The Devil Wears Prada

“The chance to work for her, to watch her edit and meet with famous writers and models, to help her achieve all she does each and every day, well, I shouldn’t need to tell you that it’s a job a million girls would die for.” 

Andy hears this mantra for the first time from a personnel rep before her interview. The irony of the statement is lost on her until much later in the story. The cult-like nature of Runway means that many girls would sacrifice their lives to work for Miranda. Little does Andy know that this sacrifice is exactly what her new boss will require of her. By the time she’s ready to quit, Andy is half-dead from exhaustion.

“But at that moment, I felt beautiful. Natural and cold and clean and crisp, I threw open the front door and called out for my mother. It was the last time in my life I remember feeling so light.” 

Andy has just accepted the Runway job but hasn’t yet started working for Miranda. This statement is uttered in hindsight by a sadder, wiser narrator. Ironically, just as everyone at Runway obsesses about being physically light, as in underweight, they’re all emotionally oppressed by the heavy responsibility of making Miranda happy every moment—and by the guilt of failing to do so.

“The classic Runway Paranoid Turnaround. Just when something negative about Miranda slips out from a Clacker’s lips—however justified—paranoia that Miranda will find out overwhelms the speaker and inspires an about-face.” 

Just as the Clackers are an ever-present feature of the Runway landscape, so is the Runway Paranoid Turnaround, or RPT, as Andy comes to call it. Whenever a Clacker says something disparaging about Miranda, they immediately reverse course; they’re not even consciously aware that they have a right to criticize her behavior. Andy, as an outsider, initially views this maneuver wryly; however, before the story’s end, she herself begins to practice it unconsciously.

“When I was at work it seemed that my job was supremely relevant, even important. I talked and talked, but I didn’t know how to explain this world that may have been only two hours away geographically but was really in a different solar system.” 

Andy is trying to explain her job to her family. Within the Runway bubble, Miranda functions as a petty despot, and her word is law. Everyone’s job is to keep her happy, and the task is fraught with significance. Outside Miranda’s sphere of influence, her demands appear ridiculous. At this early stage, Andy herself isn’t yet aware of the absurdity of her boss’s narcissistic demands.

“I loathed that fucking cell but could not ignore it. It kept me tied to Miranda like an umbilical cord, refusing to let me grow up or out or away from my source of suffocation.” 

Cell phones as a source of terror is a theme that appears early in the novel. In this quote, Andy compares the phone to an umbilical cord, casting Miranda in a maternal role, in a strangely benign analogy to a mother-child relationship. In fact, the tether to the cell phone is more like a slave’s chain.

“She’d called with no concern that her nine A.M. call would have reached me at three A.M., on my most perfect weekend in months. She’d called to drive me a little crazier, push me a little bit harder. She’d called to dare me to defy her. She’d called to make me hate her that much more.” 

Miranda has just orchestrated another false disaster over the missing Harry Potter book, which in fact arrived on time. Despite Andy’s justified rage at the intrusion, she fails to recognize the real reason for Miranda’s strategy. The boss doesn’t want to provoke anger. She wants Andy to feel inadequate and guilty. This maneuver places her assistant in a psychologically fearful and mentally subordinate position. Miranda is asserting her power once again.

“That was that. She left. And the visit that had inspired office-wide panic, frenzied preparations, even makeup and wardrobe adjustments, had lasted just under four minutes, and had taken place—as far as my inexperienced eyes could see—for absolutely no reason whatsoever.” 

As in the preceding quote, Miranda induces panic and a sense of inadequacy in her subordinates. Andy fails to see the goal of the exercise even though she uses the correct phrase to describe it—inducing panic. Keeping underlings fearful is an end in itself for Miranda to maintain power.

“I expensed twenty-four dollars more every day on coffee than necessary […] to take yet another passive-aggressive swipe at the company, my personal reprimand to them for Miranda Priestley’s free rein. I handed them out to the filthy, the smelly, and the crazy because that—and not the wasted money—was what would really piss them off.” 

Andy frequently refers to the waste and extravagance of the magazine’s daily expenses. However, this quote feeds into the book’s theme that image is everything. The staff of Runway would shun bag people on the street—not for their poverty but for their lack of style.

“What gave her the right to talk to me, to anyone, like that? The position? The power? The prestige? The goddamn Prada? Where, in a just universe, was this acceptable behavior?” 

Andy has just retrieved a lunch order late, and the restaurant owner is fearful of incurring Miranda’s wrath. The assistant, while still enamored of the opportunities her job may hold, is becoming increasingly disgusted by her boss’s demeaning treatment. She sees that Miranda’s toxic behavior affects even those who don’t work at Runway.

“This was the first time in twenty-one hours I had stopped physically running, fetching, rearranging, moving, cleaning, or otherwise assisting.”

Andy’s job title is junior editorial assistant. As an aspiring author, she expects to use her writing skills on the job. Instead, for the promise of someday writing for a prestigious magazine, she’s allowed Miranda to use her as a beast of burden who fetches and carries all day long.

“Not until starting work at this delusional place did I know what it was like to feel short and fat, all day, every day. I was easily the troll of the group, the squattest and the widest, and I wore a size six. And just in case I failed to consider this for a moment, the daily chitchat and gossip could surely remind me.” 

Andy is nearly six feet tall and weighs 115 pounds. Outside the world of high fashion, most would describe her as gaunt. Her choice of the word “delusional” to describe the body image of the Clackers is apt. However, their delusions aren’t limited to their dress sizes. They are equally delusional in their worship of Miranda.

