Lots has modified since The Satan Wears Prada was launched 20 years in the past, not least style. The 2006 movie portrayed a panorama that’s nearly unrecognizable at the moment, irrespective of the way you have a look at it. But when that first movie turned a cult film, X-raying aspirational capitalism, the sequel focuses on satirizing essentially the most unlikely routes that the posh trade and shiny magazines have gone down since.
Within the final 20 years, style has turn into a monetary asset, but additionally a supply of leisure. Actually, it’s simply one other piece of content material to be consumed throughout sofa-based scrolling periods — periods that might be mixed with the viewing of the sequel when it arrives on platforms (will probably be obtainable on Disney+). The screenwriters know this, and so they have liberally scattered the footage with cameos and references designed to turn into memes. If within the first movie it was troublesome for essential names to be added to the footage, with only Valentino Garavani and Gisele Bündchen daring, on this model, there are extra celebrities than adorn a crimson carpet, with the listing together with Marc Jacobs, Donatella Versace, Girl Gaga, Karolina Kurkova, Heidi Klum, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Tina Brown, and Legislation Roach.
In 2006, nobody needed to be related to a film that was thought of radioactive. Based mostly on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 e-book of the identical title, the story immortalized an omnipotent and megalomaniac journal editor performed by Meryl Streep and impressed by Anna Wintour, editor of the U.S. version of Vogue (Weisberger was her assistant for a number of months). Twenty years in the past, everybody feared Anna Wintour, however most people didn’t know her. At the moment, it’s the different method round. She has turn into a well-recognized face in widespread tradition, and that’s partly because of the e-book and the movie. She is aware of this and is already bluntly ironic about it, posing in Prada with Meryl Streep for the duvet of the Might subject of the journal she now coordinates as world director of content material for all Condé Nast publications.
The movie portrays that change, nevertheless it additionally touches on all of the themes which have outlined these previous years. One storyline stands out for its prescience: the budding love affair between the technooligarchs and the style world, a current flip embodied by a personality with unmistakable echoes of Jeff Bezos. The Silicon Valley gurus have come out of their garages and given up the nerdy hoodies. Now they go to the White Home and search to overcome the style trade with their checkbooks, conscious of its cultural energy. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, had been the visitors of honor at Prada’s newest style present. Jeff Bezos, founding father of Amazon, and his spouse, Lauren Sanchez, had been the discuss of the city after they attended a number of high fashion exhibits in Paris. And subsequent Monday, the couple is ready for his or her coronation as visible energy brokers after they function hosts of the Met Gala.
Organized by Anna Wintour, the Met Gala raises funds for the Metropolitan Museum’s style wing. Aside from being one of many highest-profile occasions of the 12 months, those that climb the carpeted stairs of the museum can contemplate themselves social highfliers. At the very least they might till now.
“In her quest to boost more cash annually, Anna has made the ticket costs so costly that almost no person can afford them besides tech corporations,” Amy Odell, Wintour’s biographer, wrote in a publish known as The Met Gala is Now the Tech Gala. “This inflow of tech cash on the gala has eroded its cool issue.”
For the extremely‑wealthy, nevertheless, tickets to the Met Gala are a trivial expense: “In 2025, the event raised $31 million which, proportionally, means about as a lot to Jeff Bezos as $10 does to a median American family with an $80,000 earnings,” Odell factors out.
In different phrases, it’s a small value to pay for the validation — and the feminine viewers — they’re after, achieved by sponsoring the gala or securing a entrance‑row seat.
Style wants the tech billionaires and vice versa, as a result of the tech bros yearn for the cultural cachet and aspirational aura of the posh trade. The Satan Wears Prada 2 features a billionaire founding father of a expertise firm who has simply divorced his long-time spouse. After going via his personal glow-up, he turns into obsessive about longevity and a brand new girlfriend, and units out to purchase Runway — the movie’s stand‑in for Vogue — as a present for her.
Premonition or caricature? Laborious to say. The script was drafted in 2024, and final summer season rumors swirled that Bezos was planning to purchase Vogue as a marriage current for his future spouse (or as his subsequent toy after discarding the final one). Condé Nast, the writer that owns the century‑outdated journal, denied the chatter, however on social media, some see the corporate’s newest spherical of cuts — introduced simply days in the past — as a strategic clear‑up forward of a possible sale.
Maybe the reply lies within the movie, as a result of actuality usually outpaces fiction — although some artwork captures, with shocking readability, the extra grotesque turns sure sectors are taking.
The Satan Wears Prada 2 additionally touches on the precariousness of journalism, the tyranny of clicks and the eye economic system, the function of style homes and the demise of promoting, the transformation of magazines into world manufacturers, the shift in mentality among the many younger, on-line hate speech, the waning energy of editors… What doesn’t evolve within the slightest is the narrative round work and ambition, which feels much more outdated than within the first movie. The ethical? It arrives wrapped in sequins and perched on stilettos: to succeed at work, you will need to sacrifice your private life. The movie delivers it with out a trace of critique or irony — fairly the other, actually, presenting it as an aspirational ultimate.
Different messages within the movie usually are not so apparent, although they communicate volumes about at the moment’s systemic contradictions. The script nods to physique variety via a number of traces of dialogue and a token character — a gesture that appears designed to fulfill the calls for of political correctness. But Anne Hathaway performs Andy Sachs with the form of physique at present trending on crimson carpets: rail skinny.
The movie additionally acknowledges how magazines have misplaced energy to manufacturers — an apparent reality — and portrays the previous as subservient to the latter. However the scenes meant as an example this elevate labels from the LVMH conglomerate into storylines of their very own.
Nothing is unintentional in a sequel with a finances north of $100 million, based on Selection. Dior is virtually a supporting character, and a Tiffany & Co. jewelry retailer turns into a key setting in one of many sequences, underscoring how luxurious homes have additionally turn into patrons of movie and tv.
All of the scenes appear conceived to turn into reels. The identical occurs with the wardrobe, which is the work of Molly Rogers. It’s extreme and overwhelming and forgettable and brings to thoughts these scrolling periods wherein time passes, however nothing a lot registers.
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