I think the .... let's call it resentment which some people (me, I am some people) feel towards high fashion is because it seems to demand a place in our attention which other art generally doesn't. Why do I see endless footage of the Met Gala from media outlets which DGAF about opera, for example? Is Vogue really more important than seeing Klimt paintings in Vienna's Belvedere Musum?
It's the fact that fashion is something we consume. Art & theatre etc are not consumable to the same degree. Even if you love art, you only have so many walls. Even if you love theatre, only critics attend the theatre more than once a month. But everyone wears multiple outfits each week, and are judged on them, at least to some extent. Therefore, fashion - low and high - impacts everyone and is a huge industry. Hence the marketing and PR behind fashion is much larger than behind art, theatre, etc - and so we see the Met Gala everywhere. Another regrettable example of our consumer-driven market economy, IMO.
Klimt is dead, he’s not producing new paintings. Opera is basically a dead art form in terms of engagement, popularity and artistic growth. Fashion is constantly new, and we could talk about the problem of consumerism in fashion for sure, but I don’t think fashion is shoved on you so much as it’s just true that new things gets more attention than old things.
I’m not here for this recent reframing of Miranda Priestly. I think ambition for ambition’s sake is bad (which I would distinguish from wanting to do well because you believe the thing you are doing is worth it, whether or not you are the one to do it). To the degree that our social norms used to recognize this and no longer do, I think that’s a real loss.
Does Miranda Priestly care about fashion for fashion’s sake, rather than for the sake of the social status it confers her? Almost certainly, partially, and it’s fair to find that appealing. But she very clearly also cares about the social status component of it, in way that crowd out her genuine love of fashion.
How often do we see her take joy in fashion? Famously, never. As Nigel comments, she’s only smiled once. At risk of sounding like an LLM, that’s the performance of taste, not the exercise of it. .
Her famous speech about the cerulean sweater is also performative. She gives Andy a history of the color of her sweater and its ties to high fashion, but if it’s not clear why that history matters. If Andy had instead been wearing a denim jacket in a color popularized by workwear, would she have been safe from criticism? Isn’t dressing unfashionably its own form of fashion? How were the two identical belts different? (We never get an explanation of this, so to my mind, Andy’s comment remains valid.)
And of course, she could have educated Andy in a kinder way. That would, in fact, have cost nothing. I share the worry that we sometimes neglect opportunities to correct or improve something for the sake of kindness, but there are also plenty of ways to do so while also being kind - generally, more effective ways as well - and Miranda Proestly not choosing those ways demonstrates a greater concern for lording her status over others than actually fixing the thing that needs fixed (Andy’s lack of fashion knowledge).
I've seen this movie so many times and thought I knew what my peers thought about it, but at the time it came out we didn't quite have the beehive of commentary that we do now. It wasn't until recently that I was even aware of the the great consensus among its fans that Nate is a whiny, childish brat who tries to convince himself that he's not criticizing her for the nature of her job -- "I make port wine reductions all day. I'm not exactly in the Peace Corps" -- and yet in the very next sentence he questions her "integrity" because of the devotion she has to her job. Whoever had the thankless job of developing Nate's personality/storyline I guess never had to endure an entry level job, which everyone knows is just a stepping stone, and sometimes not even that.
So I appreciate your calling out his hypocrisy and weak arguments.
I think I could more easily see the merits of Miranda Priestly if she wasn't primarily in the business of demanding illogical, utterly crazy things of her assistants, and if these requests didn't primarily accrue to her own personal comfort. ("Get me a flight out of Miami during a hurricane when all flights are grounded so that I don't have to miss my daughters' piano recital," for instance.) Her requests to Andy have very little to do with the actual creation of the art of the magazine and almost everything to do with making sure that she not only has creature comforts, but so that she can pretend to her family that her job isn't the most important thing in her life. (Getting her twins the copies of Harry Potter before it is released, for example.)
I also feel constrained to note that Vito and Michael Corleone both are thoroughly decent to the goombahs that they ask to commit crimes for them.
