Twenty years after »The Devil Wears Prada« turned the fashion magazine Runway into a pop-cultural icon, the sequel finds it fighting for relevance in a media landscape that no longer revolves around print. Articles are measured by reach rather than editorial judgment, visibility no longer belongs to the newsroom alone and the idea of a magazine as a gatekeeper of taste suddenly feels a lot less secure than it once did.
von Hannah Sturm
Spoiler warning: This text discusses key plot points of »The Devil Wears Prada 2«.
»The Devil Wears Prada 2« is framed as a return to the world of fashion, but it quickly becomes clear that the sequel is preoccupied with something else entirely: journalism, and what is left of it.
A Surface of Change
The tension between what Runway once was and what it has become is already visible on the film’s surface. At first, everything seems to have remained the same: bagels for breakfast, cerulean blues, and a million girls who would still kill for the job of Miranda Priestly’s (Meryl Streep) assistant. But at the same time, nothing is the same at all. Miranda no longer hurls her coat onto her employees’ desks – she hangs it up herself, reluctantly, under the watchful eye of HR. Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), once »just one stomach flu away from her goal weight,« now orders a breadbasket without hesitation, joking about shared carbs not counting. Even »Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking« has shifted from sarcastic dismissal to Met Gala theme.
This softening doesn’t stop at behavior – it extends to language itself. Miranda’s assistant repeatedly corrects her wording in meetings, such as adjusting »body negativity« to »body positivity«. Lines are phrased more carefully, as if the script wanted to double-check that Miranda is still allowed to sound like Miranda. What used to be cruel now feels moderated, adjusted to a different set of expectations. And yet, the more interesting shift is not happening inside the walls of Runwayitself, but in the conditions surrounding it.
Under the Pressure of Modern Technology
The magazine now exists in a media landscape where print is no longer the default form of cultural relevance. Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) works as a journalist in a system where it hardly matters what or how you write as long as it makes an impact, attracts clicks and proves its financial value. Runway’s survival depends on adapting to formats it once would have dismissed – faster, shorter, more immediately consumable content. The struggle to keep the magazine alive becomes less about fashion and more about whether a publication can still function as a gatekeeper of taste at all.
The sequel makes it clear that the biggest change lies not in the characters, but the industry they inhabit. The original film presented magazines as intimidating institutions people were willing to fight to get into. The sequel shows that same institution fighting to justify its own existence. Glamour persists, deadlines remain urgent, expectations are still impossible to live up to – but the pressure no longer comes from the devil, Miranda. It comes from shrinking budgets, shifting audiences and the constant need to prove that the magazine still matters.
This recalibration changes the central question of the story. The first film asked how far someone should go to succeed. The sequel asks whether the structure that once made that ambition meaningful still exists, thus revealing the real conflict: not fashion, not romance, not even Miranda – but the survival of the magazine itself.
Attention as Currency
Runway, once the ultimate symbol of cultural authority, is now portrayed as something fragile. Characters talk about readership numbers as if their lives depended on them – which, in a way, they do. Print issues barely matter. Serious features disappear into endless doomscrolling. Even Andy’s carefully written journalism struggles to find an audience. The message is blunt: excellence alone no longer guarantees relevance.
At this point, the film stops being a nostalgic reunion and becomes a story about media itself. The true antagonist isn’t a person but a system – venture capital, tech money and algorithmic logic. When a billionaire begins describing an AI-driven future for publishing, the threat suddenly feels much larger than the fate of a fictional magazine.
Consequently, the sequel shifts genres. What once felt like a glossy workplace chick-flick begins to resemble a survival story. The glamour remains – Milan, galas, couture, cameos – but the stakes have changed. Saving Runway is no longer about prestige. It is about preserving the idea that taste, expertise and human judgment still matter.
This is why the film leans more heavily into journalism than its predecessor ever did. Andy is no longer the outsider who dismisses fashion as frivolous. She becomes the bridge between old and new media worlds: a reporter who has already watched one newsroom disappear and now finds herself fighting for a magazine she once planned to escape. What used to be a choice between serious journalism and fashion collapses into a single struggle for longevity.
Defensive Glamour
And yet, »The Devil Wears Prada 2« never loses its sense of humor about all of this. It still indulges in spectacle and fantasy. It still enjoys the drama of powerful people in beautiful clothes. The difference is that the fantasy now feels slightly defensive – as if the film itself is trying to justify why this world deserves to exist.
By the final act, the story becomes almost sentimental about creative work. Runway is framed not just as a magazine, but as a symbol for human taste and artistic labor in general. The film argues that even glossy, seemingly excessive cultural products have value. That beauty and curation are not luxuries. That expertise still matters.
Watching the characters fight to save a magazine inevitably raises an uncomfortable question for anyone working in media today: Who or what exactly is this fight for? Perhaps the answer is the same reason Miranda Priestly keeps showing up to work, no matter how much the industry around her changes. The belief that doing good work still matters. And ultimately, as the devil herself would say: »That’s all.«
Titelbild © Anna Höcherl
