Can you believe that it's been a decade since we first met the tremble-inducing Miranda Priestley, style neophyte Andy Sachs, and the lovable cheese cube-popping Emily in The Devil Wears Prada? Few have felt the time pass by quite as quickly, perhaps, as the movie's costume designer, Patricia Field.
Patricia Field
Through the over-the-top looks she created (think coat and bag montages, those over-the-knee Chanel boots!), Field helped define style for a generation of women. And Field herself, with her fire engine-red hair and bold personal style, is just as memorable as the characters she helped bring to life, from Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, to the most feared fictional editor in chief in history. We got a chance to speak with the costume designer on the occasion of the film's 10-year anniversary and discovered some things even we didn't know about the movie. Read on and you might just earn your cerulean blue belt in cinematic style.
Here and throughout, scenes from the movie.
1. Miranda Priestley's look was not inspired by the fashion editor you think.
Field met with Streep and her longtime makeup artist before filming and the Oscar-winner had some specific ideas about the look and feel of the character. "We sat down and she gave me one idea that was major. She may have gotten her inspiration from [the late Harper's Bazaarr editor] Liz Tilberis," Field recalled.
2. Miranda's entire look was built upon Streep's decision to dye her hair a shocking white.
"Meryl said that she wanted white hair and I was like, "yay!" said Field. "What she wanted to do was not easy to understand by the producing community, because they perceived white hair as old, but white hair is not old. But at the end of the day, Meryl got what she wanted because she's Meryl Streep and she gets what she wants. I was so elated because, for me, white hair was something I could play against any color. The white gave me a backdrop and a bigger freedom... It gave me the opportunity to be more creative, because it started the palette, painting the portrait for me."
3. Sure, the "Devil" wore some Prada, but she mainly wore looks from this iconic female designer.
Streep and Field spoke about Priestley's look at length and the two collaborated on her look. "She's a fashion editor," said Field of creating Priestley's image. "She has to have a style of her own, not a style of someone else's." Field, a friend of Donna Karan, got access to the designer's New Jersey warehouse, which housed a plethora of body-con looks that made Karan a household name in the '80s. "I went through racks and racks of late '80s and '90s clothing because what made Donna Karan "Donna Karan", was that her clothes flattered and fit women. I was like, ok, a lot of these pieces are unrecognizable after so many years. It fits and it moves and it's not one of the star pieces of the current season. You don't want people to think "Oh, that’s a Dolce from last season" or "Oh, that’s a Versace from that season." It worked because it fit [Streep] and it flattered her. And she kind of owned it."
4.The famous coat and bag scene wasn't in the original script
Before the movie began filming, Field took director David Frankel to the couture shows in Paris. "I said to David, 'I want you to go to Paris and I want to take you to see what you’ll be shooting," remembered Field. "He did a lot of shooting in Paris. "It definitely inspired his additions to the script and one of the main additions to the scripts, were these fashion montages. David would come into the office and say, "I just wrote a scene here and Meryl throws a coat, and another coat, and another coat," said Field of what became such and identifying scene for the character. "I told him, 'You keep writing and my budget keeps going up and up...I'm going to need 25 coats!"
5. The film gave Anne Hathaway her first taste of high fashion, and then, she was hooked.
"She was just an emerging talent from Disney," said Field of Hathaway, whom she affectionately refers to as Annie. "But now, she was a young adult and ripe for a new image in her new age in her new acting career as an adult actress. It’s important to build your relationship with your actor, because it’s a very personal thing, dressing someone and what was very nice about her is she was open, she didn't have any major pre-judgements and opinions— it was all exciting for her. I think that her personal style really developed after The Devil Wears Prada. She became more aware of designer pieces."
6. About all that Chanel...
"This is a Chanel girl when she transitions, " said Field of Andy's makeover. It's classic, it's understandable. She strarts of in the movie with some grungy old sweater or whatever and moves into Chanel. Field said that the team at Chanel gave her carte blanche to borrow clothes for the film. "[Chanel] loved the idea because they wanted to see the clothes on someone young, so they opened their doors to me."
Watch our fourth-grade correspondent at New York Fashion Week.
Photos: Everett Collection
Source: http://feeds.glamour.com/c/35377/f/665038/s/4dcb6f63/sc/14/l/0L0Sglamour0N0Cfashion0Cblogs0Cdressed0C20A160C0A20Cdevil0Ewears0Eprada0Efashion0Esecrets/story01.htm
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