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After a promotional blitz that has run the full gamut from haute (Meryl Streep on the cover of Vogue with Anna Wintour) to not (a heinous line of Target sweats), The Devil Wears Prada 2 is finally here, and set for very chic box office takings of over $200m in its first week.
Praised as one of the few Hollywood sequels to measure up to its beloved original, the movie sees Streep reunite with Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci two decades after the original movie’s release in a flurry of designer rags, withering put-downs and a slew of celebrity cameos. Surprisingly enough, it mostly works. At my screening on opening weekend, fans crowded to take pictures with promotional cardboard cut-outs and clinked cocktails as the lights went down. Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the film, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Runway 2.0
When a sequel to the 00s comedy was first announced in 2024, many wondered how The Devil Wears Prada 2 would deal with the slow, depressing decline of the women’s glossy magazine. (Glamour, Self, Allure and Teen Vogue have all closed or gone digital-only in recent years.) Today, some of the best photography is on Instagram, the most rigorous fashion journalism is on Substack and the best styling is in #GRWM TikToks.
It’s depressing but fitting that Runway magazine is on life support at the opening of The Devil Wears Prada 2. A glitzy Met Ball-like gala can’t hide the fact that the brand is in dire straits, with the imperious editor in chief Miranda Priestly (Streep) attempting to keep Runway afloat with social-first content and Gorpcore fashion shoots, even though the mere mention of bum bags makes her break out in hives. The editor is at the mercy of advertisers to keep the publication alive, and even the biggest issue of the year is a shadow of its former self. As she grimly puts it, “the September issue’s already so thin you could floss with it.”
After being fired from her worthy yet underpaid job writing government exposes at a fictional publication called New York Vanguard, Andy Sachs is brought in to “restore credibility” to Runway, which is amid a PR crisis after accidentally promoting sweatshops. The film handles the death of media deftly – I’d bet that any former or current journalist will cringe with recognition as Andy details the “layoffs, consolidation and downsizing” that has left her and many of her colleagues jobless. One former co-worker has fallen on such desperate times she is ghost writing the memoir of Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.
Bringing the gang back together
I found it impossible not to smile at Andy and Miranda’s reunion, particularly when the veteran editor starts tearing into her former charge. “You should really get that looked at, that condition that causes you to trudge,” Miranda informs Andy of her perfectly normal gait. But it’s Tucci’s Nigel that has the funniest scenes with Andy, from initially greeting her with “Look what TJ Maxx dragged in” to (another) makeover in Runway’s fashion closet, where he showers her with designer togs and a hideous Hermès bag that might just rival the patchwork Louis Vuitton from the first Sex and the City film for ugliness.
The ice queen softens
The years have mellowed Miranda out, though the ice queen hasn’t fully thawed – or caught up to 2026 political correctness. There are satisfying callbacks to the woman who once mourned the impossibility of finding a “lovely, slender female paratrooper” as Miranda attempts to navigate modern mores. After seeing one lineup of prospective models, she asks with genuine confusion: “Some of the bodies are very …body positive. But why?”
The acidic humor of the original has admittedly been given a dose of Gaviscon, but it’s a delight to see Streep in light comedy mode: in one scene set at a garden party, she throws her head back with laughter, slurrily gossips to Andy, and tipsily demands more rosé. And while it’s hard to feel sorry for Miranda having to fly economy on airplanes or ditch her chauffeur for Ubers due to budget constraints, the movie is an effective portrait of the character at a crossroads as she (fleetingly) considers retirement. The first movie showed why “everyone wants to be us”, but the sequel shows the personal cost of maintaining that glamorous facade.
Emily is the HBIC now
After publisher Irv Ravitz dies, the future of Runway is placed into the hands of his son: a Silicon Valley coded doofus who dreams of replacing editors and models with AI. He’s “sucking the soul out of everything”, cries Andy, who hatches a harebrained scheme to save the magazine with the help of Emily and her new tech oligarch boyfriend Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux, playing a kind of Musk-Bezos composite). It’s a smart setup for some great two-hander moments between Hathaway and Blunt, and the plot point hits grimly close to home given how much of the media is now controlled by tech billionaires.
Andy needs the double act: Hathaway’s character may have won a Golden Keyboard award (me neither) for her rigorous reporting but she’s kind of a snooze, and a romantic subplot involving an Australian architect feels tacked-on. Meanwhile, Blunt’s character of Emily has only gotten more amusingly vile in the two decades since the first movie, shooting daggers at minions at her new job at Dior and taunting Miranda about Runway falling on hard times. “Remember when magazines were a thing?” she trills witchily. While caustic quotables are in far shorter supply in general here, Blunt’s one-liners steal the show. After a decorating mishap involving a garish paint shade called Tulip Whisper, she hisses: “It’s not a whisper, it’s a cry for help.”
Strike a pose … or don’t
Thanks to the original film’s stylist Patricia Field, there are at least a half-dozen looks from the 2006 movie that are so recognizable that you could pull them off as Halloween outfits. The sequel’s looks are disappointingly muted and tasteful by comparison: Andy doesn’t wear anything nearly as eye-catching here as the famous Chanel boots, or the leopard-trimmed green topcoat that Hathaway recently re-wore while promoting the film. Instead, the former assistant has been shopping on re-sale sites and building up a wardrobe of designer neutrals for pennies. Boring! I also couldn’t work out whether Miranda’s Dries van Noten couch tassel jacket was meant to be chic or absurd (it aims for the former but lands as the latter). Thankfully, comic sartorial relief comes in the form of Emily, who is often clad in an outlet mall’s worth of designer logos and shows up to Irv’s funeral in the kind of skimpy outfit you’d usually expect to see in a Tate McRae music video.
Jam-packed with celebs
Though news of Lady Gaga’s cameo leaked months ago, her appearance in the film’s third act still shocks with her commitment to the bit. With no budget to book a musical guest for a Runway event, Nigel and Miranda cook up a plan to blackmail the singer into performing for free. “Who let her in here?” Gaga screams as Miranda bursts into her dressing room, as the divas hurl deliciously honeyed shade at each other. While Gaga’s filmed performance of the forgettable new song Shape of a Woman pales in comparison to her recent Mayhem tour, a slew of guest appearances – Tina Brown, Law Roach, Marc Jacobs, Heidi Klum and Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns (sure!) among them – keep things moving swiftly from one star-studded moment to the next.
A fitting finale
After some fabulous scenes in Milan that involve speedboats, headscarves and a Donatella Versace cameo, it turns out that Emily’s plan to have her rich boyfriend buy Runway was in fact all a ruse to usurp Miranda as editor and install herself as editor. Naturally, Miranda won’t stand for that and finds her own billionaire (Lucy Liu) to buy the magazine instead, and delivers the film’s most cutting line in the process, saying to Emily icily: “You’re not a visionary, you’re a vendor.” By the end of the film, the trio of Miranda, Nigel and Andy are back to work at Runway, newly hungry and perhaps a little wiser. And I won’t spoil the film’s closing line here, but it’s a Miranda-ism for the ages. Roll on part 3.
