Does fashion really dress like ‘The Devil Wears Prada’?

When “The Devil Wears Prada” was released in 2006, it won over countless fans: critics adored how it spikily satirized the sudsy but serious business of fashion magazine publishing; Meryl Streep, playing formidable magazine editor Miranda Priestly, and costume designer Patricia Field (who also masterminded the looks on “Sex and the City”) earned Academy Award nominations; and the film grossed over $300 million.

But fashion insiders were not among the reverent. Not only did Anna Wintour, upon whom Miranda is based, ignore the 2003 book — “I cannot remember who that girl is,” she said to a colleague upon learning that her former assistant, Lauren Weisberger, was publishing a novel based on her time as the Vogue editor’s underling, according to Amy Odell’s 2022 biography “Anna” — but she glided above the film’s existence while nonetheless benefitting from its chilly portrait. (She eventually attended a screening — wearing Prada.)

The clothes, though, were a particular pain point for the industry. In 2006, The New York Times interviewed fashion figures who griped about the costumes, which comprised head-to-toe Chanel outfits and ladylike coats for Anne Hathaway as Miranda’s hapless assistant Andy, and several enormous furs and aviator frames for Miranda. Elle magazine’s then-fashion news director Anne Slowey deemed the clothes “a caricature of what people who don’t work in fashion think fashion people look like.”

Those inside Vogue’s office recall feeling the same: “We were terribly snobbish and disparaging about everyone else’s clothes, and particularly about anyone who attempted to portray the fashion industry,” said Plum Sykes, a longtime Vogue contributing editor.

“The Chanel boots that Andy wore, we all thought — this is a very English phrase — gopping error!” she added, referring to the over-the-knee shoes that Andy dons post-makeover, which inspired one of the film’s most quoted exchanges: “Are you wearing the…” her baffled rival, assistant Emily (played by Emily Blunt), sputters. “The Chanel boots?” purrs a victoriously coiffed Andy. “Yeah, I am.”