Transcript: Design Series — The fashion of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Design Series — The fashion of “The Devil Wears Prada”’

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. This is also the third episode of our special series on design. And to combine the two, we have decided to return to an often quoted film. We’ll be looking at fashion design through the lens of the 2006 classic, The Devil Wears Prada. You probably remember this film. Anne Hathaway plays Andy, a young journalism graduate who becomes assistant to the frightening fashion editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. Andy considers herself a serious reporter with no interest in the fashion world, but she’s working for the equivalent of Anna Wintour now, and as she gets closer to the top, she finds herself indoctrinated. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
This movie was huge at the time and is having a renaissance now with memes across social media. And in a true sign of our times, there’s even a Devil Wears Prada musical coming to London later this year with music by Elton John. So we wanted to return to it with some of our esteemed fashion experts. We will talk about what the film actually says about fashion then and how it lands today. Shall we get into it? I’m Lilah, and that wasn’t a question. Here with me in New York, he’s just got those Harry Potter proofs to the twins. It’s US financial commentator and men’s style columnist Rob Armstrong. 

Robert Armstrong
I was, you know, I was once a serious young journalist. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, were you? Weren’t we all? 

Robert Armstrong
And I wrote about money, and then I ran into Jo Ellison.

Jo Ellison
Yeah, I was your Miranda Priestly. 

Robert Armstrong
And she turned me into a style columnist, ruining my reputation for seriousness forever. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Beautifully introducing our HTSI editor, Jo Ellison, who’s on the line. She is wearing the Chanel boots. (Laughter) Hi, Jo. So why don’t we talk about this film? Topline for both of you, what were your impressions? Like, how did it feel watching it again now? Jo? 

Jo Ellison
I’ve actually seen this film, on and off, I’d say maybe every 2 or 3 years since its release. So it’s 2006, so it’s not like it’s not unfamiliar. And also, I think with all the memes and the like, social media content and the number of times it gets referenced, I feel like it’s kind of just been part of our cultural consciousness kind of ever since, over the past 20 years. I still hate it. Hated it then. I hate it now. 

Robert Armstrong
It doesn’t stop you from watching it every two years. 

Jo Ellison
Man, I hate that film. Yeah.

Robert Armstrong
You hate watching it every two years? 

Jo Ellison
I hate watching . . . Yeah. And it just annoys me again and again and again. But you know, last night I actually, I watched it again, so I was like, OK, right, I need to, like, just remind myself. And it’s probably the most sympathetic towards it I’d ever felt, which is kind of funny, but maybe, you know, 20 years ago, I was that young woman walking into a difficult office, hoping to kind of make an impression on an important editor. And I was given a break. But, yeah, I carried a pencil. I knew her bloody name. And I’d heard of the magazine. And that’s what journalism is, love. 

Robert Armstrong
Who did you go to work for when you were playing the Anne Hathaway character? 

Jo Ellison
I went to Alex Shulman at Vogue. So I was going into British Vogue in 2008. So it was like a couple of years after. But I felt very, you know, I felt I felt relatively, sort of familiar with the environment, I guess. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Rob. Well, what did you think? 

Robert Armstrong
I am a clothes nerd, but really only about men’s clothes. I don’t know very much about women’s clothes, so I was looking forward, going into the movie, to learn something and to watch a movie about how clothes were important. And what I discovered, to my horror, is that as far as I can tell, this movie doesn’t care about clothes at all. You know, it’s this sort of fairy tale about office life and personal dynamics and power. And the movie namedrops designers a lot, and there are scenes where characters kind of obviously change clothes or wear clothes or present certain things. And there’s the famous boots, but they, the clothes and the importance of clothes just doesn’t figure in the movie, as far as I can tell at all. It could have been a movie about a young reporter who goes working, goes to work for an aluminium siding magnate of terrible power in the aluminium siding business. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. Jo, what did you think? What was the film about to you? It sounds like, to Robert, it was about power. 

