An Insider’s Take on ‘The Devil Wears Prada’

Twenty years after The Devil Wears Prada brought cerulean and coat-throwing into the national consciousness, the recent sequel has sparked rewatch parties, massive ad campaigns, and jokes that its female leads—who look like they have not aged a day between films—must be vampires.

Reuniting journalist Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) with the iconic Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), head of the fictional fashion magazine Runway, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has also been criticized as a cash grab driven by ’90s nostalgia and celebrity cameos.

Is the new film any more groundbreaking than florals for spring? Jane Priester, A20, AG25 (MFA), who earned her bachelor’s degree in economics and won the Tufts New Venture Competition’s inaugural Creative Arts Prize in 2025 for founding fashion brand Jane Priester: Handmade in New York, has thoughts. 

Priester dishes on whether Devil Wears Prada 2 raises real issues, and how far popular trends, women in fashion, and the industry as a whole have come since the original movie. That’s all. 

Tufts Now: How realistic is the fashion world in Devil Wears Prada 2?

Jane Priester: The parallels were very obvious from the jump. Basically just replace Runway with Vogue, and the gala at the beginning with the Met Gala (which happened at the same time as the premiere), and it’s a very accurate representation.

In terms of what people are wearing, there are actually a good amount of similarities with the first movie, because Y2K still prevails—there’s an assistant who brings that back with her little hair accessories. It’s very maximalist, especially with Lady Gaga’s look in Italy, and Miranda is wearing a tasseled jacket that’s an archival piece.

In terms of the fashion industry and how working conditions and attitudes have improved, I also appreciated the updates between the first and second movie. I remember around 2008, we had a family friend who was the age I am now who was staying with us and doing an unpaid internship for Fendi, and she would come home close to midnight. One time she was painting displays and they spilled paint all over her Chanel shoes and they were like, “It’s your fault.” It’s definitely been getting better since then. 

How much of the intensity and toxic power dynamics of the fashion industry have you experienced personally?

I definitely had some fashion internships and helped out at Fashion Weeks, and you get very caught up in it all. It’s very fast paced, which I love. Maybe it’s just being from New York, but I thrive off being uptight—I feel like myself when I'm an uptight psycho!

On the other hand, because I founded my own label, I mostly got to do things my own way, which was great. I kept it small and approached it more as an artistic process and practice.

Also, the power dynamics in fashion are different nowadays because a lot of these brands don't do internships anymore, or not in the same way—they’re very regulated. I have a lot of mentors in the industry, but they can't just hire me. It all has to go through corporate and HR, and that’s because of exposure from movies like Devil Wears Prada. Hopefully there can be something in the middle.

How has the fashion industry changed in the past two decades, and how do the Devil Wears Prada movies reflect that?

I fell in love with fashion as a very young child. You cracked open a Vogue, and the editorial just blew you away with the imagination, the budget, the models. The magazine set the trends and the tone of the culture, and people came to them for that—just like Runway in the first movie.

But as you see in the second movie, it’s now Runway that has to cater to the demand, because the consumers and the billionaires really have the upper hand.  BJ Novak’s character is like, “What’s up with tradition? The world changes too fast. We don’t need models; it’s just all going to be AI.” 

Emily [played by Emily Blunt] has this monologue where she says, “Luxury is doing so well because everyone can relate to the word Dior being slapped on a bag.” I think the Alexander McQueens of the industry, the high-level art, has gotten lost in exchange for being relatable to a large audience. Everything is cheap consumerism and fast fashion—it's way more flat, and there isn't that same magic.

Why do the Devil Wears Prada movies strike such a chord with people?

The actors have such good chemistry and they’re all such big names, but also, Andy is the underdog in the fashion industry. She’s coming in not as a diehard obsessed with the industry—she has a different background that actually makes her perfect for the role and helps her succeed, which people can relate to.

Plus, everyone loves a good makeover scene. When Andy gets new clothes in the first movie, they facilitate this all-over glow-up, and she starts thriving. We get that again in this new movie, going into the closet for the Hamptons party. The costume design is great, and I think that concept of the makeover will just never get old.

The makeover does raise questions about body positivity, which is something the new movie touches on. The industry is getting better in terms of a more diverse representation of bodies and backgrounds in the workspace, but we haven’t broken out of skinny being the standard, and lately with Ozempic making it more accessible, we are going back in that direction.

Still, both movies offer a little bit of hope for the industry at the end. Miranda isn’t all good or all bad. Billionaires and corporations are taking over fashion, but the industry can evolve. 

I wrote a paper at Tufts about how fashion brands are becoming 21^st century patrons of the art—creating and saving museums, latching onto and cementing those relationships in order to regain their credibility and cachet. I just went to the Prada Foundation Museum in Milan.

The second movie shows us this push-pull between consumerism and clickbait and actual culture creation and art. But it also ends on a hopeful note, and that’s what people want to watch.