It’s no secret that The Devil Wears Prada killed the Gen X sensibility for good. Which isn’t to say the film was the sole culprit. When director David Frankel’s adaptation of Lauren Weisberg’s novel of the same name hit theaters in 2006, the grungy detachment that animated much of 1990s pop culture was already on life support. You could find traces of alternative rock’s downbeat style and depressive vibes in the thriving mid-aughts emo scene.
The early 2000s iteration of the hipster, the one who wore trucker hats and drank PBR, exhibited the same ironic detachment that flannel-clad slackers had made cool the previous decade. By and large, though, pop culture in the 2000s was more upbeat, more sincere, and more inclined to celebrate boy bands and pop princesses than Gen X ever was. Then Andy Sachs came along and drove the final nail into the coffin.
Andy (Anne Hathaway), the main character of The Devil Wears Prada, is a recent college grad. She moves to New York to pursue her dream of becoming the type of journalist who pens hard-hitting investigative pieces exposing societal injustices. Despite her solid resume and the bundle of college newspaper clips she sends to anyone who shows a hint of interest in reading them, the only job she’s landed is as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the legendary editor in chief at renowned fashion magazine Runway (a fictional version of the real Runway Magazine).
It’s a job that, as Andy is correctly told time and again, “a million girls would kill for”. It’s also far from an ideal fit because Andy has no interest in fashion. To say she hates fashion would be to assign her feelings toward it too much emotion. Rather, in that classic Gen X way, Andy sees herself as better than fashion. She scoffs at the notion of investing time, money, and effort into caring about superficial concerns like haute couture or the size of her waistline. She’s more than content to wear chunky sweaters and sport a nondescript haircut, which is to say she looks like someone who played bass in a 1990s indie rock band.
Andy may see herself as above the world of fashion, but she’s not above being opportunistic. She understands that working for Miranda will open doors that may lead to the job she actually wants, so she opts to slog through the trenches of entry-level work for a year. She does this while bringing a surfeit of classic Gen X ‘tude to the office, constantly rolling her eyes at the magazine that employs her, and at the boss and the colleagues who are so invested in their work. At happy hours with her real friends, who share her ill-defined sense of what does and does not constitute personal integrity, she calls Miranda “Dragon Lady” and lampoons everything Runway stands for. (You could import Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder’s characters from Ben Stiller’s comedy Reality Bites into these scenes, and they’d appear right at home.)
The smarter-than-everyone, holier-than-thou affectation Andy gives off while collecting a paycheck for a job so many others would do with enthusiasm and earnestness is the hallmark of the Gen X sensibility, a cultural demographic whose defining trait was to act as if it were better than the system in which it nevertheless participated. Gen X was Kurt Cobain signing with DGC Records while simultaneously claiming all things corporate were the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. It was Peter Gibbons spacing out at work for hours a day rather than quitting his job and doing the harder work of finding something more fulfilling. Gen X was about passive protest rather than active rebellion.
At the start of The Devil Wears Prada, this is how Andy lives her life. The film memorably sums up her initial point of view about fashion—which in the film doubles as a proxy for late-stage capitalism—in a scene where she watches Miranda and Miranda’s minions debate the subtle differences in the color of two belts that to the naked eye might appear to be the exact same hue. Andy’s reaction is to giggle purposefully and audibly so as to let everyone in the room know that she’s too smart to care about such nonsense.
Had The Devil Wears Prada stuck to the dynamic it sets up in its opening act—precocious, eye-rolling assistant butts head with imperious, determined boss—for the duration of its 109-minute run time, it would merely have been an entertaining film. There are sadistic pleasures to be found in watching Miranda treat Andy as nothing more than a warm body filling a seat until the next incompetent young professional comes to fill it. What makes the film transcendent is the way it sets up Andy as an avatar of Gen X detachment only to skewer her attitude and invert her personality.
Near the end of the film’s first act, Andy fails to complete an admittedly impossible task. Miranda berates her for the failure and calls her a disappointment. Crushed, Andy seeks solace in the presence of Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Miranda’s underappreciated second-in-command. Instead of comfort, Nigel offers a generous helping of brutal honesty. He tells Andy to quit or stop whining and try harder.
Much to this viewer’s surprise, Andy chooses the latter. She drops her attitude and leans in. She assembles, with the help of Nigel, a wardrobe of impossibly chic clothes. She gives her all at work and starts to view Runway not as a mouthpiece for a vacuous industry but a worthwhile publication. She hustles, working tirelessly to complete every task, no matter how trivial, that Miranda throws her way.
Like an ugly duckling transforming into a swan, the Gen Xer morphs, over the course of several jaunty scenes, into a proto Millennial Striver. Pretty soon, Andy is thriving at work and butting heads with her too-cool-for-school friends. She earns Miranda’s approval if not her praise. The story unabashedly positions her evolution as a much-needed adjustment. The message is clear: It’s not cool to whine and act detached—it’s cool to work hard and go for it.
With that one fell swoop, The Devil Wears Prada killed off the appeal of the Gen X way of life and elevated the more sincere, effort-laden sensibility of the Millennial, a generation that is nothing if not a collection of earnest and enthusiastic gold-star seeking workaholics.
Millennials are “Generation Sell”, obsessed with the idea of the entrepreneur as countercultural hero. Millennials are the early 2010s iteration of the hipster who jarred their own pickles while listening to Mumford & Sons and spent hours perfecting their homemade lagers and custom bitters. Millennials are the #girlboss.
Andy Sachs was the original Millennial. She taught a generation that striving is better than whining, that effort is its own reward, and that self-actualization starts with success at work. Those were the opposite of just about everything Gen X espoused, and the success of The Devil Wears Prada is what turned everything 1990’s culture stood for into a relic of a bygone era. Though the film ends with Andy leaving Runway for a gig at a small newspaper, it’s still clear that she is better off for having cut her teeth under Miranda. Never again will she act emotionally unvested in what she does.
Gen X made better-than-average music and initially served as a much-needed corrective to the vapidity of Reagan-era culture. Broadly speaking, however, they were also whiny and self-serving. When the core of your sensibility is apathetic negation, as in “everything sucks, so whatever,” your shelf life will be limited, and your art will be easy to appropriate. It should come as no surprise that David Fincher’s psychological thriller Fight Club (1999) and the Wachowski Bros. dystopian sci-fi The Matrix (1999) are inspirational sources for incels and red-pill-obsessed manosphere weirdos; when your message revolves around the idea that society as we know it is fake and terrible and therefore needs to be torn down, you’re obviously going to attract misguided young men who just want to rage.
The Devil Wears Prada cleverly exposed Gen Xers shortcomings and offered a different sensibility. The Millennial Striver Andy Sachs paved the way for the emergence of a new, more earnest, more effortful brand of cool. Even though the hustle culture and the “Obamacore plasticity” that followed each had its own shortcomings, at the very least, the rise of the Millennial led to an appreciation for good food (and beer) and better-fitting jeans.
The Devil Wears Prada marks the end of one generation’s relevance and the arrival of a replacement. Which, all things considered, is probably the best thing a breezy film about fashion could hope to accomplish.
Resources
Alford, Henry. “How I Became a Hipster”. The New York Times. 2 May 2013.
Berger, Chloe. “Feel the burn(out)”. Fortune. 10 February 2024.
Deresiewicz, William. “Generation Sell”. The New York Times. 13 November 2011.
Jones, Nate. “That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore”. Vulture. 20 August 2024.
Pinsker, Joe. “Why Are Millennials So Obsessed With Food?”. The Atlantic. 14 August 2015.
“The Jean war between millennials and Gen Z cannot be won”. 10 May 2021.