The Devil Wears Prada

What's inside (8 sections)

1. The job a million girls would die for
2. Miranda Priestly explains herself without explaining anything
3. Emily, Nigel, and learning to dress the part
4. Alex and Lily, or the life outside Elias-Clark
5. Paris changes the math
6. What works and what wears thin
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up The Devil Wears Prada because I had seen the movie years ago and remembered it as funny and light. Meryl Streep with the white hair, Anne Hathaway with the makeover, that blue sweater speech. I expected the book to be the same story with a few extra scenes.

It is not quite the same. Lauren Weisberger published the novel in 2003 with Broadway Books, about 360 pages in the paperback edition, and it reads rawer than the film. Funnier in spots, meaner in others, and more honest about how a certain kind of job can eat a person from the inside. The movie gives Andy a clean arc. The book lets her stay lost for a long time.

The setup is simple. Andrea Sachs, called Andy by almost everyone, graduates from Brown with an English degree and dreams of writing for The New Yorker. She has no interest in fashion. She wears sweaters with holes in them and carries a canvas tote and thinks Vogue people are from another planet. She moves to New York with her best friend Lily, finds a cramped apartment, and starts sending out clips and cover letters.

Through a friend of a friend she hears about an opening at Runway, the biggest fashion magazine in the country, published out of the Elias-Clark building on Fifth Avenue. The job is junior assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor in chief. Everyone tells her it is the job a million girls would die for. Andy takes it for the most practical reason in the world. Survive a year, get a glowing recommendation from Miranda, and walk into any magazine job she actually wants.

That plan sounds sensible. It falls apart fast.

The job a million girls would die for

Andy shares the assistant desk with Emily Charlton. Emily is the senior assistant, British, tiny, blond, ferociously organized, and completely loyal to Miranda. She has the seating charts memorized. She knows which driver likes which route. She knows that Miranda wants her steak a certain way, her coffee a certain way, her house a certain temperature. Emily also knows that new girls never last.

At first Andy treats the whole thing as a joke she is in on. She shows up in a wrap skirt and loafers while everyone else wears pointed boots and narrow trousers and carries bags that cost more than her rent. She cannot tell one designer from another. She calls a turtleneck a turtleneck while the fashion closet staff look at her like she insulted their mother.

The work itself is a mix of glamour and errands. Answering phones. Sorting mail. Fetching coffee. Picking up dry cleaning. Copying seating charts for fashion shows. Calling in clothes for shoots. Then the other stuff, the Miranda stuff. Calls at all hours. Calls on weekends. Calls when Andy is at dinner, in bed, in the shower. Miranda never says please. She never says thank you. She says, in that low voice, what she wants, and then she hangs up. Her signature closer, delivered to whoever fails her, is a flat dismissal: That's all.

Weisberger is good at the accumulation of small horrors. Miranda wants the unpublished Harry Potter manuscript for her twin daughters, Caroline and Cassidy, before it is in stores. She wants a table at a restaurant that has no tables. She wants a flight during a hurricane. She wants a particular Hermes scarf, a particular facialist, a particular driver, and she wants them now. Andy and Emily scramble, lie, beg, and bribe. Sometimes they pull it off. Often they get screamed at anyway.

What makes it bearable for Andy, at least early on, is that she tells herself she is different from these people. She is a writer. She is slumming. She keeps a mental distance. She and Lily laugh about it over cheap wine. Her boyfriend Alex, a sweet and steady guy who teaches in the Bronx and is trying to get into a graduate program, tells her to stick it out. One year. That is the deal she made with herself.

The trouble is that one year is a long time when your phone never stops ringing.

Miranda Priestly explains herself without explaining anything

Miranda Priestly is the reason the book works and also the reason it frustrates. She is on almost every page without ever becoming clear, and that feels intentional.

