As Andy becomes more glamorous and absorbs the Runway philosophy, she gradually outperforms Emily, who yearns to attend Paris Fashion Week as Miranda's assistant and, in preparation for the event, adheres to extreme diets that endanger her health.

I know now how rare it is to find situations where the stars align.Director David Frankel and producer Wendy Finerman had originally read The Devil Wears Prada in book proposal form.

But it’s also an instance of this ditzy comedy acquiring depth, because for all Miranda’s air of utter boredom with other people, this attack on Andy's very being also amounts to a philosophical defence of her boss’s line of work.In 2018 New York Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman invoked the speech in her defense of the importance of covering haute couture:[24] And it's not the "Devil Wears Prada" argument, though that does hold true: In a world where everything goes into the Instagram soup and from there seeps into the cultural digestive system, what might appear on a runway in the Musée Rodin (where Dior holds its shows) in July will affect what H&M does in August.Morwenna Ferrier, a fashion reporter for The Guardian agreed, despite the speech's references to fictional collections.

As an example of how that had happened in reality since the film, she cited the yellow Guo Pei dress Rihanna wore to the 2015 Met Gala, greatly popularizing that color for clothing over the next two years.

"[27] Six years later, in a Slate article discussing the appeal of female characters in movies and TV who deliver incisive insults and other commentary with no apparent affect, such as those played by Aubrey Plaza, Nadira Goffe recalled Streep's "epic, unfeeling monologue" about the sweater as a "perfect example" of the archetype.

"[28] Miranda's sarcastic response to assistant editor Jocelyn's suggestion for a story about the floral prints being shown in spring collections has been considered the film's single best line.

Fox wanted a young A-list actress, and felt Rachel McAdams, then coming off successes in Mean Girls and The Notebook, would help the film's commercial prospects.

[10] Verdi would later say there was no intention to actually hire him and the producers had just used him and Doonan to give whoever they ultimately did cast some filmed research to use in playing a gay character (he would end up with a walk-on part as a fashion journalist in Paris).

[43] Wintour reportedly warned major fashion designers who had been invited to make cameo appearances as themselves in the film that they would be banished from the magazine's pages if they did so;[44] Frankel said in 2021 the most any were willing to do was help the production with background information, like allowing visits to their showrooms or giving notes on the authenticity of the script.

[10] Streep made a conscious decision not to play the part as a direct impression of Wintour,[48] right down to not using an accent and making the character American rather than English ("I felt it was too restricting").

However, she said, Eastwood does not make jokes, so instead she modeled that aspect of the character on theatrical and film director Mike Nichols, whose delivery of a cutting remark, she said, made everyone laugh, including the target.

The bouffant hairstyle was inspired by model and actress Carmen Dell'Orefice,[b] which Streep said she wanted to blend with "the unassailable elegance and authority of [French politician] Christine Lagarde".

[10] Frankel, who had worked with Patricia Field on his feature-film debut Miami Rhapsody as well as Sex and the City, knew that what the cast wore would be of utmost importance in a movie set in the fashion industry.

[59] The single priciest item was a $100,000 Fred Leighton necklace on Streep,[58] who likened Field's success in putting the movie's wardrobe together to the special effects in the Mission: Impossible films.

When she called the company to ask for assistance, they were delighted because "they wanted to see Chanel on a young girl to give it another point of view," showing it as a brand for "not just middle-aged women in suits, but youthful and funky.

[61] But, like Wintour and her Vogue predecessor Diana Vreeland, the two realized that Miranda needed a signature look, which was provided primarily by the white wig and forelock she wore as well as the clothes the two spent much time poring over look-books for.

[72] Originally intended just to convince Fox to fund some shooting in Paris, Frankel's sizzle reel led the studio to put a stronger marketing push behind the movie.

It moved the release date from February to summer, scheduling it as a lighter alternative audiences could consider to Superman Returns at the end of June 2006, and began to position it as an event movie in and of itself.

While they knew that the material and Hathaway would help draw a younger female audience that would not be as interested in seeing that film, "[w]e didn't want it to just seem like a chick flick coming out.

The website's critics consensus reads, "A rare film that surpasses the quality of its source novel, this Devil is a witty expose of New York's fashion scene, with Meryl Streep in top form and Anne Hathaway more than holding her own.

"With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep's Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe," wrote A. O. Scott in The New York Times.

In addition to Streep's record-setting Oscar nomination, the magazine observed, it had proven that she could be a box-office draw by herself, opening doors up for her to be cast as a lead in later summer movies such as Mamma Mia!

Subsequent producers were impressed that she had held her own playing opposite Streep, which led eventually to her being cast in more serious roles like Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Les Misérables (2012), for which she won an Oscar.

[132][133] In 2019, reports that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2020 election, mistreated her staff and made unreasonable demands of them led some writers to invoke Miranda as a point of reference.

[137] The next year, writing about a proposed change in U.S. federal overtime regulations that was seen as threatening to that practice, the Times called it the 'Devil Wears Prada' economy",[138] a term other news outlets also used.

[139] On the film's 10th anniversary, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote in The Washington Post that Miranda anticipated female antiheroines of popular television series of the later 2000s and 2010s such as Scandal's Olivia Pope and Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones.

Like them, she observes, Miranda competently assumes a position of authority often held by male characters, despite her moral failings, that she must defend against attempts to use her personal life to remove her from it, to "prov[e], as a creature of sentiment, that she never belonged there in the first place."

Mekia Rivas faulted the film's portrayal of Miranda and Andy's relationship as reinforcing a false belief that since a young woman may only get one career break, she should take it no matter what she has to put up with from her boss.

But the idea had since been discredited by real-life examples of women like Elizabeth Holmes and Steph Korey who ran companies where workers lived in fear of their bosses' tempers and whims.

[9] Writing in The Ringer on the tenth anniversary, Alison Herman observed that "The Devil Wears Prada transformed Wintour's image from that of a mere public figure into that of a cultural icon."