“Skipping a single meal won’t kill you, I told myself. In fact, according to every single one of your sane and stable co-workers, it’ll just make you stronger. And besides, $2,000 pants don’t look so hot on girls who gorge themselves, I rationalized. I slumped down in my chair and thought of how well I had just represented Runway magazine.” 

The Clackers frown on eating. At this stage of her Runway career, Andy has begun to succumb to their warped values. The influence is all-pervasive and insidious, but Andy’s comment indicates that she’s begun to recognize the danger of becoming a Clacker herself.

“In my new Runway reality, the White House social secretary held little more interest than the vet who needed to speak to her about the puppy’s vaccinations (fat chance of him getting a call back!)” 

Andy’s choice of the word “reality” is telling. The only people who have value in the Runway ecosystem are those who have value to Miranda. No one seems inclined to do a reality check of the outside world to see what sane people value.

“Why was the ability to put together a Balmain evening gown and a brooding, leggy Asian girl on a side street in San Sebastian worshiped so much that Miranda wasn’t accountable for her behavior?”

Because Andy has never followed fashion, Miranda’s editorial talent doesn’t dazzle her. More importantly, the values of the real world still ground her. She realizes that Miranda’s underlings encourage her narcissism because they revere her. The situation seems analogous to the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

“All things non-Miranda somehow ceased to be relevant the moment I arrived at work. In some ways I still didn’t understand and certainly couldn’t explain—never mind ask anyone else to understand—how the outside world just melted into nonexistence, that the only thing remaining when everything else vanished was Runway.” 

Andy has just missed another date with Alex. She’s attempting to straddle two worlds that seem to exist in parallel dimensions but never intersect. The Runway bubble is all-encompassing once she enters the Elias-Clark building. Although befuddled by the evil spell that Runway exerts on her and all its employees, she isn’t yet strong enough to break it.

“How many Anitas were there out there? Young girls with so little else in their lives that they measured their worth, their confidence, their entire existence around the clothes and the models they saw in Runway? How many more had decided to unconditionally love the woman who put it all together each month—the orchestrator of such a seductive fantasy—even though she wasn’t worth one single second of their adoration?” 

Throughout the story, Andy notes Miranda’s seductive influence over her staff. This quote indicates just how far that influence can carry once an issue is out on newsstands. Young girls everywhere fall under Miranda’s evil spell too. Like the Clackers, they adore the fantasy Miranda creates without questioning the worthiness of the woman who weaves the spell.

“The way she looked at me with that pure, unadulterated pity triggered something inside me. I did what I hadn’t done in months of working under subhuman conditions for a nonhuman boss, what I always managed to keep suppressed for a more appropriate time. I started to cry.” 

Andy has just received sympathy from a staff member at the Met. This moment represents a reality check. At work, where Andy is surrounded by Clackers, her suffering goes unheeded. No one questions her sacrifice because Miranda is a goddess who deserves absolute devotion. Out in the real world, people recognize abusive behavior for what it is.

“There were those she perceived as ‘above’ her and who must be impressed […] Then there were those ‘below’ her, who must be patronized and belittled so they don’t forget their place, which included basically everyone else.” 

Andy is observing Miranda’s behavior during the Met gala. What she describes is a textbook definition of a narcissist. Miranda recognizes no one as her equal. Both those above and below her exist only for her to manipulate or exploit.

“As Miranda’s junior assistant, I was the lowest-ranking human being at Runway. However, if access is power, then Emily and I were the two most powerful people in fashion.” 

Andy makes a shrewd observation about her status in the pecking order at Runway. She and Emily have direct access to Miranda. They keep her calendar and can decide who will receive an audience and who won’t. This level of control may help explain Emily’s devotion to her boss. She is addicted to power. Fortunately, Andy isn’t and makes a wiser choice by the story’s end.

“I could feel my face grow hot with humiliation. Humiliation at being spoken to that way, but more than anything, my own shame in pandering to it. I had just apologized—most sincerely—to someone for not being able to make my international flight land at the correct time and then for not being savvy enough to figure out how to avoid French customs entirely.”

This quote reveals the growth in Andy’s character. At the story’s beginning, she grovels because she feels unworthy. By the end, she recognizes and deplores her own collusion in enabling Miranda’s narcissism.

“I’d yet to catch her doing anything that even resembled work, including such pedestrian tasks as answering the phone, removing a jacket from a closet, or pouring a glass of water.” 

Andy has begun to apply the principles of the real world to Miranda’s behavior. Within the Runway bubble, no one expects Miranda to lift a finger. She has slaves for that. Outside the Elias-Clark building, slavery has been abolished, and Andy is on the point of emancipating herself.

“In a move that was so fundamentally out of character for this woman on every level, she placed her hand on top of the one I had resting on the seat between us and said, ‘You remind me of myself when I was your age.’” 

When Miranda makes this observation about Andy, it triggers an epiphany for the assistant. Andy finally asks herself the fundamental question of whether she wants to become another Miranda Priestley. The quote repeats several more times as it echoes in Andy’s head and drives her to make a choice between her integrity and her ambition.

“It had taken eleven months, forty-four weeks, and some 3,080 hours of work to figure out—once and for all—that morphing into Miranda Priestley’s mirror image was probably not such a good thing.” 

In making this statement, Andy signals that her transformation is complete. She’s been tempted to make a deal with the devil that would require her to become a devil herself. Fortunately, at the 11th hour, she declines the offer.