The Duds of 'The Devil Wears Prada' - The New York Times
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In character, Ms. Streep, third from left, meets with her minions in a spangly Bill Blass jacket and several pounds of gold. The evening dress, with its many flounces, contrasts garishly with the minions' prim garb. Credit Barry Wetcher/Associated Press
EVERYONE loves a Cinderella makeover, especially when its setting is catapulted in time to the formidably spotless, lacquered world of modern fashion magazines. The makers of "The Devil Wears Prada" seem, in fact, to be banking on it. Which may be why they inserted a fairy tale metamorphosis into the heart of the film based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à clef about an earnest journalism grad who becomes an assistant to the impossibly exacting editor of Runway, the country's most powerful fashion magazine.
When the movie arrives in theaters tomorrow, some audience members may writhe with envy watching as Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the style-challenged lackey to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), sheds her scullery-maid persona for that of a smugly preening style princess. Some will likely fall under the spell cast by David Frankel, the director of "The Devil Wears Prada," who aimed, he said, to fuse fantasy — "the wish fulfillment of going to this magical kingdom of fashion" — with a sense of authenticity.
Did he hit his mark? To a point. But to the unforgiving eye of insiders who attended a flurry of advance screenings, Andy's swag-laden trip to the ball has about as much relation to reality as New York City does to Kankakee.
"Where is the chic?" groused David Wolfe, a New York fashion and retail consultant well versed in the eccentricities of real-life magazine divas. In his assessment, the film's stylistic problems begin with Meryl Streep as the silver-coiffed Miranda, a character he thinks looks far too bland and bankerlike and ugh! — far too pretty — to be convincing as Runway's chilly commander in chief.
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In fashion, "You've gotta have a gimmick, like the stripper said," Mr. Wolfe observed. Think, he urged, of the rigidly stylized signature look of magazine legends like Diana Vreeland, with her kabuki makeup and tar-colored hair, or celebrity editors like Anna Wintour, whose dark glasses and precision-cut bangs shield a profile of cut glass.
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"In a world of 'fabulous,' " Mr. Wolfe pronounced, " 'pretty' just isn't good enough."
Other self-appointed critics pin "Devil's" visual shortcomings on a misapprehension of what truly counts as "fabulous" in the realm of style. It is not summed up by a parade of Gucci, Pucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada, they say, but by breezier labels like Chloé, Marc Jacobs and Marni, which are coveted by young trendsetters but are in scant evidence on screen.
Even Prada is in short supply. In their place are masses of wool bouclé power suits, double-C logo pearls, tweed newsboy caps and thigh-high boots that threaten to sink the film under their weight.
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In the film, Anne Hathaway's graduation from frump to fabulista is signaled by boots, chains, a miniskirt and a Chanel jacket. Credit 20th Century Fox/Associated Press
Those costumes are "a caricature of what people who don't work in fashion think fashion people look like," said Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle. Conceived and styled by Patricia Field, who assembled the wardrobe for "Sex and the City," "the clothes are a little too head-to-toe perfect," Ms. Slowey said.
Not to say a little uptight. After a visit to the fashion closet, the magazine's inner sanctum, Andy emerges — voila! — upholstered to the collarbone in a doubled-breasted Chanel jacket with gold crest and trim. Cataracts of chains and a pair of high-rise boots that few lowly assistants could afford finish off the look.
That effusive costuming extends to Emily (Emily Blunt), Andy's colleague in misery, who starves herself into a size 2 shrug with studs and flanged shoulders that turns her into a hybrid of Goth girl and intergalactic warrior queen. Miranda for her part is mumsy in an asymmetric bob and beige trench coat. But she, too, is capable of going overboard. Among the 60 costumes Ms. Field put together for her is a Fendi jacket that pulsates with animal stripes, the look completed with an outsize crocodile bag.
For Ms. Field, the costumes were never intended to match reality. "Did Holly Golightly represent reality in a Givenchy dress? I was in that zone," she said. "My job is to present an entertainment, a world people can visit and take a little trip.
"If they want a documentary, they can watch the History Channel."
