The Scene staff
Throughout cinematic history, fashion has played a key role in making movie characters stand out, regardless of their roles.
For example, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Sex and The City” included main characters who had their own styles while desiring to own luxury products.
More recently, main characters undergoing fashion evolutions have been obvious in movies such as “Pretty Woman” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”
Although these movies contribute to fashion media in their own ways, “The Devil Wears Prada,” released in 2006, features all of fashion media as a theme, if not the main plot of the movie.
The book-to-film adaptation tells the story of Andrea Sachs (played by Anne Hathaway), a fresh-out-of-college student with a passion for journalism who gets a job at a leading New York City fashion magazine called Runway.
To keep her job, Sachs must put up with a wildly overbearing boss, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), and snobby co-workers, who make fun of her fashion choices and subject her to a form of hazing.
They force her to run backward and forward in an attempt to complete impossible tasks while receiving heavy criticism from all sides.
Throughout the movie, Sachs’s innocence is contrasted with the cynicism and jaded attitudes of people in the high fashion industry.
Rewatching the film, I felt more connected to Sachs than any other character because her personality, honest efforts and determination to succeed. Like most new hires, she tries to please her boss by many means while trying to maintain boundaries.
Priestly appears more human than emotionless, in charge and demanding, but she still has characteristics with which we can identify. Her catch phrase, “That’s all,” conveys both a threatening and dismissive tone.
In the above-mentioned films, we see the art of filmmaking presenting the art of fashion design, with plots that focus on the human story involved.
In both film and fashion, you have iconic styles or individuals who encapsulate ideas while letting the humans express their emotions as the stories develop.
“The Devil Wears Prada” has influenced a lot of other films, such as “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” “Ugly Betty” and even “Fifty Shades of Grey” with its character development and plot twists in the story.