth Branagh, as a new addition to the ensemble and Miranda’s husband Stuart, remarks with dry understatement that the parties used to be easier to bear ‘back when there was still alcohol’ is one of the film’s most precise diagnoses of the times: a bon mot that articulates both nostalgia and exhaustion.

In terms of acting, Frankel’s production is great fun. As in the first instalment, Stanley Tucci steals scene after scene as the secret hero, with a blend of melancholy and ironic detachment that lends the film its emotional depth, even in its dialogue. Meryl Streep remains the centre of gravity; less explosive than before, but all the more precise and controlled, a character who no longer needs to demonstrate power because she has long since embodied it. And Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, as eternal rival friends, continue to stage and deconstruct one another at will even after 20 years, both verbally and in terms of fashion.

For, of course, every scene here is a tableau, every movement a choreography of fabric, cut and colour. The film repeatedly and convincingly conveys that clothing is not mere decoration, but narrative. Identity is not asserted, nor is it immanent, but arises through the wearing of fabric, just as Hans Christian Andersen observed nearly 200 years ago in his clever fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.

One therefore actually wants to watch this film over and over again in slow motion, pausing it deliberately to savour the moments of ‘fabric-based’ ecstasy to the full. This is, of course, pure escapism, but a form that is self-aware. This involves not just a simple happy ending, but a fairy-tale ending in which not even the villains are punished entirely. And perhaps that is where the true modernity of this film lies, for it has not entirely fallen out of step with the times: in its courage to embrace total, almost grotesque improbability. In a present marked by uncertainty and fragmentation, it offers a clear, almost old-fashioned answer: we need these stories. We need their exaggerations, their beauty, their promises, and a world that is not explained but simply given a new guise – all so that we ourselves can survive a little better.