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When one of the 'Clackers' - stiletto-wearing, pencil-thin fashion divas working for the prestigious Runway magazine - holds up two, nearly identical, blue belts and proclaims they are just too different, newly employed, Northwestern University-graduate Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) chuckles and so does the audience. But while laughter is permitted and even desired from the audience, it is a gross faux-pas for the secretary of the secretary of the most powerful women in the fashion business.

After all, it's very chic today to pretend to be independent of fashion's constantly shifting whims, yet the reality is that everything we put on has somehow been inspired by the fashion industry. The very attempt to deny fashion is fashion, or so Miranda Priestly, played here by Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, would have you believe.

Under constant visual reminders of the ephemeral vanity of those employed in the fashion industry, the audience has only one heroine: Andy. With Anne Hathaway's fresh-faced beauty and her capacity to appear both intelligent and charming, all while committing comical blunders, it doesn't take much effort to follow her in a career where she couldn't seem more out of place. Her family and friends provide the Greek chorus with their attempts to ground her while she's flying with the 'clackers' and their efforts don't go unnoticed. As Hollywood magic would have it, a week-long trip to Paris is enough to prove them right and expose everyone's true nature to the harsh limelight, including Andy's.

Exactly why Miranda Priestly is feared by people in general and the 'Clackers' in particular is never explained. Like Andy's sudden change of mood and perspective while in Paris, it simply is. When the film opens, Miranda Priestly is already the Devil wearing Prada and everyone cowers from her path. Gradually, as we meet her twins and her husband, she is revealed to have something of a more human side, albeit one that is severely damaged. Her vulnerability is never clearer than when Andy battles the odds - the doors, the cameras, the Parisian traffic - to warn her of a precarious corporate decision that will leave her jobless and Runway in the hands of her arch nemesis.

Beyond showing the dark side of glitzy fashion shows, the film also poses an interesting dilemma. Andy's arduous loyalty, like all of her other efforts, does not get her as close to professional success as the ruthless and often blind ambition driving her coworkers. But in behaving like her much-mocked colleagues, Andy loses her homey, girl next door attributes in favor of resembling her boss. Buried knee-deep in petty arguments about clothes and diets, a somewhat pertinent question arises; Had Miranda Priestly been a man, would this film even have had an audience?

Learn more about this author, Meria Paidu.
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