I am experiencing a kind of existential whiplash: something I wrote in my 20s is not only still relevant, but somehow…trending again. The Devil Wears Prada hasn’t faded into a respectable backlist existence. It has persisted—quoted, memed, rebooted, reimagined, turned into a movie, a musical, and now a sequel—like a glamorous ghost that refuses to leave the building.
When I first started writing The Devil Wears Prada, as an essay for a workshop, I was 23, an age when you are wildly observant and completely unqualified to interpret what you’re observing. I was not trying to write a cultural phenomenon. There was no master plan. No vision board labeled “global franchise.” No quiet moment of prophetic clarity where I thought, Yes, this will one day become shorthand for toxic workplaces and also be quoted by teenagers who have never used a landline. It wasn’t an attempt to take anyone down or exact some sort of revenge; I was just writing something that felt true to my experience as an assistant in very close proximity to a powerful woman—one who filled me with abject terror—before I had the distance or the maturity or the sense of self-preservation to round off the edges.
The book became an instant bestseller, and the attention that followed, some of it flattering, plenty of it vicious, was not something I was prepared for. Over the next couple years I learned better how to navigate it, but by then the film had arrived and transformed my story into something glossy, kinetic, and wildly entertaining. The first movie gave my characters beautiful faces, voices, fabulous clothes, and, most notably, scale. I discovered countless women had had similar experiences. At readings and book signings, I heard so many stories of tyrannical bosses, I could have written a Devil Wears Prada for each of them. Turns out, Miranda is not unique to fashion; she’s just better dressed.
There is a moment, as every author who’s had something adapted knows, when you realize the story is no longer yours. Others aren’t merely interpreting it; they’re owning it. Suddenly, people were quoting it back to me, correcting me on details, dressing up as the characters with a level of commitment I frankly did not have when I created them. And the merch! What began with canvas totes and slogan tanks has expanded, thanks to the studio marketing machine, into everything (and I do mean everything) from tweezers to vodka to $300,000 cars. It all feels both flattering and deeply unsettling, like running into an ex who’s thriving and loudly rewriting the story of your relationship.
I’m often asked whether I still recognize myself in Andy Sachs. The answer is yes, but in the way I recognize myself in an old photograph: the features are familiar, the outfit is questionable, and I feel a strong urge to explain my choices. Andy lived in a moral universe of very clean trade-offs. She stepped into a version of herself she didn’t entirely like and then stepped right back out again, unchanged. I admire her confidence. I also now understand that life doesn’t work that way. Adults do not lose themselves in a single dramatic moment. We adapt—incrementally, even reasonably—until one day we look up and think, Huh. Interesting set of priorities I’ve assembled here.
If I wrote Prada today, it would undoubtedly be different. Not softer, necessarily, but more layered. I have more empathy now—for the assistants and the bosses, for the 20-somethings trying to prove themselves, and for those who already have. That kind of understanding comes only with time, experience, and a few hard-earned recalibrations. Still, the version of me who wrote that book had something I cannot easily access now: unfiltered honesty. There is a boldness that comes from being young and outraged. You’re less careful, less diplomatic, not as concerned with the consequences. And there is real power in that.