I think this fits my reading! (haha ofc I do...) because being nice while asking someone to commit a crime is not nice, while being mean in order to induct someone into the high standards of a discipline... is sort of nice...
Maybe. I do wonder how much easier it would have been for Miranda to do her real work if she wasn't cycling through an assistant every couple of months. That seems to be the secret that the Corleones have discovered: have high expectations for your people but be kind when they rise to them, and you'll have loyal goombahs for life (which might admittedly be short).
I think Stanley Tucci's character's position is supportable: he's actually doing the work of fashion. I like that the movie presented the case for Miranda in a way that the book did not. (One of the rare cases where a movie is far better than the book on almost every point.) But then again, Miranda screws over Stanley in one of the final scenes, choosing to sacrifice a real talent to save her own butt from the consequences of her psychotic running of the magazine, which is ultimately what shows Andy that there is nothing that she won't do to support her claim that she's the best person to run the magazine. I don't think that the movie gives us any way to evaluate that claim. It could be true, or it could be as delusional as some of Miranda's requests to her assistants.
As far as boss literature goes, I think I much prefer Wolf Hall's portrait of employer-employee relations.
Yeah, the fact that Miranda priestly has good artistic taste doesn’t make up for her being terrible. I find that the recent effort to pretend otherwise bizarre. (Also, the Godfather is…not a tale we’re supposed to want to emulate? As the Godfather 2 makes very clear?)
Great piece! I tend to agree with many of the takes here, and I quite like this movie! I am curious to hear your thoughts on The Devil Wears Prada 2. I watched it recently in theaters and found it to be far far worse than the first. For starters, the series of events that leads Andy back to Runway is unrealistic. Then also, the relationship between Andy and Miranda is less interesting. Andy has grown; she knows what she likes and what she is good at, but yet the producers still want us to think that she seeks Miranda's approval. There are scenes that suggest as much, but they are not convincing in the slightest. Andy is confident; she has already left once and she very well could leave again. I was not convinced that she was at all scared of (once-sacred) Priestly. The one redeeming quality of the film was those wonderful sweeping shots of New York City, which I admit were beautiful.
I'm reading John Canaday's The Lives of the Painters and just came across this aphorism from Fuseli, "Fashion is the bastard of vanity dressed by art." Perfect.
Such an interesting piece! This comes from another field, but in corporate culture, I find the “niceness-culture” so predominant (in the sequel, Miranda is may times dulled and reigned in by this), which makes for individual ambition, in its earnest, unacceptable and even ousted.
How can one be visionary and creative in a modern corporate world? I think the sequel tries to play with this idea, but I would love to hear what you think!
What does Stanley Tucci get for his passionate defense of Vogue, and of fashion, and of Miranda? A hearty stab in the back! Sure, Miranda's ambition is in part about art, but mostly it is about herself and about winning zero-sum status games.
That's what drives Andy off: the unconscionable mistreatment of Stanely Tucci! She learns much from Miranda, sure, but mainly she learns she does not want to be the sort of person who stabs Stanley Tucci in the back.
Which is why she goes into journalism, a domain where I'm sure no one has ever stabbed anyone else in the back.
No, what drives her off is knowing that she is like that but she does not wish to be like that for this particular goal—let the boyfriend go to Boston, she is working here!
I think that's a plausible interpretation of Andy's "real" character, but that's clearly not how she perceives herself or her actions at the end of the movie. There's no evidence presented in the movie that Andy would be okay betraying Stanley Tucci like that *in a different industry*.
Of course, it may end up coming to that; the ending reflects a certain naive belief, endemic to millennials of that period, that certain industries are inherently high-minded and virtuous and are thereby exempt from status games and power struggles. This turned out to be *emphatically* untrue, but the movie's position on that question is at best ambiguous.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder how much her ambition is about art at all. She's not a designer or a creator in any traditional sense; she's simply maneuvered herself to an industry bully pulpit where her opinion is divine writ and the costs of opposing her in any small way are enormous.
