Hello everyone, thanks for opening this up. Can you believe The Devil Wears Prada (the Lauren Weisberger novel, not the movie based on it that came out a few years later) is already 20 years old?
In researching this post I also found out that ten years ago Weisberger wrote a follow-up called Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns which I have not read. Who knew?
I thought it could be fun to look at some of the themes of this movie, the barely fictionalized magazine editors and even a little into the fashion and culture of the time and sniff them for accuracy.
Now disclaimer, I was NOT a New York magazine editor but at the time I was a Toronto magazine editor (decorating and then women’s lifestyle and a few in-between) and I would have gleefully sawed off my left arm to get a Manhattan editor job. Even above London, NYC was the pinnacle of magazine editing success. So that 100 women would kill for this job theme? Totally true.
Hardly anyone gives a rat’s ass about print magazines nowadays, you can’t even give them away for free, but at the time these were a primary source for disseminating beauty/culture/fashion/cooking/fatphobia.
Even in Toronto it was a very glamorous industry full of striving, bright twentysomethings with English and other completely useless liberal arts degrees.
This is crazy and shallow, but just like in the book and the movie, the magazines I worked on were full of beautiful women. And it wasn’t because pervy men were hiring them either, it was a very female-dominated industry, or at least speaking for the lifestyle magazines. Where did they all come from? I don’t know!
Did they self-select? Was it the unearned advantages of Pretty Privilege that got them in the door? Was it a safe space for good looking women who would be harassed or marginalized in other industries? I don’t have adequate expertise to figure out this phenomenon, but to this date some of the most attractive women I’ve ever seen were magazine colleagues.
Generally speaking they were very nice too. Except the fashion magazine staff at other magazines. They were stacked with willowy types who would look you up and down and I used to fear getting into elevators with them.
Remember the movie version when Anne Hathaway gets her makeover? There’s some truth to the pressure to glow up.
Dressing up was part of the job because there was a lot of see and be seen in the industry, but we didn’t make tons of money so it would be a bit of this and that, not the Celine and Marni that are in the Devil Wears Prada.
I wore heels exclusively, some H&M and lots of discount Club Monaco because there was a boutique near my apartment that would often have 60% off sales if you went to the upstairs level. They made the most beautiful skirts and dress pants.
When I got a promotion I got some new clothes too, swapping Nine West for Jimmy Choo shoes, polyblend sweaters for pure cashmere (jokes on me, my husband shrunk my new $200 sweater in the dryer!) and a Louis Vuitton Speedy handbag that I still have.
Jeans and a Going Out Top was becoming a real vibe too, so you could wear this combo to all the previews and press trips we were constantly invited to. Jeans were usually premium denim and every magazine girlie had her favorite. I was partial (still am) to Citizens of Humanity, and one of my office BFFs was a Seven for All Mankind acolyte.
Not everyone dressed up though, especially those who were more established in their careers.
Usually in a week you’d be out of the office and at a press preview once or even twice. You might go to a skincare launch, or a Christmas in August holiday preview where a PR company loaded up table after table with their clients' holiday gift offerings. And always ALWAYS you’d get a fat swag bag. If you didn’t, you’d curse the hosts' souls and never return.
Going to events also meant seeing and meeting other editors. You might make friends at these, or you might cement enemies. The fashion editors were given a wide berth, we always felt they were judging us.
Ironically the fashion editors who were once looked down at us from the apex of the food chain are now among the worst off in today’s economy, not having cultivated the generalist writing and editing skills (and humility) the rest of us did. Fashion editorial is not revered as it once was.
The freebie fashion closet was a real thing, though I would say most fashion got returned to the design house or store so this might be a bit overstated for magazines other than Vogue. No designer is giving you a $10,000 couture dress. No. The real overflowing freebie closet back in the day was the beauty closet. The amount of goods sent to us was truly staggering. We were constantly getting packages of every Essie nail polish out that season, or Pantene’s entire product lineup for curly hair. Boxes and boxes and boxes. Constant free books, too, which I loved.
