Prada Finally Dresses The Devil
Sometimes you don’t have to think too hard about method dressing. If you’re starring in a franchise called The Devil Wears Prada, why not just wear Prada? (All the better if it’s in a devilish shade of red.) That’s exactly what Meryl Streep did last night, at the South Korea premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2 in Seoul. Of course, the woman who plays the fierce editrix Miranda Priestly shouldn’t be wearing any old Prada. Her suit was custom, of course. The most interesting part of this red carpet storyline may be that Prada decided to take part at all.
A power suit fit for anyone hoping to lead an editorial meeting, Streep’s double-breasted red suit jacket featured an exaggerated collar that sat slightly above her shoulders. Her wide-leg, slightly flared pants matched perfectly, and an unexpected brown belt synched with the silhouette.
Although Streep’s suit was custom-made, it appears to takes its cues from deep within the Prada archives. Supermodel Lara Stone stomped down Prada’s fall 2009 runway in a similar demon-red outfit (but hers was a skirt suit). Fall 2009 was a particularly austere season for Prada, with lots of sturdy suits made of stiff fabrics. Pops of red were just about the only color shown on the runway amid a collection otherwise dominated by blacks and various shades of brown. Backstage, designer Miuccia Prada told Style.com at the time that it was all “about a need for feminine empowerment.”
Although The Devil Wears Prada is largely understood to be a stylized fictionalization of Vogue magazine and its global editorial director Anna Wintour, the films do bear another famed moniker: Miuccia’s surname. Mrs. Prada has said very little about that fact over the years. She told an Italian newspaper back in 2015 that she was originally afraid because she thought the original novel was “awful,” but she ultimately concluded that, “the film, on the other hand, was fun.”
Wintour has shed a little more light on Miuccia’s reaction. “Many years ago, the Prada name and I were thrown together in the title of a book and then a movie,” Wintour told the audience at Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards in 2016. “For a while, it seemed that that association was the only flattering thing about the enterprise, and Miuccia and I never discussed it. Finally, at one of our lunches, she leaned across the table and she said, ‘Anna, that book, it’s good for both of us.’ And the subject has never come up again.”
While the fashion world famously held the original film at a distance, everyone, including Wintour and Prada, are showing their support this time around. The Vogue editor is even featured on the cover of the most recent issue of her magazine with Streep. Both are wearing Prada. As Miuccia would say, it’s all just “fun.”