In fact--and I realize that this is more than a movie about Jimmy Choos might be able to bear--Miranda has the classic personality of the tyrant, according to the Republic. She's ruled by unnecessary and dreamlike desires, with dreamlike illogic that other people leave behind in their sleep but which she frantically tries to impose upon the world. She's driven mad by these desires, which never end because she's essentially unsatisfiable (and may define her desires in such a way that they can't be satisfied). She's fearful and paranoid, as the subplot with the editor of French Vogue and her betrayal of Stanley Tucci show. She's completely unjust and lawless, with no respect for ordinary human standards of conduct. And all of this--Plato's central insight--doesn't make her happy, but makes her a kind of slave to herself and what she needs, which is less the fulfillment of an art form than the exercise of power. That's the decision that Andy faces in miniature at the beginning. She, too, was willing to sacrifice all sorts of things to her ambition (some of them meaningless, some of them not). Just one year, she tells herself. For just one year I will be a slave to Miranda so that I can be a slave to my ambition. I'll let them dress me, shape my flesh, pluck my hair out, shove my feet into impossibly contorted shoes, and at the end of it, I'll have what I want. I think what she realizes in Paris is that ambition is the bottomless tyrannical desire that can't be satisfied, and serving it only enslaves you more.
Yes, I think if Henry wrote the "bull" case for Miranda, then this is the bear! Stanley Tucci is the character who unambiguously loves *fashion* and sacrifices for *fashion*. For Miranda, it's not clear whether she loves fashion, or whether fashion is just a convenient vehicle for her ambition; or even if she would recognize this distinction.
To be fair, people like Tucci benefit from Miranda in the sense that Miranda has a real incentive to find and promote passionate, talented people--that is, to promote them as far as is politically expedient for her.
Great essay. There was one moment at the end of DVP2 where the script faltered and betrayed Miranda: it’s when And asks her about the costs of her dedication to her job, and after she mentions the times she didn’t see her children, she says “But I just love to work.” It should have been “I just love the work,” meaning this specific vocation. Loving to work is mindless grunt behavior; loving this work is sublime. It’s the substitution of general for specific; love is only ever specific anyway. The way she phrased it was mindless girl-bossing, but that’s not Miranda Priestley’s character. Perhaps she would be successful elsewhere, in other industries at other jobs, but she would only be Miranda Priestley at this job, in fashion, at Runway, because that’s what she loves. It’s choosing one specific thing to love, to follow, to serve, that makes greatness.
The Devil Wears Prada is secretly a Jane Austen novel about education in taste and seriousness. :) Michael Corleone makes a nifty parallel to Prince Hal.
two things about the boyfriend never made sense - firstly, he was far too good looking for her at the start. secondly, he was a chef, so he would absolutely know a thing or two about having to prioritise work, not to mention that he would probably be busy working most nights and not waiting around for her to come home
They, and their whole friend group, were modern bohemians. The boyfriend’s looks didn’t matter any more than Andy’s, because they both believed in “beautiful on the inside (and who cares about societal success)”
Andy is only abandoned by her friends when she comes out to them as a Striver - someone who is PROUD of doing difficult things even when it’s pointless (e.g. getting the early HP books).
Boyfriend et al may represent the current zeitgeist, but I disagree with OP that this was meant to make the audience more comfortable. Unlike Stanley, their portrayal is not at all sympathetic - they all come across as hypocritical losers.
Oh God, I absolutely hated that spoiled brat man-child of Andy's boyfriend! At that time - when the movie premiered - nobody could understand me why I supported Andy actually having a career and becoming someone and being ambitious (and looking GREAT doing it!) instead of her coddling that small-minded, unambitious boy. And her friends, what an infuriating, toxic lot, all of them.
Of course, Stanley Tucci was the epitome of mature, sophisticated manhood. (Speaking of Tucci - this is exactly the type of man modern culture needs so much, there's too many man-children like Chalamet around nowadays... But I digress.)
I think the .... let's call it resentment which some people (me, I am some people) feel towards high fashion is because it seems to demand a place in our attention which other art generally doesn't. Why do I see endless footage of the Met Gala from media outlets which DGAF about opera, for example? Is Vogue really more important than seeing Klimt paintings in Vienna's Belvedere Musum?
