The Devil Wore Boredom
I love fashion. I grew up reading Marie Claire back when fashion magazines felt like magic portals. I still remember Stella Tennant with that boyish haircut, looking impossibly ethereal in a green Versace dress. That image lives in my brain beside my SIN number and every humiliating thing I’ve ever said. So yes, I understand the fantasy.
In 2013, I found myself at a party at Cosmopolitan’s headquarters near the editor-in-chief and Chrissy Teigen. Glamorous on paper. In reality? Terminally dull. By the end of the night the coat-check guy left the strongest impression. He took my picture and delivered more warmth, charm and humanity than half the room…and he was guarding parkas. Maybe that’s the problem with The Devil Wears Prada universe. Fashion dazzles on the page. On screen, it becomes rich people in expensive clothes complaining in elevators.
To prepare for the sequel I rewatched the 2006 original. It’s fine. A serviceable rom-com from the same cultural cupboard as Failure to Launch. Cute enough. Disposable enough. The kind of movie we enjoyed once and then gaslit ourselves into calling iconic. Anne Hathaway is sweet. Emily Blunt is sharp. Meryl Streep whispers insults like she’s removing your organs with tweezers. The emotional depth? Somewhere between a perfume sample and a Holt Renfrew receipt. Still, I was ready. Two hours before the sequel I ordered from the secret Devil Wears Prada 2 Starbucks menu. Andy’s Oatmilk Cappuccino tasted faintly like someone judging your résumé. I walked into the theatre ready for glamour, reinvention and at least one purse worthy of committing fraud for.
Almost immediately I realized the sequel is not better than the first. It is not worse. It is the first movie reheated in a JennAir microwave. Everyone is back and somehow no one has evolved, except possibly the lighting. Anne Hathaway tries to play Andy as both a grown woman and the same confused intern from 2006. Miranda still enters rooms and says something cruel, which in 2006 made her a “legend” In 2026, it makes her an HR incident in couture. Then there’s Stanley Tucci. What happened? He used to sparkle. Now every line lands with the smug weight of a man who discovered olive oil and won’t shut up about it. I wanted to throw my Tom Ford glasses at the screen and yell, “Snap out of it Tucci.” While the fashion? For a movie about clothes, too many outfits looked assembled during a blackout. One look gave Superman II Ursa vibes after a Winners clearance-rack incident. I wanted something that made me open a magazine and become a better person with worse credit. Instead, I got fabric-based confusion.
The movie tries to make a point that magazines are dying, digital is winning, journalism is collapsing, blah blah cerulean. However, pointing at a dying industry is not a plot. The whole time, I kept asking why does this exist? Meryl Streep said she made this movie because “it was worth doing.” Okay. Worth doing what? Proving everyone can still wear sunglasses indoors? Reminding us mean people with good coats are still just mean people? Giving nostalgia a blowout and hoping we wouldn’t notice it had no personality? That’s the flaw. The sequel thinks bringing back the faces, heels, insults and the Runway is enough. It isn’t. Nostalgia without spark is just a mannequin wearing your memories. So no, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not a disaster. It is worse. It is okay, and okay in fashion is fatal. The devil didn’t wear Prada this time. The devil wore boredom and somehow, it still needed tailoring.