Devil Wears Prada 2 cast start filming and New Yorkers catch a glimpse

Times

2 days ago

There is a feeding frenzy on the streets of Manhattan. The hunting pack: millennial fashionistas armed with iPhones and TikTok. The prey: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, Chanel, Fendi, Valentino and, most importantly, Prada.
After years of speculation, the cast of the 2006 blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada are in New York City, filming scenes for a sequel slated for release around May next year.
But whereas the first film was a sleeper hit, produced on a relatively small budget to surprisingly enormous acclaim, the second arrives with a pre-ordained fan base, dedicated followers of fashion who are all grown up and ready to reminisce about the old and obsess over the new.
Social media is awash with videos filmed by fans. There is Hathaway, who leads as the wannabe writer Andy Sachs, strutting across Midtown; there is Streep, who plays the editor of Runway, Miranda Priestly, Anna Wintour-like in her ice-queen demeanour and enormous sunglasses; and there is Tucci as Nigel Kipling, the ever-loyal art director in perfectly clipped suits and jaunty glasses.
Emily Blunt will rejoin the cast as Emily, the ambitious Runway colleague with a face like thunder, while Sir Kenneth Branagh makes a first appearance, as Priestly's probably-second husband. Other new names include Lucy Liu (Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels), Simone Ashley (Bridgerton), Justin Theroux (American Psycho, Mulholland Drive) and Pauline Chalamet (sister of Timothée and star of The Sex Lives of College Girls).
The first movie was about Andy, a smug graduate desperate to write cerebral long-reads for a magazine that put only words on a page, but who was instead hired at one that was obsessed with pretty pictures.
Instead of cracking her knuckles to write, Andy had to fetch the editor of Runway and her new boss, Miranda, coffees (Starbucks, tall, non-fat vanilla latte with two shots of espresso) and lunch (rare ribeye steak, two baked potatoes, a side of smashed potatoes and eight asparagus stalks, picked up from Smith & Wollensky, transferred on to a new plate then placed on her desk).
'That's all,' said Miranda famously, often after dumping her enormous fur coat on Andy's computer. The movie was based on the best-selling novel of the same name, written by the one-time Wintour assistant Lauren Weisberger.
According to the news site Puck, the storyline for the second movie will follow Miranda as she navigates her career amid the decline of traditional magazine publishing, going head-to-head with Blunt's character Emily, now a high-powered executive at Dior.
With other details still redacted, fans are poring over the looks on the streets of the city to try to fill in the blanks: Andy standing next to a suitcase and a garment bag reading 'Runway', hinting at her return to the magazine; Miranda with the same haircut, same style, same sunglasses, as consistent as a Wintour; and Tucci's character, Nigel, sitting in a Midtown meeting room with Andy, hinting at their union as colleagues, but next to a sign for a new potential publication that reads: Adore.
Instead of the high-glamour fashion transformation Andy had in the first movie, all thigh-high boots and bouncy blow-outs, the character seems to be looking much more rich-hipster Brooklynite this time around.
She has been seen wearing the Chanel 'dad sandals' ($1,000+), almost orthopedic in their chunk and stamped with the two-Cs; a plain white tank top (Toteme, $110); and a denim jumpsuit from Re/Done in collaboration with Ford, whose previous collections have mostly consisted of cars.
There has also been some of the brilliantly funny takes on workwear that the first movie did so well: this is high-camp fashion trying to disguise itself in pin stripes; this is corporate drag. Think a white T-shirt with a narrow panel that hits the floor like a train or the Margiela Tabi boots, which look normal until you notice that the big toe is separated from the rest.
The genius of the first movie can be credited to Patricia Field, the now 83-year-old, Emmy-award winning costume designer also known as the brains behind Sex and the City, Ugly Betty and Emily in Paris. It is unclear whether she has been brought on for the sequel.
A consummate New Yorker, Field was the owner of the legendary Manhattan boutique Pants Pub, later renamed eponymously. Field was famous then, as she is now, for her bright red hair and enormous winged glasses, leopard print on leopard print, punk on punk, cigarette in hand, a hard-rocking downtown rebel.
'My style is personal, happy, colourful,' she said. 'Everything in my closet goes together like a bowl of fruit.'
Before the first Devil Wears Prada movie, Field took its director, David Frankel, to fashion week, 'to loosen him up a little and inspire him for the world he was about to shoot', Field later wrote in the Washington Post.
For Miranda's style, she wanted something far away from trends, seeking special permission to rifle through Donna Karan's archive in a warehouse in New Jersey.
The designer's representatives, she wrote, 'were astonished that I was the one climbing ladders and unzipping garment bags, and not some minion'.
She continued: 'I pored [over] her designs from the Eighties and Nineties, which was when Donna introduced the world to what was known as her Seven Easy Pieces: bodysuit, skirt, tailored jacket, dress, leather element, white shirt and cashmere sweater.'
She also fought for Miranda's famously white shock of hair, perfectly coiffed the same way every day, a mirror to Wintour's bob.
Her white hair had been dreamt up by Streep's longtime hair and makeup stylist, J Roy Helland, who was inspired by then-septuagenarian model Carmen Dell'Orefice and Christine Lagarde, the French trade minister who went on to become managing director of the International Monetary Fund and president of the European Central Bank.
When producers disagreed with the white hair, saying she should have a more stylish haircut, Field launched a campaign to persuade them otherwise. In the end, it was white.
'When Prada wrapped, everyone knew the picture was good,' she wrote. 'But just how well it would be received, we had no clue.' The film, which cost $41 million to make, grossed $326 million worldwide. Streep was nominated for an Oscar for best actress and Field for best costume design.
And so back to New York, a city so tightly stacked on top of itself that it is impossible to keep any filming quiet, everyone watching and waiting to see if the devil will wear Prada, again.