The Devil Wears Prada 2, a faithful and cruel mirror of fashion (and other) journalism

Another reason for my scepticism about D2 was precisely the fact that I did not particularly like D 1. It was too far (it was 2006!) from fashion journalism as I experienced it and also from the fashion I know, as an Italian woman before being a fashion journalist. In D 1 I found the outfits, the caricatures of stylists and journalists and press offices exaggerated. At the time, I had been at Sole 24 Ore for 'only' six years (I was hired in August 2000) and had begun to observe and report on a world that fascinated me and did not seem to me in any way similar to that of Runway (which, incidentally, in English is a way of saying fashion show or catwalk) or that of New York. Runway, for those who don't know, is a magazine 'invented' by the author of the book from which D1 is taken, and Miranda Pristley - it has always been said - is a character inspired by Anna Wintour, the director of Vogue America for whom the author of the book The Devil Wears Prada worked, just like Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the protagonist of D 1 and D 2.

I had not found myself, upon seeing D 1, in the very telling of fashion, which I have always loved, I repeat, as a teenager and then a young woman and then no longer a young Italian woman. I have always loved it as an expression of creativity and as a generator of wonder, and since I have been telling the story of fashion in Il Sole 24 Ore together with my colleagues, I have learnt to love and respect it as a supply chain, that is, for everything that is behind what we see in the fashion shows and then in the shops, from the sourcing of raw materials to manufacturing, from modelling to retail. Over these 20 years I have also read a lot about the history of fashion and I know for a fact how much fashion matters to me as a person. I consider my clothing choices, the driving force of which is - also - fashion's ability to constantly churn out new things, a way of telling the world (sometimes even myself) about myself and, yes, of being in the world with a little less effort and even without finding a place that is perfectly tailored to me, if such a place exists.

I liked D2 because in two hours all the chords I mentioned were touched, albeit from a model, a world and a culture - the American one and in particular that of Manhattan, not even New York - which in many ways is very distant from us, in every sense.

As has always been the case at least since the 1960s, it is from America, however, that the changes, the real revolutions (including the digital revolution, which almost overlaps with the period covered by the two films), the exaggerations, the fall of gods and the rebirths, real or figurative, start. In fashion, one only has to think of the department stores (be careful never to translate as 'department stores'), those big - everything is big in America, isn't it? - high-end multi-brands that revolutionised fashion and luxury wholesale distribution, have been imitated all over the world, more or less well (in Italia very well by Rinascente), only to implode. Saks Global, which had merged three department store brands - Saks, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman - in Europe last year went bankrupt, crushed by debts. In the US, it filed for Chapter 11 at the end of 2025 and will perhaps restart by the end of this year: fall of the gods and rebirth, indeed. Another example of how the US really is the home of the creative destruction Schumpeter spoke of: in Europe, there is talk of price madness after the post-Covid rebound, when it seemed that anything could be sold at any price. Mid- to high-end brands that thought they could transform themselves into luxury brands using only or almost only the price lever. But it is not enough to cost the same as Hermès or Chanel to be Hermès or Chanel. The Americans realised this before anyone else, with a nice 'reality check' still to come here: result? The best performers are Ralph Lauren, Coach, Tory Burch and even the 'renaissance' Gap. Ralph Lauren is perhaps the most famous American fashion brand: it did not raise its prices as so many others did, it did not therefore have unconscionable peaks in turnover in 2022 and 2023, but since 2024 it has returned to growth, following the paradigm, so American that many Americans had forgotten it, 'value for money'.

But back to D 2: a very positive surprise was the absolute absence of influencers. As if to say: if there is a crisis - and fashion is in crisis, because of prices but also because of an excess of supply, but that's another matter -, the first thing that must disappear - or disappear by itself - is inconsistency, smoke without roast, whipped cream so quickly that it deflates like a bad soufflé.

They have not disappeared, neither from our world nor from D 2, social, the digital part of our lives that does not or perhaps cannot deflate any more. From the online shift in the way we inform ourselves there is no going back. Because it is easier, faster, de-empowering and - at least for now - less expensive. Any subscription to the digital version of a newspaper, magazine, costs less, much less, than its printed version. For now, the business model - at the heart of D 2, moreover - also seems to be a winner. Making digital information cuts the costs of paper, printing, transport, and intermediaries (newsstands, which, as we know, are also disappearing in Italia).

However, I think that sooner or later we will have to address the issue of the cost of the energy required for a digital business model, especially if it is enhanced by AI and data centres, which as we know are among the most energy-intensive 'creatures' that humans have imagined and built.

Maybe someone will soon make a comparison - I am talking about publishers but also advertisers and us readers/users - and maybe it will turn out that we spend more, to produce and consume information, in the digital age than before.

Digital, I said, is central to D 2. In fact, that's where it all starts. It was a reputational crisis that went viral on social media that brought Andy Sachs back to Runway. And it was the costs of journalism understood as the creation of content by human beings that got Andy fired, who after leaving Runway, at the end of Q1, we are told as a super correspondent who for 20 years travelled the world and her country telling stories far from fashion.