Robert Armstrong
Maybe. But Jo, you would know more about . . . Jo, you would know more about the clothes, the women’s clothes. So maybe it might have made a very different impression. 

Jo Ellison
Well, it’s interesting. So Patricia Field did the costumes, and she also did Sex and the City, and both of which I think are kind of, they’re both things that are just like ostensibly about clothes, even if, like, you’re not deep into the wardrobe all the time, probably more so with Sex and the City, where they really did talk about shopping and buying and things like that. I think there is a definite association, like, it’s very much like knowing, it’s that the Chanel boots, sort of moment and then, you know, the fact that people wear different things. Miranda Priestly wears a lot of Don Mclaren. She has a lot of vintage, you know. Like, Emily wears Vivienne Westwood. There’s a kind of, there are sort of things that you can pick up. But I don’t think you’re right. It’s about how you project yourself as clothes. And Andy’s journey is, oh, I look like a kind of little graduate frumpy in, like, kind of ugly polyester sweater, who then, like, puts on loads of Chanel from the fashion cupboard and, like, becomes, you know, more powerful and like, the classic childhood princess makeover, isn’t it? I mean, she did Princess Diaries and it’s exactly the same narrative. And it has a very strange mid-2000s style tropes which I don’t even recognise as being particularly fashionable, actually. They’re just very Patricia Field-y. Like, I certainly remember going to see the film and not aspiring to look like anybody in it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Long necklaces . . .  

Jo Ellison
Yeah. Yeah. Horrible, very expensive outfits. 

Robert Armstrong
I came away . . . The only time in that film I remember other characters interacting with our hero in the realm of appearance and saying, you got to look like this, you got to look like this, you got to do that, is other characters saying to her, your ass is too fat. 

Jo Ellison
Yeah, it’s about thinness. It’s not about style. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, it really doesn’t hold up today, does it? The relationship with weight. She’s basically seen as a cow until she goes from a size six to a size four.

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OK. Let’s talk a little bit more about the fashion in the film. As you mentioned, Jo, Patricia Field was the stylist. She was almost like the puppeteer of early 2000s fashion in Sex and the City. You know, a lot of people back then were wearing layers and long necklaces and belts for no reason over their clothes and a lot of things that sort of were part of her. I think my older sisters were wearing stilettos to work because that was what you did in New York at the time. 

Jo Ellison
I feel like it’s a very New York look. I didn’t recognise, I didn’t recognise it particularly well from what I remember of London, which was much more grungy. Alexa Chung, Topshop was still kind of king. I feel as though what that, what the film tells and of American style is a very New York moment. That’s what it felt like to me, because I didn’t really recognise it. 

Robert Armstrong
The fashion equivalent of the cosmopolitan, the drink they all drink in Sex and the City . . . 

Jo Ellison
Yeah, exactly. 

Robert Armstrong
It’s like, looks kind of pretty, but it’s also slightly sweet and childish. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. 

Robert Armstrong
And grown-ups drink martinis. 

Jo Ellison
I’m very fussy. There’s no, there’s everything’s like, yeah, very layered. And there’s a belt with this and there’s a necklace with that, and there’s clanging things there. And there’s a horrible little hat on top of it, like it’s, I think it’s very Hilton sisters, right? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, yes, I think perfectly encapsulated by this outfit that Anne Hathaway is wearing or Andy is wearing with this white shirt under an off-the-shoulder black jumper with long Chanel pearls. 

Jo Ellison
That’s a full . . . I think that’s a full Chanel outfit. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Inaudible) Tweed . . . Baker boy hat. 

Jo Ellison
Yeah. That’s it. That’s a full Chanel look in there, in that scene . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, the newsboy cap, I think is . . . That’s all Chanel. 

Robert Armstrong
The awful little hat on top. 

Jo Ellison
On the very ironed hair. 