Still, the movie wardrobe has little in common with the chicly understated style of Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or "Funny Face," considered by professionals as delightful depictions of fashion. It is more akin to the overblown outfits of Sophia Loren — all polka dots and floppy picture hats — in "Prêt-à-Porter," the 1994 fashion satire by Robert Altman disparaged by the pros. Even the makeup in "Devil" (gecko-green eye shadow, coral-reef lips) owes more to fashion's last great age of conspicuous consumption than to the Boho-inflected, low-key, often self-consciously haphazard look of today.
"The hair, the clothes, the furs, the handbags, the editor's apartment, it's very much the heyday of the 80's, which was our flashiest moment to date," said Tiffany Dubin, a former curator of vintage fashion for Sotheby's.
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Those elements prompted Ms. Dubin to dismiss the film's style with the fashionista's ultimate putdown: "The people in it are trying a little too hard."
The first hint that "Devil" may go over the top arrives in the form of a wardrobe montage in which Miranda stalks into the office on a series of mornings, flinging onto her assistant's desk enough status bags and lavish furs to clean out the Bronx Zoo. They are just the beginning of a brazen outpouring of $12,000 handbags, $30,000 furs and $1,000 over-the-knee boots assembled by Ms. Field with a budget of $100,000 and a little help from designers and friends who, she said, provided access to about $1 million worth of clothes.
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Meryl Streep in throbbing jungle stripes and spots with a handbag by Nancy Gonzalez. Credit 20th Century Fox/Associated Press
In the tradition of Ms. Hepburn, who has played her share of Cinderella characters, Andy looks on saucer-eyed. Her frowzy poly-Shetland sweaters and argyle skirts are a sure indication that she is about as well suited for her position as Paris Hilton would be for a job as a nanny.
Not to worry. It is at this juncture that Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Miranda's right hand, a chilly martinet in a shrill plaid suit, steps grudgingly into the role of fairy godmother. He bears a glass slipper, of course: a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos, which Andy eyes warily before slipping them on.
As they say, if you can't beat 'em ... Like a Stockholm syndrome sufferer, it is not long before Andy takes on the look and mannerisms of the enemy.
In a violation of the strictures of most fashion glossies, she routinely raids the fashion closet, a mini-Versailles tidily packed floor to ceiling with Valentino, Narciso Rodriguez, and of course, Jimmy Choo. Cavernous and brilliantly lighted, it is the antithesis of a real-life fashion closet, which is usually the size of a generous bathroom jammed with tray upon tray of jewelry, hosiery and clothes all guarded by junior editors — fashion's "grim vigilantes," as Gay Talese called them in "Vogueland," his acid 1961 magazine portrayal of life at Vogue. Eager watchdogs, they would be as likely to borrow tens of thousands of dollars worth of designer wares for a night out as they would to upend a latte on the boss's desk.
No such scruples trouble Andy, who rejects the searingly orange cape that Nigel offers in favor of a leopard-trimmed parrot-green Gucci coat that is much too buttoned-up for the likes of a 22-year-old editorial assistant. It is one in a multitude of costume changes that see Andy through days of running errands and nights of dropping in at galleries and fashion galas.
"I find it astounding that all these people in the movie have so much time to change," said Hal Rubenstein, the fashion director of InStyle magazine. "By and large, if you go from work to an event in the evening, you change your shoes, your jewelry and your bag, the same way that the magazine editors tell their readers to do."
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Mr. Rubenstein objected as strenuously to the filmmakers' tendency to pile on the goods. "For the most part women in fashion fiercely edit what they wear," he said. In contrast, the movie offers much too much in the way of furs and gold bangles, he said, reflecting "a weird desire for abundance for the sake of abundance."
Ms. Dubin said: "It's costume. People now are more subdued."
Fashion codes have visibly relaxed since 1961, when Mr. Talese described the denizens of Vogueland as a phalanx of "suave and wrinkle-proof women filing into the office weekday mornings."
Indeed, a random check of editors and assistants passing through the glass doors of 4 Times Square, the headquarters of Vogue, showed them to be more rumpled than wrinkle-proof, though as seemingly unstudied and spare as those editors of old. Granted it was summer, and fittingly they wore light-as-air-kisses dresses and filmy jersey tops with slim pants and dainty sandals. There wasn't a logo or "it" bag in sight.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page G1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Duds Of 'The Devil Wears Prada'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe