Fashion gets evil
It is the survival of the best-dressed.
Welcome to the dizzying world of New York fashion, where size zero is the new two, six is the new eight, and a bad hair day can end a career.
Here, Runway Magazine is the Holy Grail and it is controlled with finely manicured fist by editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the most powerful woman in fashion. Runway is a fearsome gauntlet for anyone who wants to make it in the industry and although being her assistant is a job no self-respecting person can survive, yet it’s an opportunity a million young women in New York would kill for.
Enters recent college graduate Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) whose fashion sense is more college drab and a far cry from the super-slim fashion divas clacking their stilettos down the halls of the magazine’s Manhattan headquarters.
When Andy comes in for the job, it dawns on her that making it in this industry will take more than drive and determination. And her ultimate test stands before her in head-to-toe Prada - Miranda, a fearsome and ruthless dragon lady.
Indeed Miranda can spin the fashion world like a basketball but has a devil of a time finding and keeping a good assistant.
But Andy has something the rest of them don’t: she is extremely smart and refuses to fail. To be that perfect assistant, however, she finds she needs to make herself over in Miranda’s image.
Soon, much to her boyfriend’s (Adrian Grenier) dismay, she can talk the talk, walk the walk (in flawless Manolo’s) and never again confuse Dolce with Gabbana. But the more of life she sees through Miranda’s eyes, the more she begins to grasp that Miranda’s world is a fabulous but lonely one – and that great success also requires great sacrifice.
The price of high fashion
The Devil Wears Prada is adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling chic lit of the same title. The novel, translated into 27 languages, was based on the author’s experience of a year’s stint as an assistant to Anna Wintour, the legendary and demanding editor of Vogue.
Two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep is the inimitable Miranda Priestly - the centre figure of the movie who shares her screen presence with Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs.
Director David Frankel, who explored the vagaries of fashion and celebrity in the award-winning series Sex in the City, said that instead of making the obvious choice to demonise Miranda, he preferred “to explore Miranda’s relentless pursuit of excellence in a serious way.” Although she is fearsome, Miranda has made hard sacrifices to make it to the top and stay there.
“Miranda has an incredible amount of power in the marketplace,” said Streep. “She’s a taste-and trend-maker and therefore a market-setter. She functions with a lot of pressure, and she runs a very tight ship.”
Streep’s Miranda, Frankel pointed out, skates the edge between the comically mean and the genuinely sad. “As an actor, Streep has the talent and ability to blend comedy and drama,” he said.
Finding the smart assistant who can live up to Miranda’s high expectations is a near impossible task. Hathaway, the breakout star of The Princess Diaries and Brokeback Mountain, portrays the smart and confident journalism graduate who believes she can handle the toughest job.
“Andy is on a journey that we all take when we get our first jobs and discover what the real world is like. We’re faced with ethical and moral choices that we never considered, and we learn about ourselves,” said Frankel, adding that Hathaway embodied Andy with grace and humour.
Stanley Tucci (The Terminal, Big Night) stars as Miranda’s right-hand man and art director Nigel, who like everyone at Runway, survives on Miranda’s whim. Nigel is horrified when he meets Andy, because her hair, clothes and shoes are “just all wrong”. But they become friends and Nigel helps fit her in a size-four Chanel from the Runway wardrobe room, complete with a sleek new haircut, some stiletto Jimmy Choos!
“Andy becomes more and more preoccupied with success,” said Hathaway. “All she can see is her job and doing it well. But she also needs to rethink who she is and what she wants.” At Runway, Andy also makes a reluctant friend in Miranda’s chief assistant Emily, played by British actress Emily Blunt (My Summer of Love).
“Emily is so far on the edge of fashion that she’s practically falling off,” Blunt said. “She has no friends and thinks of nothing else but Miranda and fashion.” Andy’s boyfriend is Nate, played by Adrian Grenier of HBO’s series Entourage, is a chef with a simple lifestyle, who is not seduced by fashion or money and power and is feeling estranged by Andy’s new career and priorities.
The lure of haute couture
Fashion, undoubtably, is a main theme in The Devil Wears Prada.
To Frankel, fashion is “a constant pursuit for reinvention. It’s both what’s so great and what’s so awful about fashion. For fashion to succeed, it has to make all of us feel that everything we have and wear is inadequate.”
“People love fashion,” Streep said. “They love to look at it, in magazines, in runway shots. But it’s interesting to get a look inside this world, and see how much of a business it is, and where the fun is and where the fun stops.”
“The movie doesn’t have a judgment about the fashion world,” said screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who adapted Weisberger’s bestselling novel. “We take the fashion seriously as a business and show it realistically.” For the film to create a realistic portrait of today’s fashion giants, the costumes had to be authentic.
“The way I made sure that we got the fashion right was to hire Patricia Field as our costume designer,” Frankel said.
Field, an Emmy winner for her work on Sex and the City, created a style for Streep’s Miranda Priestly, as well as for Hathaway’s character’s transformation into a fashionista, and the look of the omnipresent “Clackers.”
The most fascinating is the chameleon-like wardrobe of Miranda, whose style has to be a class above the rest. Streep herself influenced aspects of Miranda’s wardrobe.
“My job was to make Meryl look as absolutely beautiful as I could. Not to dictate fashion, but to have people say, ‘Wow, Meryl Streep!’ said Field.
Famed fashion designer Valentino created a dress Miranda wears at a ritzy charity ball. Making his acting debut in the film as a cameo, the dress is also one which she looked sexiest in, says Field.
Throughout the movie, we see the cast garbed in designs ranging from Valentino, Donna Karan, Bill Blass, Galliano, and, of course, Prada.