Robert Armstrong
And the belt for no reason. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Probably the most famous scene in this film related to fashion is Miranda Priestley’s cerulean speech, where she basically takes Andy to task for saying that she doesn’t care about fashion, and she points out how the colour of her ugly, cerulean sweater was conceived of by the people in this room. 

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Jo, how realistic was that scene? I think people want to believe that someone’s in charge of this stuff. And so they kind of like the simple answer that like, you know, things that were cool were decided by a few people in a room. Was that the case then? 

Jo Ellison
I think a trend is always an interest that, you never really quite understand the sort of moment at which a trend takes form. But I think probably 20 years ago, when there were, there was no Instagram, there was barely any internet. Like, you didn’t really get to see kind of shows online immediately in the way that you do now. So everyone didn’t have access. There was a much more curatorial approach to what people would take away from a show, and then present it to other people. So it was, it was definitely fewer people controlling the kind of, you know, the means of distribution, as it were. And like, I think those big magazine editors were also quite tight with the buyers in the shops. So they were influencing that. They were also working with the designers on their collections and talking to them. So it was, there were certainly like a fewer people in the room kind of hoping to decide on what everyone might wear. There’s, I think there is an element of truth to it. I just think now, that has kind of blown away a bit. There’s so much less of that. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. That’s interesting. 

Robert Armstrong
So for me, that scene personified and really nailed what I was talking about when I said that the movie is not interested in clothes, or is even in some way anti-clothes. Think of the different things the lecture could have said. The lecture could have said, is what we do here is help people look their best. And here’s why that’s important. Here’s why these little choices really matter. Or it could have been about here’s why fashion is really an art form that deserves respect. You, you young punk. This is why what we do matter. It wasn’t about any of those things. What it was about is, I am the boss bitch. And the great unwashed do what I say. The reason people wear cerulean sweaters bought at cheap stores is because I decide. I am in charge. I have power.

Jo Ellison
But interestingly, in fashion, I think there are people who genuinely think they are that important. I think that’s what’s quite interesting about the fashion industry. There are people who think they’re God. I mean maybe that exists in all industries, but I think because the fashion industry is kind of more interesting, like . . .  

Robert Armstrong
Let me introduce you to some bankers some time, Jo. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think there’s probably quite an overlap. (Laughs)

Jo Ellison
Yeah. I mean, they just have like this, like hilarious, sort of like self-belief. And you’re like, OK, fine, maybe. You know, did they decide or didn’t they? They think they did. Does that just count as the same? 

Robert Armstrong
And I’m sure that’s true. I’m sure it’s even more true probably in fashion than many industries. The point is, this is what the movie chose to emphasise. This was the aspect of the story that the director decided to land on. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. Jo, is there anything you want to say about the fashion world in the film? I mean, given you were at Vogue around that time. 

Jo Ellison
I mean, the only thing I would say is it is portrayed as being catastrophically bitchy. And obviously I’d want to say, no, it wasn’t like that at all. We were all great friends. (Laughs) I mean, it was quite catastrophically bitchy. And definitely there were like terrible female rivalries in a mostly female office. So you would get that you thought a lot of that felt like scarily familiar. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
For the last section of this conversation, I’d love to look at the film from the perspective of today. This film came out before fast fashion was really what it is, before the internet was obviously what it is. And I’m curious, sort of like, how it sits today. What is it like to look back on it now, knowing what we know about where fashion went? 

