Legacy media is dying. Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) walks through New York passing a “Florals for Spring” advertisement for Runway magazine on her way to an awards ceremony for outstanding journalism. Her colleagues at the New York Vanguard are being recognised, but awards won’t save them as the entire staff is fired via text just as she is announced as a recipient. “Journalism fucking matters,” she says in her acceptance speech. The reality is that journalism no longer matters and it’s not nearly as important as consumption. The altar of consumption which is a fashion magazine under the stewardship of the famously spiky Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is also facing woes – most immediately via a story promoting a label that uses sweatshop labour. Andy is hired as the features editor at the magazine that almost swallowed her whole twenty years ago. However, being an award-winning writer doesn’t mean people are going to read writing in an attention deficit milieu. No one really buys the glossy arbiter of taste any longer and getting clicks on the digital edition is also difficult. What is going to happen when one of the iconic taste making magazines no longer speaks to an audience?
The Devil Wears Prada 2 has a few issues on its couture worshipping mind. In 2026 it’s unsurprising that Runway hasn’t been able to adjust to the new reality of social media. Fashion magazines, the bibles of conspicuous capitalism, are being replaced by influencers trends (although the film doesn’t directly say so) and are surviving mostly via advertiser spends. Miranda, whether she likes it or not, has to eat some humble pie and promise her ex-employee, now Dior executive, Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) a very handsome package to keep her on board. Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) the senior stylist at Runway hasn’t progressed in twenty-years and takes on the business of reducing costs in the current media landscape. None of the magazine’s troubles are made any better when Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) dies before he can name Miranda as the head of content across his media empire and leaves behind his uninterested son Jay (B.J. Novak) who is happy to drop Runway altogether.
There is a blissful naïveté to The Devil Wears Prada 2 that picks up threads of an interesting idea; how does print survive and what does journalism mean and then drops it for a much neater idea that fashion is art and denying the ostensible catalogues of that art, the glossy magazine, is forgetting the heritage and necessity of the creative arts. Much attention is paid to the New York Dior showroom’s staircase display curated by Emily to highlight the eras of Dior. High-end couture brand names get dropped as often as possible with cameos by people like Donatella Versace to hammer the point home. The Runway fashion show in Milan has the team meeting in a space with Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ fresco on the wall. The point is made that Louis Vuitton and YSL are just as important to culture, and if they are important then of course Runway is too.
While The Devil Wear Prada 2 is a somewhat amusing sequel with solid performances by the core four (Hathaway, Streep, Blunt, and Tucci) it doesn’t really interest itself with the issue it first set up. Andy is still desperate to impress Miranda whose whole personality is defined by extremely grudging approbation. Miranda herself is no longer able to be the ‘devil’ she once was with HR reining in her horns. There is a subplot about the ex-wife of a tech billionaire turned philanthropist Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu) who grants an extremely rare interview to Miranda and Andy. To continue the Bezos related thread Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux having a great time as the recently yassified nebbish nerd) is dating Emily and gifting her with whatever she wants, and if that turns out to be a magazine it doesn’t much matter because everything will be AI anyway. Another subplot revolves around Andy’s fledgling romance with all-round-nice-guy Australian architect Peter (Patrick Brammell). Nice guys are de rigueur with Kenneth Branagh playing Miranda’s new husband Stuart.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is generally entertaining but if you poke at the confection at all it does collapse into not a great deal. Miranda flying coach! Miranda having to cede some control! Miranda not being allowed to say “fat”! It’s great to recognise the cameos and references to the first film and the fantasy element of being able to step into a rarefied world is a lot of fun. Does it do what it sets out to do? It’s difficult to say because Aline Brosh McKenna’s script teeters on paper thin once it stops talking about journalism and the necessity of expertise being eroded and focuses on the “putting on a show” third act.
David Frankel manages to create a mostly pleasing sequel that lacks any particular bite. If you’re happy to just exist in the world of the characters then The Devil Wears Prada 2 is going to fit perfectly. If you’d like something “groundbreaking” the film isn’t it. Ironically, it’s more comfy sweats than haute couture.
Director: David Frankel
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci
Writers: Aline Brosh McKenna based on characters created by Lauren Weisberger