‘Prada’ sequel ‘Revenge’ not sweet
The devil is back, but there should have been much more of her here
The devil has returned, only her pitchfork isn’t so sharp. And neither is Lauren Weisberger’s sequel to that publishing phenomenon of 10 years ago, The Devil Wears Prada.
Much of what made the original such a tour-de-pop-fiction-force was its basis in fact: Weisberger, as everyone knows, wove her experience as an aggrieved assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour into a roman a clef that introduced the world to the Clackers (sylph-like, stiletto-clicking fashion editors), the Book (the
Runway magazine draft copy handled as preciously as the Bible) and “That’s all” (editor Miranda Priestly’s signature, shut-you-down sign-off ).
But so much of Revenge seems like fantasy, and not in a complimentary way. A decade after feisty Andy Sachs flipped Miranda the verbal bird, Andy is running her own glossy magazine, The Plunge, chronicling celebrity weddings with none other than former nemesis Emily Charlton. And it’s a huge success. In 2013 (or thereabouts). The last time a real magazine launched — and lasted — probably was before Prada Part 1.
And then there’s Andy. She has come perilously close to being a Clacker herself: She has married a WASPy media scion named Max (and taken his name, Harrison, as least for part of her life), moved to a swanky Chelsea apartment and shelved her newsy aspirations for frothy fare. She becomes an irritatingly anxious mother to daughter Clementine, the kind who returned all her gift-wrapped onesies “unless she could confirm, beyond a doubt, that none contained poisonous flameretardant fabric.”
And when the novel’s big moment occurs — when Miranda, as Elias-Clark’s new editorial director (Wintour, incidentally, ascended to Conde Nast’s artistic director this year), shows interest in scooping up The
Plunge — Andy is a naive fool, resisting the idea of selling in the quaint name of editorial control. Again, who in 2013 would build a business — in a dying industry, no less — and not cash out? Talk about Upper East Side problems.
Revenge is too much annoyingly whiny Andy and not enough entertainingly malevolent Miranda. However, Weisberger again has fun with the fashion-philic, now baby-phobic Emily.
And her depiction of Max’s frosty mother, the Miranda-esque Barbara, with her “crusty, not-quite-British, probably-just-too-many-years-on-Park-Avenue accent,” is on the toffee nose. (Barbara does something sinister at the novel’s outset that is far more fraught, and believable, than Andy’s bratty beef with Emily and Max over The Plunge’s potential plunge into corporate security — and Miranda’s Chanel-slicked hooks.)
Revenge Wears Prada, unfortunately, doesn’t wear patrician Prada. It’s clad in something closer to pedestrian Payless.