The Devil Dresses Like Björk

 

The Devil, in reality, never wore Prada. Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue and the real life inspiration for Miranda Priestly, has always been more closely associated with Chanel (currently the most popular brand according to the Lyst Index). But for marketing purposes, Prada sounded better. If Malcolm in the Middle could make a triumphant return after 20 years, why couldn’t The Devil Wears Prada?

Everything I know about fashion I learned from watching The Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty, and Sex and the City about ten times with my wife and daughters. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a romantic comedy, a romcom, as they call it, though this time I honestly saw less romance than in the first film. It reminded me of what I felt with Materialists: something darker lurking beneath the surface of the romantic comedy. Nostalgia returns once again as narrative fuel, but it isn’t overused here. Instead, there’s a clear dissection of the present that I found far more interesting than any trip to the past. Slavoj Žižek and I could easily have been watching a completely different movie from the one many others saw in the same theater.

This time, Miranda Priestly, Andy Sachs, Emily Charlton, and Nigel face an almost catastrophic scenario: the editorial world of the first film is collapsing under the onslaught of the digital age, algorithms, and ephemeral content. What was once pure power is now fighting for survival. Even the once prestigious Runway magazine, led by Priestly, is in danger of disappearing. Ironically, the first film introduced many people to the world of high fashion, the second now announces the beginning of its collapse.

You can’t expect anything less from Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt. Joining the original cast are some heavy hitters: Lucy Liu (the iconic O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill), Kenneth Branagh (the brutal Andrei Sator from Tenet), and Justin Theroux (the memorable Kevin Garvey from The Leftovers). The main duo must find a way to save print magazines, and in this historical moment, that’s almost like trying to save something the world has already decided to let die.

And there lies the film’s great revelation: the devil is no longer Miranda Priestly. The devil is now obsolescence. That observation carries enormous weight when, in real life, we see Jeff Bezos showing up at Paris Fashion Week shortly after firing hundreds of Washington Post staff via email, or Mark Zuckerberg sitting front row next to Miuccia Prada. Fiction and reality stare each other in the eye, and neither blinks.

The film’s true wager, beyond the romcom tradition, is the survival of high fashion and the print media that supports it. Today, designs shown on the runway can be replicated in days and sold in accessible versions thanks to artificial intelligence, just as Zara does. And now Zara has John Galliano. Trends have moved past fast fashion into ultra fast fashion, changing almost daily according to the dictates of TikTok and Shein. We live in a time when the highest possible compliment is to be called “iconic” (as Meryl Streep is), just as Justin Bieber called his wife Hailey, and that word no longer belongs to anyone in particular because everyone has claimed it at once.

At one point in the story, the heir to the publishing company that owns Runway decides to sell it to one of the so-called “tech bros”, someone who could be Bezos, Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk: a person who has no idea what to do with it, exactly as happened with Bezos and The Washington Post, or Musk and Twitter. It’s no longer just about power. It’s also about obsolescence and reinvention.

Including Lady Gaga’s appearance in the film is no coincidence. Gaga is trapped in that same triangle of power, obsolescence, and reinvention that Madonna experienced, at a time when figures from the new hyperpop scene like Charli XCX seem to have seized the vanguard from her. The question no one asks out loud is how long it takes for a vanguard to become nostalgia.

Perhaps the answer is in the Björk T shirt Andy wears in one scene. Björk doesn’t just step away from the spotlight when she wants to. She dictates her own fashion, sets her own trends, and reinvents herself with every album without asking anyone’s permission. In a world that sheds its skin every 48 hours, that is no longer eccentricity. That is power. Lucy Liu's character, Sasha Barnes, could very well be a portrayal of MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex wife, or perhaps Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife. Or maybe she's just Björk. 

I think that if the devil dressed in high fashion, she would wear Balenciaga, Vetements, or perhaps Comme des Garçons, brands that don’t follow trends because they themselves decide what a trend is. Björk operates with exactly that same logic.

Maybe she was the one who taught the devil how to dress.