The Devil Wears Prada

After three months, Andy is finally getting the hang of her job, but she still struggles with her wardrobe. Her own clothes aren’t fashionable enough to fit the Runway image. Her friend James hints that her job might be on the line unless she begins to dress more stylishly. She learns that Runway keeps a closet full of clothing for photoshoots that she might borrow and wear.

Exhaustion sets in as Andy works 14-hour days, and cryptic phone calls from her boss disrupt her nights’ sleep: “Every night, without exception, Miranda would leave eight to ten ambiguous messages for us between the hours of one and six in the morning” (141). Neither Andy nor Emily dares ask Miranda for clarification, so they’re left to sort out what she actually wants them to do.

The junior assistant spends much of her daily routine fetching food and beverages for Miranda. Each day, Miranda expects her morning latte from Starbucks to be piping hot. If it’s cold, Andy may have to make five or six coffee runs until her boss is satisfied. A similar ordeal occurs with both breakfast and lunch orders. Andy is generally in a frenzied rush to get the food back to the office before she receives an angry phone call either from Emily or Miranda demanding to know where she is.

One day, while scurrying to pick up a lunch order, she receives an unexpected call from Christian, the novelist whom she met at the A-list party. He invites her to a small gathering of New York literati. Andy declines and says she has a boyfriend, but Christian seems undeterred.

Andy gets another call from her friend Lily, who has just lost her apartment and is now free to share a flat with Andy. Andy is ready to move out of her tiny bedroom sublet, and the two former college roommates happily reunite.

One day, Andy arrives with Miranda’s lunch order only to be told that the boss is in a meeting. She arranges the meal perfectly and waits two hours for Miranda to return. When the editor gets back to her desk, she’s angry with Andy because the food is waiting for her. Nobody bothered to inform the assistants that Miranda ate lunch earlier with the magazine’s publisher. Andy thinks:

She what? After all of that, after all the running and the […] ridiculousness, and the angry phone calls, and the ninety-five-dollar meal, and the Tiffany song, and the food arranging, and the dizziness, and the waiting to eat until she came back, and she’d already eaten? (170).

That evening, Andy meets Lily and Alex for drinks but shows up two hours late because the Book wasn’t ready. Alex is disappointed and must leave. Lily, already drunk, throws up outside the bar, so Andy takes her home and puts her to bed. Andy gets barely four hours of sleep that night.