Meryl Streep's Speech From "The Devil Wears Prada" is a Load of Rubbish

My wife and I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada (2006) for the first time. It is a pretty good movie—about as good as formulaic "romantic-comedies" get really. Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are all wonderful, the dialogue passes the Bechdel test, it is plenty funny, and the plot is plenty interesting. It is also plenty cheesy at points, but oh well. As a light-hearted movie about relatively serious things, it is a good way to spend an evening.

But something has not sat well with me in the weeks since watching it. About a third of the way through the film Meryl Streep's "Miranda Priestly" (channeling Vogue's iconic Anna Wintour) drops an epic speech onto Anne Hathaway's fashion neophyte "Andy", a speech that changes the course for Hathaway's character. Andy had just snickered at the Runway magazine team's seemingly superfluous back and forth indecisiveness as to which belt should go with an outfit in question. Miranda turns to Andy and mercilessly dismantles Andy's dismissive smirk with an scathing monologue. It is a speech that advocates for the legitimacy and importance of fashion to all our lives, how every single article of clothing we wear is the result of years of risk and work and money. It is an inspiring speech that should forever shift how we understand fashion, especially if we think it is a helplessly vain and decadent industry. The speech could do that, but it shouldn't, because it is an absolute load of rubbish.