THE most coveted, up-to-the-second wardrobe of any film – and nearly the most expensive – belongs to “The Devil Wears Prada,” a spectacle of $12,000 handbags and $40,000 fur coats.
“It has to be over 100 designers,” says film stylist Patricia Field, who previously dressed the women of “Sex and the City.” “We must have used at least $1 million worth of clothing.”
Not that filmmakers spent that much. Field had a costume budget of a mere $100,000, “but we could never have done it without my friends in the fashion industry helping us along. It would have been impossible. The level of fur coats, and designer bags – oh my God.”
And for fashion lovers who will crowd the July 29 opening of the film, by God, there are clothes. In one sequence Meryl Streep, as the fashion magazine’s formidable editor in chief, is shown storming in to the magazine’s offices on a series of mornings, slinging more minks and deluxe purses at her hapless assistant than PETA has slung raccoons and pies at Anna Wintour.
“This was a movie of wardrobe montages,” Field says. “It was a parade of coats and bags. And every time you saw her, there was a different outfit underneath.”
The No. 1 factor in creating the look, comprising about 60 costumes for her alone, was Streep. “I didn’t reference Anna Wintour is what I’m trying to say,” Field says. “What I wanted to do was to create a character who was the biggest editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine. And the only rule I imposed upon myself other than making Meryl look as good as I knew how, was that in her position she would wear expensive clothing because she has access to everything.”
While glamorous, the ultra high end wardrobe was a source of amusement for Streep, who cracked up at the endless costume changes.
“These clothes cost so much money,” Streep says. “One of the handbags was $12,000. It’s almost inconceivable to me. So then a $4,000 bag seems like a bargain. You just re-adjust your whole way of thinking. It’s just insane.”
Among the designers, Prada was naturally on prominent display. A grey frame handbag from fall 2005 with a front and center logo and a $1,445 price tag opens the movie on Streep’s arm. Streep wears a black Prada suit, and plenty of the designer’s shoes.
“Out of every 10 pairs, four were Prada,” Field says. “Prada was making a lot of platform shoes that gave her the height that she liked.” The burgundy suede pair on Streep’s feet for her first appearance on screen cost $445.
Streep came to Field with the idea of white hair already hatched with her makeup artist. Then Field called in every piece of clothing she could and they went to work, trying on and crafting the image.
But the looks are not the greatest hits of fall 2005, when the movie was filmed. Instead Field referenced Donna Karan archives from 1987 and pieces from Michael Vollbracht for Bill Blass as a base of timeless fashion sculpted to a woman’s body.
“The important thing for her character was I didn’t want her to be wearing trendy, recognizable clothing,” Field says. “I didn’t want it to be so obvious. I wanted her to look more original and less recognizable, but at the same time luxurious.”
For Anne Hathaway’s character, the assistant, Field did the opposite, as directed by the script.
“She starts out as a college graduate and she wants to write for a literary magazine and she’s not that conscious of fashion,” Field says. “She thinks she dresses nicely, but she doesn’t have a head for fashion, and finds herself in this fashion environment, where she’s under pressure to look a little more the part. In the story she gets exasperated, she can’t please her boss, she starting to feel sorry for herself and then she asks Nigel to help her. He takes her in to the closet and he starts throwing clothes at her. Here wear this, you need this, try this. What’s in the closet is all the designers. So I felt she should wear really recognizable designers.”
Do assistants really get to dress from the fashion magazine closet? “I don’t know if they do or they don’t,” Field says. “I was just creating a character.” Hathaway wears Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein and Chanel, who comprises half her on-screen wardrobe and asked to dress her. “They said, ‘We’ll give you whatever you want for Annie.’ And I said, ‘Bring it on!'” Field says.
The super stylist had a say about which designer names were mentioned, but says there was no product placement, which would entail a fee for a mention or an appearance. “They were going to mention designers no matter what, so I said, instead of this one or that one, let’s mention the ones that helped us because that’s one way of thanking them.”
Among those was Valentino, whose black gown Streep wears in a black tie party scene. “He helped us so much with Meryl. And then I suggested he be in the movie and he went for it and he came with his entourage. He had fun.”
Streep speaks
On her character, Miranda Priestly: “I was interested in making a human being as contradictory and messy as we all are. I think that she’s an exacting, highly disciplined, demanding, ambitious person who doesn’t necessarily take the time for all the nice social lubricants that help make the workplace fun.”
Who was her model for the character: “We don’t have enough women in power to copy. Most of the models for the character were on the male end of the species. Compared to the people I know and was thinking about, Miranda is so well behaved. I know the book was based on an assistant’s vision of Anna Wintour. But it didn’t interest me to do a documentary about Anna Wintour. I don’t know anything really about her. … It’s much more fun for me to make the uber-boss out of my own pastiche of experience.”
‘Devil’ scared some designers
FOR some designers, “The Devil Wears Prada” was a dicey project – as they risked drawing the ire of Anna Wintour , editor of Vogue, on whom the hard-driving boss of the book is based.
“There were a few that didn’t want to just because they thought it was a sensitive political issue,” says stylist Patricia Field. “But it didn’t matter. It did matter to me in one instance, and I will not mention the name, but it’s a designer who I really helped. And it was a conflict because Wintour helped this designer a lot. I didn’t mind that they didn’t want to participate, but they never called me back. And I had somewhat of a decent relationship with them. You can call and say I can’t do it. I’m not going to kill you.”
Field only had about three weeks to pull it together. “I didn’t want anybody to participate who felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t live or die over any particular designer. If I felt discomfort, I didn’t push anyone. It wasn’t necessary. There’s a vast amount of clothing out there.”
For her part, Field had no qualms about repercussions. “I’m not dependent on Vogue. I’m not a designer who’s trying to sell to Neiman Marcus.” She adds, “I wanted very much not to zone in on Vogue and Anna Wintour. It was a movie about the fashion world. Outside the fashion world, how many people in the general audience know who is Anna Wintour? To make it too fashion-specific, you lose the general audience. A lot of those fashion movies, they get too insider.”