Unfortunately I do have to talk about this because 1. It’s such a memorable part of Devil Wears Prada and 2. It was 100% true. Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway have given interviews detailing how hard it was to lose weight and barely eat to play their respective roles in the movie version of the book.
The early 2000s, taking a strong lead from the 1990s, was all about not just fatphobia but thin worship. I’d say the tide has only turned relatively recently thanks to the body positivity movement. I wrote about how Jessica Simpson was relentlessly bullied for being a size 8 back then, you can read it here. So yes, the Fashion Girls did not eat when we went to media events. This was well known. I did eat, but usually I didn’t eat carbs. Very twisted behavior on all parts.
Fashion editors would of course fly out to Paris fashion weeks, but for the rest of us in non-fashion magazines, press trips and getting flown out to media junkets was a regular occurrence. The beauty industry then and now (they do influencer trips now) had the most money to fly editors to the best places: France, the Caribbean, Manhattan, London and it was all luxury all the time. Luxury hotels, beautiful dinners, gorgeous settings and fun events.
Aside from media events, if you could write about travel for your publication you’d be wined and dined and flown around the world. Places I’ve been for free as an editor: Alberta; Newfoundland; Quebec; Nova Scotia; Hawaii; Switzerland. Those are the ones I can remember, I’m sure there are more.
All this money today is not spent on magazine editors, it’s spent on influencers instead.
I was lucky to have pretty much only exceptionally kind bosses pretty much until the end of my magazine office-lady career (I still write but strictly freelance now, I do not take any onsite masthead roles). However yes, fashion magazines, even in comparatively provincial Canada are known to be toxic monsters.
An editor friend got her start interning at a fashion magazine where one of her tasks, and I’m not shitting you, was collecting and disposing of strands of the Editor In Chief’s hair extensions from where they fell out over the office carpet. This editor was famous for her withering glare.
Another friend, same editor, got her start interning but instead of writing blurbs or doing fact-checking as you’re supposed to be doing, she spent the summer wrapping up and mailing out the editor’s best friend’s photography book. He was once a very, very famous Canadian rocker and is still a household name for those of us over 40. I don’t have permission to name names here, so hit reply on this email and I’ll tell you who it is if you’re curious!
So yes, fashion magazine monsters exist, the most notorious one of all is the very subject of Devil Wears Prada itself. Anna “Nuclear” Wintour. She is a notorious toxic boss, a terrible communicator and with a mean streak sometimes redeemed by the generous gifts she gives.
For a real-life look into what she is like, and you’ll soon realize Weisberger probably played down how awful Wintour was to make her book more believable, read Andre Leon Talley’s 2020 memoir The Chiffon Trenches. It made me so sad how he was cast aside, and how cruel she can be not just to him but other longtime creative luminaries like Grace Coddington.
I can’t remember all the mean anecdotes, but Talley thought it reprehensible that Wintour still has a car and driver and yet wouldn’t find the budget to get a private car to Coddington, who was at the time of his writing in her 70s, when she arrived home at the airport after returning from far-away photoshoot locations or fashion weeks. Wintour allows Coddington to stand in line and wait for the taxi instead.
So if it wasn’t clear, yes, The Devil Wears Prada in both the book format and the movie was a pretty accurate thinly veiled account of fashion magazine snobbishness and elitism. The only note that rang a bit false for me was Meryl Streep who is of course faultness as an actor, but lacked (for me) the brittle Britishness and youth obsession that Anna Wintour displays at every turn. Even the choice in going the silver fox hairstyle route struck me as utterly at odds with the real life Anna Wintour, whose hairstyle and color never really changes. The boyfriend character (played by Adrian Grenier in the movie) struck me as a real wet napkin as well.
Overall vibes and attention to detail though: 10/10. It’s really nostalgic for me to think back to this time, but the magazine industry wasn’t without its problematic sides.
That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed this!
Warmly,
Helen
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