Jo Ellison
I think it’s actually weirdly still quite pertinent, which is why I think maybe it’s survived as it has. I think there are still people who aspire to inhabit small corridors of power, where they get to look pretty and wear amazing clothes and go and travel the world, and that this sort of architecture of fashion hasn’t really changed. People still publish monthly magazines. The shows still happen twice a year in the same four cities. You know, the same designers. Some of them are still designing the same heads of house. So like a lot of it, and the fashion is kind of weird in that it changes constantly and yet some of the kind of basic structure of it is fundamentally unchanged. And so I think that’s possibly why it’s held its own for so long. Like bits of it feel dated and obviously like, if you made it today, you’d have to have a kind of social media desk or, and, you know, everyone would have a kind of Instagram account or be doing TikTok, but those are kind of incidentals. I think in the bigger picture, I don’t think that much, like the production of clothes is still, for fashion houses is still very much the same, even though the kind of proliferation of fast fashion means that it’s all out a lot quicker. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Rob what do you think? 

Robert Armstrong
Well, it’s very different for me, right, because I’m not a person really from the fashion world and I don’t really look seriously at women’s clothes. But let me say this. It’s significant that the only male character in fashion world in that movie is Nigel, who is a gay man. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Played by Stanley Tucci.

Robert Armstrong
Played by, beautifully in many scenes by Stanley Tucci. And something that’s happened in like the last 10 years is while most men continue and in particular, straight men continue to revel in casualisation and slobbery and indifference to clothes, the internet has created a subculture of menswear nerds that I don’t know if it existed back in 2006, and it’s Instagram accounts and its Twitter accounts, and it’s people and it’s certain stores about men who are, you know, whether they’re straight or gay or whatever, kind of care about this stuff now. 

Jo Ellison
I would say that existed then though. Because they, you, Esquire and Gentlemen’s Quarterly, all those magazines existed. It’s just migrated and it’s easier to find for people like yourself who maybe wouldn’t have wanted to pick up a magazine that kind of looked like you might be into men’s fashion. I think online is something you can kind of do a bit more secretly. 

Robert Armstrong
That’s an excellent point, Jo. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Or you could talk back, you know . . . 

Robert Armstrong
Well, I would say it tells you like, where are those men in that movie? And I wonder, if that movie was made today some of those men might pop up. 

Jo Ellison
They’re definitely not in the Vogue offices. But you do not get like, gentlemanly chaps wondering, well, I don’t think . . . 

Robert Armstrong
Yeah, I don’t know, not even. But you don’t . . .  

Jo Ellison
I mean, look at HTSI.

Robert Armstrong
It’s not just classic menswear nerds. I think there is nerds who are into clothes more generally, more fashionable clothes. 

Jo Ellison
I think everyone’s way more aware. I think maybe that’s why it feels so unforgivable that, like, she can’t spell Gabbana and she’s never heard of a magazine because you just would, that would not happen today. There is no way you could go to an interview and just not know how, you know, you just wouldn’t. There’s no possibility of that happening like, who’s Miranda Priestly, because you would be aware from the internet. So I think maybe we’ve become more just generally like, oh, I don’t know about education but definitely aware. 

Robert Armstrong
Yeah.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
I’d love to talk a little bit more about the nostalgia now about that time and why it’s resonating with people now. Jo, you were saying it’s not quite different, and that’s why it’s had the lasting power, I think that’s right. 

Jo Ellison
It’s familiar and yet, like, it’s also that perfect sweet spot before everyone had smartphones, which I think is for everybody in the industry. I mean, look at everything they made on Netflix at the moment. The majority of stuff is historical drama or something, which is set in a world where people don’t . . . I mean, they find that people find smartphone technology so hard to make into some sort of like fictional device. It’s just a nightmare. So I think it’s that, it’s, the film is perfect in that because they don’t have to devote huge amounts of the storyline to how people communicate. They still meet in bars, they go out and do things. And I think there’s definitely a nostalgia for that. And it’s kind of, things are just a bit easier, aren’t they? Like, you don’t have to fiddle around with technology all the time. 

Robert Armstrong
It’s presumably also relevant that 2006 was before the financial crisis. There was a generally higher level of trust in institutions in 2006 before the wheels came off really badly. And since then, of course, we’ve had another wheels coming off in the pandemic. So it’s like you could believe in the fundamental solidity of something like a magazine and in a way that you just couldn’t now.  

