It’s widely known that The Devil Wears Prada is inspired by what it’s like to work for Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour since it’s based on a book by one of her former assistants. However, there’s quite a few ways Anna and Miranda are different. For example, Meryl Streep actually based Miranda on Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood. The author behind Anna Wintour’s biography just brought up one thing Miranda does that is “very un-Anna.”
Amy Odell, who wrote Anna: The Biography, just pointed out something she noticed while rewatching The Devil Wears Prada. In Miranda’s grand entrance early in the movie, she’s seen with a white Prada bag with the logo on it visible. Check it out:
Per the author’s comments on her podcast Back Row, Anna Wintour would not be caught wearing a bag with a logo on it like that. In her words about what the former Vogue editor actually did instead:
She actually walks in with a tote bag. She doesn’t carry it in. Her assistants would go down to her car, grab the tote bag – it says A.W. on it. It’s an L.L. Bean tote with navy handles, and they would carry it up for her because it would have the book and it would be really heavy.
Of course, in the context of a movie called The Devil Wears Prada, it makes perfect sense that Miranda Priestly’s first moment would be her literally donning the brand. And, while Anna Wintour surely inspired the character, Miranda is her own fictional character at the end of the day, and the movie had no need to get all the specificities correct.
Odell’s comments come as The Devil Wears Prada sequel arrives in one of the new 2026 movies coming to theaters this weekend. It comes twenty years after the original movie, and this time Anna Wintour was actually part of the marketing when she posed in Vogue with Meryl Streep for an interview tied to the release. During their cover story, Streep revealed that it was actually hard to get clothes secured for the original movie because “everybody was afraid of Anna” and perhaps what it would mean to be tied to a movie that might be making fun of the icon.
When Anna Wintour was asked about what she thinks about The Devil Wears Prada 2 coming out, she said she was “thrilled” because of how the movie franchise shows how important the world of fashion is. Along with Streep, The Devil Wears Prada 2 stars Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh, Simone Ashley, Lucy Liu, Lady Gaga and much more. You can see it in theaters on May 1.