I get that but I think it is just a function of the speed of the industry and the fact that a lot more people care about it
It's the fact that fashion is something we consume. Art & theatre etc are not consumable to the same degree. Even if you love art, you only have so many walls. Even if you love theatre, only critics attend the theatre more than once a month. But everyone wears multiple outfits each week, and are judged on them, at least to some extent. Therefore, fashion - low and high - impacts everyone and is a huge industry. Hence the marketing and PR behind fashion is much larger than behind art, theatre, etc - and so we see the Met Gala everywhere. Another regrettable example of our consumer-driven market economy, IMO.
Klimt is dead, he’s not producing new paintings. Opera is basically a dead art form in terms of engagement, popularity and artistic growth. Fashion is constantly new, and we could talk about the problem of consumerism in fashion for sure, but I don’t think fashion is shoved on you so much as it’s just true that new things gets more attention than old things.
I’m not here for this recent reframing of Miranda Priestly. I think ambition for ambition’s sake is bad (which I would distinguish from wanting to do well because you believe the thing you are doing is worth it, whether or not you are the one to do it). To the degree that our social norms used to recognize this and no longer do, I think that’s a real loss.
Does Miranda Priestly care about fashion for fashion’s sake, rather than for the sake of the social status it confers her? Almost certainly, partially, and it’s fair to find that appealing. But she very clearly also cares about the social status component of it, in way that crowd out her genuine love of fashion.
How often do we see her take joy in fashion? Famously, never. As Nigel comments, she’s only smiled once. At risk of sounding like an LLM, that’s the performance of taste, not the exercise of it. .
Her famous speech about the cerulean sweater is also performative. She gives Andy a history of the color of her sweater and its ties to high fashion, but if it’s not clear why that history matters. If Andy had instead been wearing a denim jacket in a color popularized by workwear, would she have been safe from criticism? Isn’t dressing unfashionably its own form of fashion? How were the two identical belts different? (We never get an explanation of this, so to my mind, Andy’s comment remains valid.)
And of course, she could have educated Andy in a kinder way. That would, in fact, have cost nothing. I share the worry that we sometimes neglect opportunities to correct or improve something for the sake of kindness, but there are also plenty of ways to do so while also being kind - generally, more effective ways as well - and Miranda Proestly not choosing those ways demonstrates a greater concern for lording her status over others than actually fixing the thing that needs fixed (Andy’s lack of fashion knowledge).
I've seen this movie so many times and thought I knew what my peers thought about it, but at the time it came out we didn't quite have the beehive of commentary that we do now. It wasn't until recently that I was even aware of the the great consensus among its fans that Nate is a whiny, childish brat who tries to convince himself that he's not criticizing her for the nature of her job -- "I make port wine reductions all day. I'm not exactly in the Peace Corps" -- and yet in the very next sentence he questions her "integrity" because of the devotion she has to her job. Whoever had the thankless job of developing Nate's personality/storyline I guess never had to endure an entry level job, which everyone knows is just a stepping stone, and sometimes not even that.
So I appreciate your calling out his hypocrisy and weak arguments.
I am not really aware of any of this discussion I just thought he was awful!
Truly!
We live for over-contextualised pop cultural analysis.
I think I could more easily see the merits of Miranda Priestly if she wasn't primarily in the business of demanding illogical, utterly crazy things of her assistants, and if these requests didn't primarily accrue to her own personal comfort. ("Get me a flight out of Miami during a hurricane when all flights are grounded so that I don't have to miss my daughters' piano recital," for instance.) Her requests to Andy have very little to do with the actual creation of the art of the magazine and almost everything to do with making sure that she not only has creature comforts, but so that she can pretend to her family that her job isn't the most important thing in her life. (Getting her twins the copies of Harry Potter before it is released, for example.)
I also feel constrained to note that Vito and Michael Corleone both are thoroughly decent to the goombahs that they ask to commit crimes for them.