Jo Ellison
Yeah. And also there’s so much money. Yeah. I mean, this is a world in which they can kill a £300,000 shoot, which is like, you know, a budget of four magazines or something in this day and age. I mean the money they’re spending is like astronomical. There’s town cars everywhere, like, she’s never in a taxi. She’s in some kind of hired limo or something.

Robert Armstrong
If you want another perspective on this era — and, Jo, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of this book — I think it’s very interesting to think about Leon Talley’s book, The Chiffon Trenches, as a kind of companion piece to this movie, because that, I thought that was a very affecting, bittersweet book of someone who also flew a bit close to the sun with Anna Wintour. And it just, it gives a picture of that time that is also awesome in terms of the money and the clothes and everything else, but showed in a real-life autobiography the painful side of that time. 

Jo Ellison
And maybe that’s why it’s so moralistic, because in a way, like it is the period of sort of like excessive kind of aspiration and that we’re more so than in a kind of the offices of like the most powerful fashion magazine in the world. And anyone who kind of gets anywhere close to kind of possessing a piece of it must be deeply flawed. So everyone here kind of comes away, anyone who can get out of it, they’re all basically evil, anyone who remains there. And it’s kind of a consolation prize. Like, sorry, love, you’re not gonna able to wear this, and you can’t like, you know, you won’t be going to Paris anymore. But you know, you’ve got a good heart and you can write stories about janitors for the rest of your life. Hurray! (Laughs)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Well, I think that seems like a great place to end. Rob and Jo, thank you so much. We will be back in just a moment for More or Less. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each guest says something they want to see more of or less of in culture. Rob, what do you have? 

Robert Armstrong
I would like to see more women’s basketball, specifically women’s college basketball. We just had South Carolina beat Iowa in the finals in a tremendous game featuring tremendous players. And there was something about this year and last year, partly because of the superstardom of people like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers. Who are these? These are players who are legit humongous stars all of a sudden. Not just stars in the subcategory of women’s college basketball. Something has changed in the sport, such that a lot of people like me who are just like old-fashioned basketball meatheads are watching women’s basketball and we’re talking, we’re like talking to my friends like, oh, they should not have switched to zone there. (Laughs) And, I’m ready for next season. I’m up for it, man. I think it’s good stuff.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Cool. Great recommendation. Jo, what about you? 

Jo Ellison
I’ll be super quick. I didn’t get a total eclipse in London, so I want to see. I want to see a total eclipse. Would that be alright? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I think we can give you that. We’ll talk to whoever handles that. Mine is also a more. I watched the Steve Martin documentary recently. It is a two-parter on Apple TV and it was excellent. And I want more stories of people who keep trying something weird for years and years and years. And it doesn’t hit until one day it does. I didn’t really know that that was his story when it came to standup, and, it was very inspiring. 

Robert Armstrong
Yeah, I interviewed him once, and he was one of those . . . Sometimes you meet a celebrity and they’re not like they are on screen. Steve Martin is the Steve Martin-iest person that you can possibly imagine. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, that’s beautiful. I love to hear that. OK, Jo, Rob, what a joy. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. And, please come back. 

Robert Armstrong
Cheers. 

Jo Ellison
Thank you. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a read through the show notes. We have links that expand on everything mentioned today. We’ve got Rob’s column, Jo’s column, a recent interview with Anna Wintour, and every link that goes to the FT gets you past the paywall.

Also in the show notes is a very exciting link to buy tickets to the US FT Weekend Festival in Washington, DC. That is on Saturday, May 4th at the REACH at the Kennedy Centre. Rob will be there. Jo will be there. I will be there. We’ll all be hosting panels as will a lot of regulars on the podcast. There will also be big-name guests there on stage, including Nancy Pelosi, and we have a special discount for you in the show notes for podcast listeners specifically.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Zach St Louis is our contributing producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday. 

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