Miranda Priestly is an antagonist for the ages. But why is she so appealing, and what does she represent in this period of artists’ strikes?
By Ruth Folorunso
photo: 20th Century Fox
I graduated a couple of weeks ago with an arts and humanities degree, no job offers and a vague sense of anxiety. When I watched The Devil Wears Prada— between job applications, CV writing, cover letter drafting and redrafting, taking calls, rejections and hemorrhaging interviews— I predictably saw myself in Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the film’s owlish, brow-beaten heroine. We tick all the boxes: hanging in the limbo between graduation and employment, having an “artistic” degree that you’re now trying to convert into hireability, trying to convince everyone around you that you are not wasting time or deluding yourself about your capabilities or what you want to do. And as rejections roll in, it becomes less about what you want to do and more about which job will take you, please. Although when Andy’s last choice is as a secretary to the legendary editor-in-chief of a renowned fashion magazine…yeah, I couldn’t relate to that.
The fashion industry as writ by the film is awful: demanding and run by power-drunk narcissists like Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), Andy’s infamous boss and the quintessence of the proverb, “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss”. Miranda girlbosses hard in this movie. She’s brilliant, but also abusive— Andy manages Miranda’s personal life as much as she manages her schedule, sacrificing her own free time to keep her employer happy. In 2023, the notion of a boss expecting work from you past the hours explicitly stated in your contract has become increasingly unpopular; and these sentiments run up against the reality of life in creative industries, which always seem to demand more and more from their workers without compensation. Andy stretches herself thin trying to please this woman, and yet it’s never enough.
Andy’s friends, especially her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), are baffled by the demands of her industry. When she begins to dress like a fashion girl, coinciding with her steady neglect of her personal life, the snide comments start rolling in— “you’ve changed, man! you’re wearing clothes now, and you’re no longer my Andy.” The idea of fashion transforming sensible women into shallow harpies isn’t new, but The Devil Wears Prada is too nuanced even as it— feebly— tries to agree. Andy’s friends berate her for letting the clothes change her as she misses outings due to Miranda’s out-of-hours, last-minute demands. But the issue isn’t the clothes, it’s about agency in a cutthroat industry. It’s about what happens when ambition and youth run into power. In its flippant, easy way, the film explores the kinds of abuse people will take as long as they believe they can make their dreams come true, and look good doing it.
photo: 20th Century Fox
Andy’s friends are wrong about this: fashion doesn’t “change” Andy. Clothes derive their power from how they give voice to unexpressed longing. They don’t enforce themselves on a person, who simply lets it happen— the consumer is active, not passive. Someone vain who wears Chanel is vain because they’re vain, not because of the brands they put on their body. Buying Chanel might be an expression of that vanity, but the vanity precedes the purchase. This is why Miranda’s “stuff” monologue is so beloved amongst those who care about fashion. Fashion gives a language to express the sentiments of a people or a person. Andy chooses her cerulean blue jumper to project an aspect of herself onto the world, but the language and the history of cerulean blue has been fashioned by artists also looking to express an idea. In expressing that idea, they give a means of self-articulation to the masses.
Or at least, that’s how I believe it’s supposed to be. In truth, fashion in The Devil Wears Prada is just another means of control. Andy doesn’t wear beautiful clothes because she likes them. She wears beautiful clothes because she wants— needs— to impress Miranda, to lessen her unrelenting disrespect. If Miranda was a man, this would read more clearly as what it is (workplace harassment), but since Miranda is the girlboss and makeovers are always fun no matter the context, Andy’s transformation is delightful wish fulfillment. And she becomes a kind of doll, wearing gorgeous fits without ever talking or thinking about what they mean to her, beyond the demands of her boss. Fashion doesn’t change Andy, but ironically reflects her powerlessness in an industry supposedly devoted to giving the individual control over their image. Andy has no agency in the story, not until the very end. She chooses the job because she has no other choice. She chooses to stay in the job because she has no other choice. She ruins relationships because her job demands her devotion, and she cannot lose this job because she has no other choice. But also because the job presents opportunities, and Andy, for all her owlishness and mild manners, is deeply ambitious.