I think this fits my reading! (haha ofc I do...) because being nice while asking someone to commit a crime is not nice, while being mean in order to induct someone into the high standards of a discipline... is sort of nice...
Maybe. I do wonder how much easier it would have been for Miranda to do her real work if she wasn't cycling through an assistant every couple of months. That seems to be the secret that the Corleones have discovered: have high expectations for your people but be kind when they rise to them, and you'll have loyal goombahs for life (which might admittedly be short).
I think Stanley Tucci's character's position is supportable: he's actually doing the work of fashion. I like that the movie presented the case for Miranda in a way that the book did not. (One of the rare cases where a movie is far better than the book on almost every point.) But then again, Miranda screws over Stanley in one of the final scenes, choosing to sacrifice a real talent to save her own butt from the consequences of her psychotic running of the magazine, which is ultimately what shows Andy that there is nothing that she won't do to support her claim that she's the best person to run the magazine. I don't think that the movie gives us any way to evaluate that claim. It could be true, or it could be as delusional as some of Miranda's requests to her assistants.
As far as boss literature goes, I think I much prefer Wolf Hall's portrait of employer-employee relations.
Yeah, the fact that Miranda priestly has good artistic taste doesn’t make up for her being terrible. I find that the recent effort to pretend otherwise bizarre. (Also, the Godfather is…not a tale we’re supposed to want to emulate? As the Godfather 2 makes very clear?)
Probably too obvious to say, but I’ll say it anyway—
Their names are mirrors: Andy in the Mir-ror of Miranda
Great piece! I tend to agree with many of the takes here, and I quite like this movie! I am curious to hear your thoughts on The Devil Wears Prada 2. I watched it recently in theaters and found it to be far far worse than the first. For starters, the series of events that leads Andy back to Runway is unrealistic. Then also, the relationship between Andy and Miranda is less interesting. Andy has grown; she knows what she likes and what she is good at, but yet the producers still want us to think that she seeks Miranda's approval. There are scenes that suggest as much, but they are not convincing in the slightest. Andy is confident; she has already left once and she very well could leave again. I was not convinced that she was at all scared of (once-sacred) Priestly. The one redeeming quality of the film was those wonderful sweeping shots of New York City, which I admit were beautiful.
I am going to see it soon... will report back!
I'm reading John Canaday's The Lives of the Painters and just came across this aphorism from Fuseli, "Fashion is the bastard of vanity dressed by art." Perfect.
Such an interesting piece! This comes from another field, but in corporate culture, I find the “niceness-culture” so predominant (in the sequel, Miranda is may times dulled and reigned in by this), which makes for individual ambition, in its earnest, unacceptable and even ousted.
How can one be visionary and creative in a modern corporate world? I think the sequel tries to play with this idea, but I would love to hear what you think!
What does Stanley Tucci get for his passionate defense of Vogue, and of fashion, and of Miranda? A hearty stab in the back! Sure, Miranda's ambition is in part about art, but mostly it is about herself and about winning zero-sum status games.
That's what drives Andy off: the unconscionable mistreatment of Stanely Tucci! She learns much from Miranda, sure, but mainly she learns she does not want to be the sort of person who stabs Stanley Tucci in the back.
Which is why she goes into journalism, a domain where I'm sure no one has ever stabbed anyone else in the back.
No, what drives her off is knowing that she is like that but she does not wish to be like that for this particular goal—let the boyfriend go to Boston, she is working here!
I think that's a plausible interpretation of Andy's "real" character, but that's clearly not how she perceives herself or her actions at the end of the movie. There's no evidence presented in the movie that Andy would be okay betraying Stanley Tucci like that *in a different industry*.
Of course, it may end up coming to that; the ending reflects a certain naive belief, endemic to millennials of that period, that certain industries are inherently high-minded and virtuous and are thereby exempt from status games and power struggles. This turned out to be *emphatically* untrue, but the movie's position on that question is at best ambiguous.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder how much her ambition is about art at all. She's not a designer or a creator in any traditional sense; she's simply maneuvered herself to an industry bully pulpit where her opinion is divine writ and the costs of opposing her in any small way are enormous.