In person she is tall, impossibly thin, white haired, perfectly made up, wrapped in clothes that fit the way armor fits. She does not raise her voice much. She does not need to. She corrects pronunciation. She stares until people stammer. She asks for the impossible with total calm, as if asking for water. When Andy brings the wrong thing, or the right thing five minutes late, Miranda looks through her.

Weisberger never gives Miranda a backstory speech. No sad childhood. No explanation for the divorces or the custody arrangements or the way she treats nannies and housekeepers and assistants as disposable. We see her through Andy's eyes, which means we see the surface: the white Hermes scarves, the town car idling outside, the office that goes silent when she walks in.

That choice keeps Miranda scary. It also keeps her flat. After a while I wanted one scene where the mask slipped for real, not just a glimpse of tiredness on a plane or a sharp remark about men. The movie added a scene like that, where Miranda talks about her divorce and her job being under threat. The book holds back. Miranda stays a force of weather.

Still, some of the best pages are just watching how the office bends around her. Editors who are confident and cutting with everyone else turn soft and girlish when Miranda appears. Publicists overnight packages she will never open. Designers send gifts and notes. The whole Elias-Clark floor seems to hold its breath between nine and six. Weisberger worked at Vogue after Cornell, and you can tell she saw this kind of fear up close. The details feel lived in: the coat that must be hung a certain way, the bag that must be placed just so, the way no one eats lunch at a normal time because Miranda might call.

Andy starts to learn the rules. Do not ask questions. Do not say you do not know. Find out. Do not cry in the office. Do not expect thanks. Do not, ever, assume you are done for the day.

Emily, Nigel, and learning to dress the part

Emily Charlton could have been a cartoon, the snobby British gatekeeper who hisses about shoes. She is sharper than that in the book. Yes, she mocks Andy's clothes. Yes, she guards access to Miranda like a palace guard. But she also trains Andy, in her own cruel way, because she needs someone who will not quit in week two.

Emily has been there longer. She knows which battles are worth fighting. She tells Andy what to wear, who to avoid, how to talk to security downstairs, how to pack the Book, the mockup of each issue that Miranda marks up in red. The Book becomes a character in itself. It must be delivered to Miranda's townhouse every night, no matter the weather, no matter the hour. Andy starts taking it uptown in cabs she cannot afford, waiting outside while doormen call upstairs.

Then there is Nigel. In the movie he is the art director with the best lines. In the book his role is smaller but important. He is one of the few people in fashion who is kind to Andy without an angle. He notices when she starts trying. He helps her get clothes from the fashion closet so she stops looking like an intern from another magazine. He tells her, more or less, to stop acting superior to the job she agreed to do.

That makeover section is fun to read, even if you know it is coming. Andy trades her shapeless skirts for tight pants and high boots and fitted jackets. She learns which jeans actually fit. She gets a haircut that costs more than her groceries for a month. She starts getting checked out on the street. Part of her likes it. Part of her is embarrassed by how much she likes it.

Weisberger nails that contradiction. Andy tells herself clothes do not matter while spending an hour choosing a bag. She rolls her eyes at models and editors while memorizing their names and hierarchies. She is not a fashion convert. She is a tired twenty three year old who wants to stop being humiliated at work. Looking the part is the fastest way to get yelled at less.

The cost shows up quickly. The closet clothes have to go back. The discounts still cost money. The cabs, the dinners she cannot attend, the phone bill, the dry cleaning runs she pays for out of pocket and submits for reimbursement that takes weeks. Andy is supposedly in the most perked job in publishing, free clothes, free trips, free dinners, but her bank account keeps shrinking. That detail felt true. Prestige jobs often pay in access instead of cash, and access does not cover rent.

Alex and Lily, or the life outside Elias-Clark

If the office is the devil, Alex and Lily are the life Andy is supposed to be protecting. The book is clear that she fails them, slowly and then all at once.

