THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2: INTERIOR DESIGN BREAKDOWN
I recently wrote about why The Devil Wears Prada is so much more than a movie about fashion — it's basically an encyclopedia of everyday aesthetics. I won't overcomplicate this one: we're looking only at the furniture and decor from the sequel. But if the first movie changed your life even a little and made you realize that your hunger for beautiful everyday surroundings isn't some annoying little obsession but an actual need worth satisfying, you should definitely read the interior break down in the part 1 too.
Let's start with the office. Miranda's office has changed a little and become slightly more simple. She even hangs her own coat in the closet now. Look at her go.
Some things have stayed:
Bird Chair by Danish designers Preben Fabricius & Jørgen Kastholm
Beverly Hills bar cart by Eichholtz
The desk has become much smaller and considerably more modest (I almost don't want to comment on it), presumably because all of Miranda's work materials now fit into a slim MacBook Air. The decorators did, however, add a stack of magazines — just enough to suggest that Miranda is still processing all these changes.
The lamp sitting in the corner of the desk by the wall is the Janus Lamp by Danny Kaplan, a French-American ceramicist originally from Provence. The name Janus refers to Janus, the ancient Roman god with two faces looking in opposite directions. Which is actually a pretty perfect reference for the piece: it looks ancient and contemporary, rough and refined at the same time.
I don't know whether the decorators thought about it this way, but I like to think it's not accidental that they placed a lamp here that sits somewhere between handmade craftsmanship and contemporary design.
The chair Andy is sitting in is the Meandre Chair by Design Frères. Méandre is French for a meander (a curve or winding path) and the name makes perfect sense once you see its distinctive wavy metal frame. The structure is made of steel with a bronze patina, while the seat is upholstered with a natural linen cushion.
Design Frères is often compared to the aesthetic of Jean Royère, whose famous organic, almost cartoonish forms made his furniture look like it had wandered out of a fairy tale. And honestly, Andy looks a little like Alice in Wonderland sitting here.
On the bar cart you'll spot bougie candles by Trudon, as well as a half-kilo Very Large Candle by Diptyque — their enormous five-wick candle, also known as the 5-wick candle or hat box candle. At this point, this is no longer just something you buy because you want your room to smell nice. It's a recognizable decorative object in its own right.
On the windowsill there's an accent vase called Bubble by La DoubleJ. If the Janus Lamp is quiet craftsmanship and the Meandre Chair is an intellectual French eccentricity, the Bubble Vase is pure joy, theatricality and Italian maximalism.
La DoubleJ isn't really a traditional furniture brand. It's a lifestyle brand built around the idea of dolce vita. It was founded in Milan by American journalist J.J. Martin, who had originally worked in fashion and design journalism. The brand started with vintage Italian silk prints and gradually expanded into clothing, tableware, textiles and home decor.
Interestingly, Miranda's gallery wall of fashion photography has also changed. Here's what we're looking at, from left to right:
“Issey Miyake” by John Goodman, 2002
“Montego Bay, Jamaica” by Toni Frissell, 1946
“Chanel Profile” by Todd Barris, 1990
“Woman in Tennis Costume” by Toni Frissell, 1947
A work in the style of Irving Penn, from the Flowers project, 1967–1973
Lauren Santo Domingo in Rochas crinolines, from Vogue, February 2005
The gorgeous antique Mastercraft console and the Kartell desk with its laminated aluminum top are gone. If you miss them as much as I do, you can find my breakdown of the first movie here.
The antique hexagonal mirror, however, survived and was simply moved to the opposite wall.
Overall, this part of the office has become softer, both literally and figuratively, but it still has that unmistakable glossy-American-space quality — somewhere between a luxurious New York department store and a glamorous magazine editorial office.
Now let's step inside the Runway offices. Because there it is again: the Eames Aluminum Group Chair, which has already made appearances in The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and the home office of Cameron Diaz's character in The Holiday.
This is a piece that genuinely changed the history of office furniture. The Eameses originally designed the chair for an outdoor terrace, but in the process came up with an entirely new construction.
The big innovation was getting rid of the traditional rigid frame with stretched upholstery and creating what they called a suspended seat. In other words, the chair doesn't just cushion you — it moves with you.