In fact--and I realize that this is more than a movie about Jimmy Choos might be able to bear--Miranda has the classic personality of the tyrant, according to the Republic. She's ruled by unnecessary and dreamlike desires, with dreamlike illogic that other people leave behind in their sleep but which she frantically tries to impose upon the world. She's driven mad by these desires, which never end because she's essentially unsatisfiable (and may define her desires in such a way that they can't be satisfied). She's fearful and paranoid, as the subplot with the editor of French Vogue and her betrayal of Stanley Tucci show. She's completely unjust and lawless, with no respect for ordinary human standards of conduct. And all of this--Plato's central insight--doesn't make her happy, but makes her a kind of slave to herself and what she needs, which is less the fulfillment of an art form than the exercise of power. That's the decision that Andy faces in miniature at the beginning. She, too, was willing to sacrifice all sorts of things to her ambition (some of them meaningless, some of them not). Just one year, she tells herself. For just one year I will be a slave to Miranda so that I can be a slave to my ambition. I'll let them dress me, shape my flesh, pluck my hair out, shove my feet into impossibly contorted shoes, and at the end of it, I'll have what I want. I think what she realizes in Paris is that ambition is the bottomless tyrannical desire that can't be satisfied, and serving it only enslaves you more.
Yes, I think if Henry wrote the "bull" case for Miranda, then this is the bear! Stanley Tucci is the character who unambiguously loves *fashion* and sacrifices for *fashion*. For Miranda, it's not clear whether she loves fashion, or whether fashion is just a convenient vehicle for her ambition; or even if she would recognize this distinction.
To be fair, people like Tucci benefit from Miranda in the sense that Miranda has a real incentive to find and promote passionate, talented people--that is, to promote them as far as is politically expedient for her.
Great essay. There was one moment at the end of DVP2 where the script faltered and betrayed Miranda: it’s when And asks her about the costs of her dedication to her job, and after she mentions the times she didn’t see her children, she says “But I just love to work.” It should have been “I just love the work,” meaning this specific vocation. Loving to work is mindless grunt behavior; loving this work is sublime. It’s the substitution of general for specific; love is only ever specific anyway. The way she phrased it was mindless girl-bossing, but that’s not Miranda Priestley’s character. Perhaps she would be successful elsewhere, in other industries at other jobs, but she would only be Miranda Priestley at this job, in fashion, at Runway, because that’s what she loves. It’s choosing one specific thing to love, to follow, to serve, that makes greatness.
- good observation - but Prada 2 might not have been necessary to any particular end -
The Devil Wears Prada is secretly a Jane Austen novel about education in taste and seriousness. :) Michael Corleone makes a nifty parallel to Prince Hal.
two things about the boyfriend never made sense - firstly, he was far too good looking for her at the start. secondly, he was a chef, so he would absolutely know a thing or two about having to prioritise work, not to mention that he would probably be busy working most nights and not waiting around for her to come home
They, and their whole friend group, were modern bohemians. The boyfriend’s looks didn’t matter any more than Andy’s, because they both believed in “beautiful on the inside (and who cares about societal success)”
Andy is only abandoned by her friends when she comes out to them as a Striver - someone who is PROUD of doing difficult things even when it’s pointless (e.g. getting the early HP books).
Boyfriend et al may represent the current zeitgeist, but I disagree with OP that this was meant to make the audience more comfortable. Unlike Stanley, their portrayal is not at all sympathetic - they all come across as hypocritical losers.
Oh God, I absolutely hated that spoiled brat man-child of Andy's boyfriend! At that time - when the movie premiered - nobody could understand me why I supported Andy actually having a career and becoming someone and being ambitious (and looking GREAT doing it!) instead of her coddling that small-minded, unambitious boy. And her friends, what an infuriating, toxic lot, all of them.
Of course, Stanley Tucci was the epitome of mature, sophisticated manhood. (Speaking of Tucci - this is exactly the type of man modern culture needs so much, there's too many man-children like Chalamet around nowadays... But I digress.)