Alex is patient for a long time. He cooks. He waits up. He listens to stories about Miranda and laughs in the right places. He tells Andy she should quit when it gets bad, then backs off when she says she needs the year for her resume. He is applying to schools, teaching kids who need him, trying to build something real. Andy keeps missing his dinners, his readings, his birthdays. She answers Miranda's calls during their weekends away. She promises to do better and then takes the call anyway.

Lily's story is harder to read. Lily is Andy's best friend from college, bright and funny and reckless, getting a graduate degree in Russian literature and drinking far too much. Early in the book the drinking looks like partying. Bars in the East Village, vodka sodas, missed mornings. Then it stops looking like fun. Lily misses classes. She picks fights. She drives when she should not. She shows up late and smelling of alcohol. Andy notices and files it away for later because there is always a Miranda emergency right now.

This is where the book is better than I expected. Weisberger does not make Lily a lesson. She makes her a person Andy loves and neglects. There is a scene where Andy is supposed to meet Lily and blows her off for work, and you can feel Andy choosing wrong in real time. She knows it. She does it anyway. Later, when Lily gets into a serious car accident after drinking, Andy's guilt is physical. She flies home, sits in the hospital, tries to be present, and still checks her phone.

The friends stage a kind of intervention in their own clumsy way. Alex says what has been obvious for months: Andy is always working, always tired, always talking about Miranda. She has become boring and self important. She name drops designers she once mocked. She corrects people's pronunciation. She treats service workers the way Miranda's staff treat her. It is ugly to watch, which is the point.

Christian Collinsworth enters around here and makes everything messier. Christian is a handsome young writer, connected, charming, the kind of guy who knows everyone and remembers your drink order. He meets Andy at a party and flirts with intent. He can help her career. He also clearly wants more than coffee. Andy tells herself she would never cheat on Alex. She also keeps taking Christian's calls. She likes being seen by someone who sees her as a writer, not a fetcher.

Weisberger handles this without turning it into a romance. Christian is a test. He represents the New York Andy thought she wanted: literary parties, well known friends, a shortcut around hard work. The fact that she is tempted says more about how hollow she feels than about Christian himself.

Paris changes the math

The last third of the book moves to Paris for fashion week, and the pace picks up in a good way.

Emily is supposed to go. She has been planning for months. She has her outfits, her schedules, her lists. Then she gets sick, really sick, with mono that flattens her, and Miranda decides Andy will go instead. Emily is devastated. Andy feels guilty and thrilled at the same time, which tells you how far she has slid. A year ago she would have been horrified to take her coworker's dream trip. Now she packs.

Paris is described with a tired insider's eye, not a tourist's. Nice hotel, impossible schedule, cars waiting, shows running late, Miranda needing everything at once. Andy runs on coffee and adrenaline. She carries bags, delivers the Book, tracks down a particular steak, finds a photographer, soothes a publicist. She meets editors from French and Italian magazines who treat assistants like furniture. She sees Miranda at work in a city where Miranda is royalty.

Two things happen that break Andy open. First, she spends more time with Christian Collinsworth, who is in Paris too, and crosses a line she cannot uncross. It is not romantic in the sweeping sense. It is sad and drunk and opportunistic, and Andy knows it while it is happening. Second, she watches Miranda do something cold to someone else in order to protect her own position, and realizes Miranda will always choose herself. That should not be a surprise. It lands like one anyway because Andy had started to believe that loyalty might earn safety.

The flight home is the emotional low point. Andy is hungover, broke, ashamed about Alex, worried about Lily still recovering, furious at Emily for hating her, furious at herself for not hating the Paris perks enough. She looks at the other passengers from fashion week, all exhausted and chic and checking their phones, and sees herself among them.

Back in New York, Miranda pushes once too often. It is not one huge blowup so much as the last in a thousand small cuts. A call during a family moment. A demand that requires Andy to lie to someone she cares about. Andy finally says no. The actual quitting scene is short and flat in the best way. No speech about dignity. No applause. She just stops answering, stops showing up, lets the phone go silent.