You can find it in architects' offices, glamorous executive suites and, naturally, movies with a certain level of aesthetic ambition. This one would feel incomplete without it.
Here you'll also spot the incredibly elegant Horizon 2.0 LED Task Lights by Humanscale. They look less like office equipment and more like a little flock of white birds.
The design is a recognized object in its own right: the original Horizon won a Red Dot Award and became part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Horizon was also one of the early desk lamps to use Thin Film LED Technology, which made it possible to create an extremely thin, even light source. It's very much part of the high-tech minimalist tradition.
If the artichoke lamps we saw in Miranda's office in the first Devil Wears Prada were almost sculpture, Horizon is an icon of a different kind. It makes the case that a technological object can be beautiful too.
In the backstage area of the magazine, where they recreate the scene of Nigel taking Andy shopping for clothes, you'll notice pale blue botanical wallpaper. And against that backdrop, the Valentino bags lined up along the wall almost disappear.
You can find similar wallpaper by searching for blue botanical garden wallpaper. The version I included in the collage came from Etsy — be honest, did you notice right away that it wasn't an exact match? Yeah. Me neither.
The beautiful interiors in this movie don't stop at the office. This time we get a slightly better look inside Miranda's home than we did in the first movie.
The blue, Mondrian-inspired rug is still there. It's a print by Anthony Baratta Home.
In Miranda's kitchen, the first thing that catches your eye is the molded plywood Cherner Counter Stools by Norman Cherner, with white frames and blue cushions. Honestly, one of the most elegant bar stools ever designed.
There's also a rug featuring a motif from Frank Stella's Sinjerli Variation series — Stella's work is often translated into textiles.
The sofa is the Welt Played by Caracole. Its inspiration came from Paris Fashion Week: tweed fabrics, men's tailoring and contrasting jacket trim. It's a rare case of furniture being designed almost like a piece of clothing.
For my collage, I chose the version with the closest upholstery color, but the real star of this sofa is the welt, or piping. Remove that contrasting trim and the whole thing would look almost anonymous. That little detail is what makes it recognizable.
For many manufacturers, piping is simply a neat finishing touch. On Welt Played, it becomes the main design feature. If you look closely, your eye registers the lines first and the volume of the sofa second. See what I mean?
On the kitchen ceiling, there's another interesting detail: decorative ceiling tiles. In Victorian-era houses, you can sometimes find pressed metal ceilings made from thin sheets of tin (pressed tin ceilings). If you weren't lucky enough to inherit one, you can recreate a similar effect with polystyrene ceiling tiles. It's not a particular designer piece but rather a category of finishing material. Search for polystyrene ceiling tiles and you'll find plenty of options.
Now let's look at a few other spaces from the movie.
In Andy's friend Lily's apartment, there's a Kevin Sofa by Giancarlo Valle — a great example of contemporary collectible design. It looks simultaneously like furniture, an architectural object and a little bit like a theatrical set.
And hanging right next to it is the mohair tapestry The Slippery Feel of Inevitability by Misha Kahn, inspired by the shapes of Jell-O molds — hence the wonderfully ridiculous title.
You can spot more of Kahn's work in the Milan hotel rooms where Miranda, Nigel and Andy are staying.
There's the knitted wool Bois Brûlé Sofa, whose name translates from French as “burnt wood.” It looks almost like a surreal piece of landscape that somehow turned into furniture. Andy's room also gets a chair by Misha Kahn. Basically: the big boss gets a whole sofa, the slightly smaller boss gets a chair.
There is a lot more art in The Devil Wears Prada 2, but we'll stop here, because after this point we get into Monet and Klimt paintings that Emily receives from her boyfriend. And this blog is, after all, about furniture and relatively accessible decor — the kind of things you can actually take inspiration from and recreate at home.
If you've already seen the movie, you may have noticed just how much blue appears in the new interiors. One of the prettiest examples is Miranda's country house in the Hamptons.
It's basically a full-on coastal grandma fantasy. There's even something wonderfully funny about seeing Meryl Streep slip, for a second, into the kind of character she played in It's Complicated.
Coastal grandma might honestly be the most beautiful version of retirement anyone has ever put on screen. But what's especially interesting here is the way that aesthetic is combined with Miranda's much more glamorous side.
Look at these rooms. It's almost hard to believe they're from The Devil Wears Prada, right?