photo: 20th Century Fox
This is where Andy resonates with me the most deeply. She wants to be a successful journalist, she wants her career to bloom. Who doesn’t? It turns out that there’s a lot of overlap between the fashion magazine and the journalism industry, and Andy learns quickly that all these last-minute events that Miranda sends her to open her up to connections that could get her the job that she really wants. Every time characters would say, “Andy, you always have a choice,” I would think, but does she really? Realistically, what graduate with few prospects is going to leave a job that, though shitty, will give her connections, ingratiating her into circles that will propel her career? I can’t say I would. When Andy says she “doesn’t have a choice”, she’s right to an extent— she doesn’t have a choice because she isn’t able to see a way out that would also satisfy her ambitions.
For me, this is why Miranda Priestly is so alluring. Not only is she objectively the best-dressed person in the film, she is also an immensely powerful woman whose presence functions as a demonstrable, imitable path to success and stability. Enduring abuse for connections suddenly seems like a small sacrifice to make. And there’s a thrill of watching Andy adapt to the abuse, the thrill of watching her use all her wits to meet the tyrannical demands of her boss. It’s even fun! Dressing up to please your boss is fun if it’s in Cavalli or Jimmy Choo’s or Dolce! Running around New York to find an unpublished manuscript of a book for your boss’s kids is fun if a hot journalist helps you! Even better if you exceed your boss’s demands. These scenes are full of adrenaline, staged and shot as achievements that consolidate that belligerent, sympathetic, strangely sexy dynamic between Miranda and Andy. I hated Miranda’s guts, but I got really invested in Andy’s increasing devotion to her.
photo: 20th Century Fox
But at the end of the day, Andy does have a choice. It feels stark— endure abuse to achieve success, quit and throw your life back into limbo— but it exists. There’s a sentiment amongst fans of the movie that Andy’s boyfriend is the “real villain” of the film, and that the film punishes Andy for the audacity of being an ambitious woman. But, guys, let’s be serious. Andy chooses to leave Miranda because at heart, she doesn’t want to be Miranda. Success, in her eyes, is not fame, exclusivity and the routine neglect of friends. And the narrative rewards her— she gets that serious journalism job and gets it because Miranda gave her a glowing recommendation. Whilst there's definitely a weird, “suffering does pay off actually” vibe to this resolution, it’s still lovely to see Andy get the happiest ending of finding work that won’t hurt her and will also nourish her. And, strangely enough, I think that Miranda and Runway become more beautiful after Andy leaves them. Not only does Miranda help her get her new job, but she speaks with Emily (Emily Blunt), her abrasive and equally mistreated colleague, like a proper friend. And Miranda smiles properly for the first time after seeing Andy walk away. Distance makes the heart grow fonder— Andy can look fondly on the fashion industry once she’s no longer part of it. And that vindicates the notion that Miranda was never that bad. We, the fans who watch this movie, can love Miranda’s world because it is all fiction, because the layers of artifice that construct a film make the suffering glamourous. But if we’re ever in Andy’s position, in reality, a lot of us most likely wouldn’t walk away or wouldn’t be rewarded for choosing to walk away. But still, that choice remains.
I can’t say what the discussions on workplace misconduct were like in 2006, but today, Miranda’s behaviour is harder to situate solely within the realms of fantasy. Artistic industries present themselves as places of freedom, where the soul is free doing what it loves. It is this messaging that makes its persistent betrayal of that ideal so vile. After all, you’re doing what you love. You’re not at a desk job, slaving away like all those pencil pushers— you’re free! So why are you so upset? Why are you demanding more, even though “more” is literally just livable wages and bearable workplaces? I was already familiar with these stories— once upon a time, I seriously wanted to be an animator and animation’s labour practices are messed up in ways you wouldn’t even believe. “Love” can’t feed anybody, love can’t make an abusive boss or a mismanaged working environment any better. But seeing the strikes and the steady pushback against exploitation has given me a sliver of hope. It can’t have been easy for those artists to make that choice. But they made it, and I hope that they get paid in full. I hope that the joy that they give to us through their art also finds its way into their lives.
photo: 20th Century Fox
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