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Twenty years after the original charmed audiences with its sharp satire of ambition and excess, The Devil Wears Prada 2 brings back Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs and Emily Blunt’s scene-stealing Emily Charlton for what seems, at first glance, a smartly updated reunion. Directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna, the sequel begins with Andy winning an award for ‘real’ journalism, although what story earned her that honour, the film never bothers to tell. This arc exists only to pull Andy back into the orbit of “Runway” magazine, this time to help manage a sweatshop scandal. This irony is hard to miss: Vogue, the real-world inspiration for Runway, has long and freely featured fast fashion brands, many of which have faced allegations of using exploitative sweatshop labour practices.  

The clothes are still spectacular, the one-liners land and the chemistry among the leads remains fun to watch. Yet beneath the surface glamour and timely-sounding crises, the film performs a careful act of ideological laundering. It acknowledges just enough real-world pain to seem relevant, while shielding the fashion industry from any meaningful reckoning. The film’s central tension revolves around Runway facing backlash over its ties to a brand using exploitative production. Andy is tasked with damage control: writing the apologetic feature, humanising the brand and helping Miranda steer the ship through stormy waters. But what Andy actually writes, and what Runaway itself thinks about fast fashion or exploitative labour or sweatshops, we never find out.  

Anne Hathaway in a scene from “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” Photo: Macall Polay/ 20th Century Studios via AP.

On paper, the film recognises the horrors of the global garment industry, but stops short of confronting them. There is a widely cited claim that the planet already has enough clothing to dress six generations of humanity, frequently referenced by sustainability organisations. The fashion media, however, fails to acknowledge this fact. Vogue itself publishes........

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