I will confess to working at this magazine and more often than not someone will respond with: “But is it like the Devil Wears Prada?” The real answer – that yes sometimes it is and no sometimes it isn’t – is not important, because most people just want you to agree with them. It helps to maintain the poisonous allure of working in fashion publishing – a place of pursed-lip monsters in Chanel suits – that has fast become one of the hardest-working tropes in pop culture.
“We’re enamoured not only by women but female villains, because I think we see a lot of ourselves in them. Sure, Miranda isn’t the kindest editor in the world, but I can tell you that there are nuances in Streep’s characterisation that I have seen time and time again throughout fashion. The film resonates for a reason.” The movie resonated with Stone, but perhaps not as much as Ugly Betty and its own arch-editor Alexis Meade, who inspired Alexis’s own name.