The original Devil Wears Prada movie was about how the Runaway, the “beacon” of the fashion industry was run by a woman akin to the devil herself, Miranda Priestly, played by the legendary actress Meryl Streep. One of her interns, Andy, played by Ann Hathaway is tested as she is transformed by her job from a kind hearted gal to someone willing to throw people under the bus to keep her job. At the end Andy faces a cross roads, and decides not to become the devil’s daughter, and instead chases her journalism goals. The film is a classic, and when sequel was announced I had reservations. The first film tells Andy’s story as protagonist so well from beginning to end, that a sequel felt unnecessary.
My reservations about sequels have merit for some of worst films are sequels made too long after the original, examples being Coming To America 2 and Happy Gilmore 2. Usually what happens is a major regression of the progress the characters had, which a chief example of this is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2 where Norman and his love interest end up going back to where they were earlier in the first film relationally. To my unexpected delight, The Devil Wears Prada does not commit this mistake. Andy is a successful Journalist and has for fifteen years been doing what she loves, when her paper folds or rather guts itself and she with her team lose their jobs. Journalism like everything, even Runway, is facing the tide of Artfiical Intelligence, everything going digital, and the need for humans is seen as a cost loss for coperate. Andy gets a job offer from Runeway’s Irv, to come back and work for Miranda Priestly once more, but not as Assistant No. 2 or a New Emily, rather as someone to save Runway with her journalistic skills, specifically helping deal with gaff by Priestly that has shaken faith in Runaway. I appreciate they did not take Andy’s character and make her fill role she had before in first film, instead she retains all the development from the end of the first installment and the years between it and this film.
There is an inclination in our churches to take two radically different approaches to fashion as an industry. We either resist it as being the devil’s, “the lust of all we see,” (), or we adopt it wholesale and see it as simply accenting what God already created. I am convinced that the song Lady Ga Ga preforms this sequel best sums up the truth, “remember, when you fell in love with the shape of a woman,” and “I found God in the shape of the woman,” which makes me think of the verse, “We shall both male and female, man and woman in our image.” (Genesis 1:27). Woman is made in the image of God, so you are seeing God, and fashion like Runaway helps draw attention to it. In fact, many models who wear the line by designers are Christians, even having bible studies together (CBN News, 700 Club). We have to remember its not all vanity, God made beauty, it is all around us, and most obviously in “the shape of a woman.” Hence why the most famous pieces of Art are the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and others which subject matter is woman.
The Devil Wars Parada 2 felt to me a coming home. Getting to be with characters again was comforting. is Miranda still a cold fish? Certainly, but in her vulnerable moments she does convey some things, even a truth of Jesus, “write it all Andy, tell my coldness, and all of it, how much of my children’s lives I have missed.. people need to know there is a cost,” says Miranda Priestly, she is echoing Jesus, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”” (Luke 14:28). Which might be unexpected, how can a film that seems to promote the lost of the eyes be speaking of truths of our Lord? The answer is God will speak through what he Wills, he did so fro Donkey to Balaam. (Numbers 22:21-39). But I am convinced that fashion is not the enemy, its the need to keep up with and go into debt to be branded. Just as money is not the source of evil, the love of it is (1 Timothy 6:10), it is obsession with staying in trends that is the evil, not the trend or fashion itself. Just as the internet is not the devil, it is how its used.
I highly recommend the Devil Wears Prada 2 to anyone who saw and enjoyed the first film. It is a rare case where sequel lives up to the first installment. That alone is a reason to see it. That said, there is a grim prognostication in film by a character named Benji, “change is constant and is coming, like the lava of Pompeii, and it will wipe away things, eventually all of us.” This is said to Miranda Priestly and has profound effect on her. It has a manner of truth in it, because God is coming with Fire (2 Peter 3:8) and he is going to wipe everything away like the lava did Pompeii. However, we as Christians have this blessed hope, that we shall survive unto eternal life and be raised into new bodies to live on a New Heaven and New Earth (Revelation 21:1-43), and I am fairly sure there will be fashion shows in the New Jerusalem, cuz the gates are pearl and streets made of gold, and every precious gem adorns the place, and that is beauty, so why not fashion shows, a Redeemer’s Runaway for all those Christian Models. Amen.
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