In her column “What I’ve Scene Lately,” Chloe Loquet delivers witty, opinion-forward reviews of the latest in film and television.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Let’s set the scene. Freshman Spring has surreptitiously sprung, meaning it’s the season for cerulean skies and — though far from groundbreaking — resurfaced floral fabrics. There I was, standing in the famed Vogue closet on FashionX’s trek to New York, gaping at the very wall of shoes I’d dreamed of since watching “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006) for the first time. Even then, long before I could spell Gabbana, my seven-year-old self was swept away by the glitzy outfit montages and glamorous allure of it all.
The trip was a haute whirlwind: Chanel, LVMH, Condé Nast. For five days, I felt like I had won the golden ticket; only these tours had Wintour instead of Wonka, and Coco instead of cocoa. As a travelator inched me toward my flight home, the sadness of leaving was washed away by ads for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (2026) plastered across every airport monitor. I would get to continue my Andy Sachs Spring back in Palo Alto!
On opening day at the Landmark Aquarius downtown, I was the first in my seat, silently reminiscing about all the times Miranda’s iconic quips got me through sick days home from school. One by one, people trickled in until every seat was taken and then some — that’s right, three people stood at the back of the theater to watch the sequel that had taken my entire lifetime to be made. Before the lights dimmed, I realized my excitement had been accompanied by some nervousness: the kind you feel seeing your high school friends after a long time apart, hoping that you will slip perfectly back into each other’s lives but cognizant that time, and life, may have other plans.
The film picks up 20 years after Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Anne Hathaway) left behind “the job a million girls would kill for” as assistant to the formidable Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), editor in chief of premier fashion publication Runway. Now a celebrated investigative journalist, Andy realizes she is the last of a dying breed when the newspaper where she works goes under. Ironically, Miranda finds herself in a similar situation. Facing a PR scandal threatening Runway’s survival, she must fend off corporate pressures in a brave new world where tastemaking institutions now teeter on the edge of relevance. The two reunite in a narratively clunky fashion when Andy is hired to restore the magazine’s credibility.
From the start, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” serves anything but quiet nostalgia, leaning into a style of self-aware maximalism with its engineered references to the first film. The fabulous Nigel (Stanley Tucci) returns as both jester and heartbeat. Emily (Emily Blunt) is back too, with her unapologetically chic attitude, only now she wields power over Miranda in her senior position at Dior, one of the luxury advertisers Runway must bow to in order to remain afloat.
Despite familiar faces, this is a bizarro version of the original’s 2006 New York. A now mature, stylish Andy needs no makeover. Miranda must hang her own coat (gasp) and fly coach, middle seat no less (l’horreur). The Elias-Clarke high-rise offices have shed their mysterious exclusivity. Instead of calling shots among designers and editors, Miranda takes orders from tech billionaires and McKinsey consultants who make calls on profitability, not taste. This evolution is an inherently darker universe that directly explores a changing media landscape in the age of AI, the attention economy and consolidation.
Though filled with divine clothing and funny at times, this movie is not the lighthearted, nostalgic escape some might be looking for. Instead, it felt more like an honest meditation on the current state of the arts, culture, media and power. The characters have grown, and so too has the world we all now live in. Walking out of the theater, I felt dissatisfied, despite having gone in expecting a fair deal of cringiness — which there absolutely was — and knowing the bar was set at astronomical heights.
I imagine the reason many people turned out for “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the reason a throwback fashion comedy was able to gross over half a billion dollars, is because viewers (including myself) were desperate for a return to the simplicity of the shimmery 2000s fashion world. What we got was a sobering reminder that the fantasy was just that — a shadow of what art, the fashion industry and culture once were and may never be again. After sitting with “The Devil Wears Prada 2” for some time, I realized that I wasn’t disappointed because I expected a sequel better than the first, but because the magical world that had been my safe space has been ravaged 20 years later by the very forces I live with everyday: venture capital, artificial intelligence and the death of taste at the hands of social media algorithms.