I liked that Weisberger does not reward her right away. Andy does not walk into a New Yorker job the next day. She has to face Alex, who has already moved on in the ways that count. She has to face Lily, who is sober and angry and fragile. She has to face her parents, who never understood why she stayed. She has to figure out what a year at Runway actually taught her besides how to get a table and calm a driver.

What works and what wears thin

Here is the fair part. The book is a lot of fun when it stays specific. The Harry Potter chase for the twins. The staf meetings where everyone tries not to get noticed. The fashion closet with its racks and rules. The town car drivers who know more about Miranda than her husbands do. The Book delivery in the rain. The seating chart disasters. The steak order that must be exactly right. Those scenes move fast and feel observed rather than made up.

The dialogue helps too. Emily's insults are sharp without being cartoonish. Nigel's kindness stands out because so few people offer any. Miranda's few words carry weight because she uses so few of them. Andy's narration is chatty and self deprecating in a way that keeps you on her side even when she acts badly.

What drags is the middle. Around page 150 to 220 in this edition, the plot stalls into a loop. Miranda demands, Andy scrambles, Andy fails or barely succeeds, Miranda sneers, Andy cries or drinks, repeat. A few of those cycles would have been enough. Weisberger adds several more, and they start to blur. The stakes do not rise, they just repeat. I found myself skimming the third or fourth late night call to get back to Alex and Lily, who felt more alive.

The fashion writing itself is thin if you come to it now. It is mostly labels: Prada, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Hermes. There is little sense of why clothes matter, how a collection is made, what Miranda actually sees when she looks at a dress. The movie tried to fix this with the blue sweater speech about how high fashion trickles down to discount bins. The book rarely tries. Fashion is backdrop, not subject.

Andy herself can be annoying, and I mean that as both criticism and credit. She complains about fashion people being shallow while using her access to get into parties. She judges Emily for caring about weight and clothes while starving herself to fit sample sizes. She says she wants to be a serious writer but never writes. Part of me wanted to shake her. Another part thought, yes, that is exactly how twenty three looks when you are tired and flattered at the same time.

Lily's alcoholism is the riskiest thread. Weisberger treats it seriously, but the resolution feels rushed. One accident, one hospital stretch, and suddenly everyone speaks the language of recovery. Real life is slower and less tidy. The book wants Lily to be both a warning and a forgiven friend, and it does not quite earn both.

Still, the ending earns its feeling. Andy does not become a hero. She becomes a person who quit. She calls a friend about a possible writing job, a small one, not The New Yorker. She apologizes without expecting to be absolved. She throws away the phone number she memorized for Miranda's line, or stops answering it, which amounts to the same freedom. There is no big reunion, no revenge scene where Miranda gets hers. Miranda does not need to get hers. She will keep being Miranda with the next girl.

That is what stayed with me. Not the clothes or Paris or Christian Collinsworth with his easy smile. It was the idea that a job can remake you without asking permission. Andy went in thinking she was too smart to be changed. She came out checking her reflection in every window, snapping at waiters, missing funerals and birthdays for a woman who did not know her middle name.

If you watched the film first, read the book for the sharper edges. Emily is tougher. Lily is sadder. Alex is more patient and therefore his disappointment hurts more. Miranda is colder. Andy is less charming and more real. You will laugh, you will get mad at everyone, and you will probably check your own phone habits on the last page.

I did.

FAQ

Is The Devil Wears Prada based on Anna Wintour?

It is fiction, but Lauren Weisberger worked as an assistant at Vogue after college. Readers have long treated Miranda Priestly as a fictional version of that kind of powerful fashion editor.

Do you need to like fashion to enjoy The Devil Wears Prada?

No. The book is about a bad job swallowing a young woman's life. The fashion detail is mostly brand names, offices, closets, cars, and travel plans.

Is the book different from the movie?

Yes. The 2006 film softens Andy and Miranda and gives the ending more warmth. The 2003 novel is meaner, Andy is more passive, and Lily's story is darker.