The Devil Wears Prada

Andrea Sachs considers fashion something that other people take seriously. She wants to become a journalist, has little interest in runways and designers, and applies to Runway mainly because a year as an assistant to Editor-in-Chief Miranda Priestly could open doors for her. The fact that she clearly doesn’t belong in this world—even during the job interview—seems at first to be just one of several problems.

The bigger one is sitting behind a desk. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) hardly has to raise her voice to transform a room. Employees fall silent, glances drift toward the door, and preparations begin before she’s even arrived. Her requests may seem absurd, but in the office they aren’t treated as requests. They are tasks. At first, no one cares how realistic it is to fulfill them.

Andrea (Anne Hathaway) gets the job anyway. Thus, The Devil Wears Prada doesn’t simply begin as the story of a young woman in an unfamiliar industry. Andrea is convinced that her distance from this industry is an advantage. To her, fashion is superficial, and because she’s interested in substance, she considers herself inwardly a cut above the rest of the staff. After all, she isn’t working at Runway because she wants to belong. For her, the job is above all a stepping stone to her real career.

The office doesn’t notice much of that. Phone calls have to be answered, appointments coordinated, and items procured that Andrea didn’t even know existed just moments before. Miranda rarely explains in detail what she expects. Usually, a glance or a tersely worded assignment is enough. Andrea has to figure out the rest on her own.

The humor often arises from the fact that situations which are completely out of the ordinary for her are treated by everyone else as part of their normal workday. No one pauses long enough to explain just how crazy Miranda’s demands are. That would be a waste of time. The next task is already waiting.

Emily (Emily Blunt), Miranda’s first assistant, has long since internalized this logic. Her impatience with Andrea therefore doesn’t need to be framed as a separate conflict. From her perspective, the newcomer isn’t a brave nonconformist, but simply ill-prepared. When a workplace operates by rules that you take seriously, someone who finds those rules ridiculous can be quite exhausting.

Andrea is learning. This first becomes apparent in the things she initially considers trivial. Her clothing changes how she is perceived in the office. She becomes familiar with names and procedures. Tasks that initially overwhelm her, she eventually handles almost casually. The film doesn’t portray this as a simple transformation from an unassuming woman into a glamorous fashion icon. What’s more interesting is how quickly competence and conformity can blend into one another.

One of the most incisive scenes begins with Andrea laughing at two belts that look almost identical. For her, the moment confirms everything she thinks about this world: grown adults discuss with great seriousness differences that hardly anyone outside this room would even notice.

Miranda doesn’t respond with offense. She explains. The blue sweater Andrea is wearing is, in her eyes, not proof that Andrea has nothing to do with fashion. Its color, its prevalence, and ultimately its presence in an ordinary closet are all tied to decisions made long ago in the very industry Andrea is currently smiling at. For a moment, the dynamics shift. Andrea isn’t standing outside this system, observing it. She’s been part of it for a long time.

Meryl Streep doesn’t need big outbursts to play Miranda. It’s precisely her calmness that makes her authority uncomfortably effective. A softly spoken “That’s all” ends conversations more reliably than shouting. Even praise is so sparing that a barely noticeable change in tone suddenly takes on significance. Miranda doesn’t have to prove that she’s important. Everyone else does that for her.

And yet, The Devil Wears Prada isn’t just a simple story about a terrible boss and her victim. Andrea gets better at her job. She discovers skills within herself that initially have little to do with fashion: improvising, organizing, reading people, functioning under pressure. The fact that she’s increasingly taking seriously what she previously scoffed at makes sense at first glance.

But a demanding job rarely stays confined to the office. Friends wait. Appointments get postponed. The phone could ring at any moment. Andrea wanted to use Runway as a stepping stone to get somewhere else eventually, but the job has long since begun to dictate when she has time, how she looks, and which problems suddenly become urgent for her.

Therein lies the film’s most uncomfortable irony: Andrea notices her own transformation later than everyone around her. At first, her shoes don’t fit into this world. Eventually, they do.