In this beginning I actually found a clash, the one that disturbed me most about the film. Yes, the US invented social. Yes, the US coined the terms vital, meme, etc. Yes, the first trials against the tech giants for the social damage of social (!) have just taken place in the US. But I don't believe that even there, in the US, in 2026, digital will cause such irreparable reputational disasters. An example? The Secretary of Defence who quotes Pulp Fiction believing he is quoting the Bible, goes around the world for it in a few minutes and doesn't even feel the need to explain. On the contrary, after a few days he participates in a marathon reading of the Bible (the real one). There was a time when it was certainly true that readers' trust and reputation could be severely compromised and never fully recovered. Today, digital accelerates and intensifies shit storms but perhaps also forgiveness. It erases scandals, because it creates them all the time. We know a lot about it in Italia too.

Other things I liked about D 2, more related to the cinematic essence of the story (I'm not a film critic, I think and write as a film buff or if you like, as a simple viewer). First, the staggering skill of the protagonists: in the medium-long dialogues, it feels like being in the theatre, with the added cinematic advantage of seeing the faces up close. And what a breath of fresh air it is not only to hear the voices acting splendidly (this could also be said of Nicole Kidman), but to see faces that have not been disfigured by surgery or at least 'nullified' in their expressive capacity by surgery, as happened, precisely, to Nicole Kidman. Stanley Tucci, from whom leaks a love for our country and our language (he even has a programme on CNN in which he talks about the food and wine wonders of Italia), is extraordinary. I don't love Anne Hathaway's smirks and wiggles and faux-awkward runs (I'll never forget her in the role she played in Brokeback Mountain, even though she seems to do everything she can to make him forget it), but she is still great and beautiful. I loved the character of Amari (who plays the role that was Andy's in D 1, Miranda's first assistant), who is also immensely better dressed than Andy was twenty years ago. Another breath of fresh air: very few squashed boobs, which is the reason why I don't believe at all that Emily Blunt wants to make people think of Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos' second wife, as I have read in several articles. Perhaps she is still a trapped and 'stuck' character at D1, but still very good. I also don't think that Emily Blunt wants to make people forget performances like those in Sicario or The Girl on the Train. Perhaps the director and screenwriters should be asked for further explanations. Perhaps Emily Blunt has made a few concessions to the sirens of aesthetic medicine - I don't believe surgery -. But it may also be that her features are simply buried by too much make-up for script requirements. In any case, I repeat: no marble tits in full view, no lips ready to explode.

Simply ingenious is the character of the nerd who becomes a trillionaire and then dumps his first wife (gorgeous and, moreover, pacified with the world Lucy Liu) and deludes himself into becoming a superman, with the aim, of course, of luring the kind of women who 'in high school wouldn't even look at him'. Here the thought goes, yes, to Jeff Bezos or perhaps Bill Gates. Certainly not Elon Musk, who has changed physically, but not for the sake of having 'trophy women' beside him. The other paths that Musk has chosen (so many children with surrogate mothers) are perhaps - albeit in a different way - the symptom of a deep existential discomfort, more than 'aesthetic', and in order to feel himself as a protagonist, he seems to aim more at proximity to Trump's 'toxic' power than at relationships with women disfigured by surgery.

As a woman, sticking to the theme, I was actually struck not so positively by Stanley Tucci's apparent independence from the sirens of fashion: he has his own style, so much so that I defy anyone to identify the brands of what he wears. The female protagonists, on the other hand, are, like it or not, 'fashion victims'.

Other minor mismatches? Andy is perhaps too beautiful, good and kind and in the end even finds a kind of adoring boyfriend who has nothing to do with the fashion world. But one has to console oneself and, we know, Americans like happy endings. On the other hand, it's nice that Miranda is portrayed as an unexpectedly cultured woman (scene in which she explains some secrets of The Last Supper to Andy), perhaps trying to ward off comparisons with Anna Wintour, whose personal culture, beyond American fashion, remains an unidentified object. True, the promotion of D 2 saw Wintour and Streep very busy, side by side. But what one doesn't do to keep one's distance from the throne (?) as the most powerful woman in fashion journalism... A very shaky throne indeed. In reality, not on the big screen.

Another positive point: Paris absent in D 2, replaced by Milan at its best. A postcard-like Milan (with an appendix on Lake Como), admittedly, but still real, not generated by AI.

As a dreamer and idealist, in spite of everything and in spite of the fact that life, after 56 years, perhaps could or should have changed me, I finally appreciated the glimmer of 'redemption' that we see in the finale with regard to Emily and her ability to be loyal, transparent and even able and willing to become friends with Andy.

Last thing: Stanley Tucci's character. The colleague I think many would like. As a boss or as a peer or as a 'subordinate'. Loyal in deed. Honest in deeds and therefore sometimes brutal in words. Because sincerity, linked to loyalty, can be brutal. Dreamily his weaknesses and frailties coexist with a strength (and purity) of spirit that is hard to find. I don't know whether an aspiring (but ultimately failed) Miranda like Emily or a genuinely loyal person like Stanley Tucci is further from reality. But it is nice to think that somewhere, in some newsroom, in some country, people like him exist.