By Lana Schwartz | lana.schwartz925@gmail.com

At the climax of the film The Devil Wears Prada, Andy (Anne Hathaway) is stuck in a car with her boss, the titular devil in prada, Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep). 

She questions every decision she’s made over the last 90 minutes of the film’s run time. She alienated her friends and family members to find success at Runway (the fake magazine that’s a stand-in for the real Vogue). And it seems like if she wants continued professional success, there will be a lot more of that in her future.

“What if I don’t want to live the way you live?” Andy asks Miranda.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea,” Miranda says, scoffing. “Everybody wants this.” 

The year was 2006. And back then, there were scores of people who did want this—this being not just success, but success at the exact place where wealth and culture intertwine. To be a writer at an editor at a major magazine, to make actual money doing it, and to be at the kinds of parties they write oral histories about 30 years later. And in 2006, there was still a world of difference between Runway and The Village Voice stand-in where Andy goes to work at the end of the movie (apologies for spoiling a 20-year old movie with a sequel now in theaters).  

Twenty years later, however, well, it’s a different story. Did you expect that the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, a frothy and fizzy movie about sacrificing your morals for success, would be about the death of Conde Nast, the most influential media conglomerate of the last century? Well, I did a little bit, because I read Empire of the Elite by Michael Grynbaum. But watching it in a theater on Saturday night, I was still somewhat taken aback.

2026 in The Devil Wears Prada world is as bleak as it is in our world. Budgets have been slashed. Award-winning journalists are laid off in droves. Clicks and content are king. The magic is all but gone. 

Where the idea of working at Runway was a joke to Andy in 2006, in 2026 she barely hesitates to take a job at her former place of traumatization—because it is the only place where a shred of a job still exists. There is no “selling out” to be done. “Selling out” doesn’t exist anymore, their world (and ours) would have you believe.

Though I would argue that selling out does still exist. It looks different now, but I would argue putting your faith in a billionaire is a form of selling out, no matter how good their intentions seem or what their gender is. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a billion dollars? A woman with a billion dollars. For those of you who have seen the movie, you may be asking, Well, what choice did they have? But if there is a message or takeaway from the first Devil Wears Prada film it’s that we always have choices. Be it the real Jeff Bezos or the fictional Benji Barnes, no one is endeared to these tasteless one percent tech bros, so why do we keep climbing further into bed with them? Are we doomed to keep settling for less for us and more for them?

If there is comfort in anything, I aim to find it in this: For years we’ve been told that similar to media, movies are dead. No one wants to leave their house to see a movie in theaters anymore. Streaming is the future. Yet The Devil Wears Prada 2 defied expectations to make $77 million in North America opening weekend. There will always be an appetite for storytelling and art—and it’s up to us to find a way to keep billionaires out of it.