National Post (National Edition)
GO A COURTING
Anna Wintour’s stand-in shares her passion for, ahem, tennis in Devil Wears Prada sequel.
What a backhand! Not only did the “King of Clay,” Rafael Nadal, nab a Roland Garros trophy the other day — in the process netting an unprecedented eighth French Open win — but he’s also just been immortalized in another, somewhat more satantic, manner. And he can thank Lauren Weisberger for it.
Having read the just-out sequel to The Devil Wears Prada — primarily so you don’t have to, allow me to footnote — there’s a tennis-centric scene, in which Miranda Priestly, the dangerously bobbed fashion editor based on the dangerously bobbed Anna Wintour, has a well-hello-there moment with Spain’s Rafael.
It’s perhaps the best setpiece in the novel. Certainly, the most rabbit-hole-y. Naughty, too. For, anyone but anyone who has has even a basic understanding of Wintour 101, the ABCs of Vogue, knows full well that its scarecrow-inchief, Anna — a massive tennis buff — is nothing if not Roger Federer’s No. 1 Fan. (She’s known to have left fashion shows early to catch one of his matches, and also threw a star-studded birthday party for dear Roger last year!) And, yet, here is her alter-ego, Miranda — 10 years after Weisberger’s last book left off — sitting with rival Nadal when Andy Sachs, her once-upona-time-assistant, sees her. And get this: Miranda is smiling. And laughing! Actually laughing!
Or, as we read on page 201 of the exasperatingly titled Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns, “Miranda was laughing at every word he uttered ... the pale skin stretched across her face; those thin, white lips pulled into even tighter little lines, and the teeth looked like they’d reach out and bite you if you got too close.”
Plus ça change, i.e., in the Devil/Prada world Weisberger unleashed in 2003, which then flowered millions of incorrigible take-offs in newspaper/ internet headlines (the Devil was always wearing something forever after that) and, more successfully, birthed a very successful movie version of the book (grossing US$300million, and starring as the titular horns-wearer Meryl Streep, who, via a pitchperfect performance, elevated the whole narrative beyond the obvious limiations of the book).
And, so, here we are again. And there I was, flipping the pages of the book, last weekend, as an inner war raged inside me: I couldn’t stand the person I was while read- ing this book, and yet — selfawareness can be so very ghastly — I knew I could never be the person who wouldn’t read this book. Of course, I had to know. Pop goes the culture.
A plot “flimsier than a Roberto Cavalli dress.” That’s how a reviewer in The Washington Post surmised Revenge Wears Prada — a line I like so much that I’ll just reuse here, instead of trying to come up with my own fill-inthe-blanks fashion analogy. The few scenes that Priestly appears in this follow-up are fun — cartoonish, but fun,
It all lacks the satiric grist that was the bedrock of the first book
her eyes still flashing cold, and her lips “curling into thin hissing cobras” — but what it all lacks is the satiric grist that was the bedrock of the first book. At least it was presented (and promoted!) as a thinly veiled account of the author’s time as an assistant to the real-life Wintour, which gave the book its juice. Without that roman a clef whoopee-doo — and relying disproprotionately here on Andy’s love-life, and her feelings, ugh — the result is just dreary, dreary.
The contrivances and the whininess are so legion that I clung to even the smallest rays of cleverness in the book. That, for instance, there is a chapter in the book called “Ceviche and Snakeskin: A night of Terror.” (Not bad, Lauren!) Or that Valentino appears in one chapter (holding one of his dogs — “a snorting, wet-faced pug”!) Or the disclosure that Miranda’s twins — remember how Andy sweated trying to get an advance galley of a Harry Potter book for them, as per Miranda’s demand?! — are now, goodness, 18, as bratty as you might imagine, and that one of them even — gasp! — has a shaved head.
There is also one bit of intriguing synchronicity between life outside and between the covers. In the book, Miranda has a new, over-seeing role as the editorial director of luxury publishing house Elias-Clark (spoiler alert: she approaches Andy and her one-time foe, Emily, with a Faustian bargain — one to buy a magazine they now run, a bridal magazine called The Plunge). In real life, as stylephiles fully know, Vogue’s Wintour recently got a similar promotion at Condé Nast. Life! Art! Or, well... fluke! That’s pretty much what Weisberger told Entertainment Weekly recently, telling the mag, “Revenge was signed, sealed and delivered before I heard about that.”