The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Conde Nast has been renamed Elias-Clark, but Oscar de la Renta and Tommy Hilfiger and most of the rest of the vast throng of designers, photographers, models and celebrities who adorn the fashion firmament are undisguised.' Weisberger worked at Vogue - here called Runway - as an assistant to its pencil-thin brunet editor, Anna Wintour, here the blond Miranda Priestly. Start with a Mommy Dearest premise featuring our most famous fashion editor, add an irresistible title and throw in a six-figure movie deal - does it even matter what's actually on the page when everybody is reading between the lines?Īs is customary in this increasingly popular brand of bite-the-boss fiction, the names (and hair color) have been changed to protect the guilty. 'It's hard to get past the onslaught of Page Six gossip and film-rights buzz that has preceded 'The Devil Wears Prada,' Lauren Weisberger's thinly veiled roman a clef about her thankless year sidetracked in the trenches of a fashion magazine. Kate Betts, former editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar wrote:

Hence the double New York Times reviews and the spleen they express. It's a novel for Christ-sakes but one that I have come to learn is close enough to the truth to titillate the interested and petrify the knowledgeable. The book details Andy's loss of humanity as the months ensue and her eventual recovery as the year ends, tragedy overtakes, and her boyfriend puts his foot down. Andy becomes a slave to the whims and demands of her boss who, in the book, is presented as the primal scream of high couture. The author actually worked in the same capacity for Anna Wintour of Vogue. The book tells the story of Andy, a young woman fresh out of Brown, who becomes the junior assistant to Miranda Priestly who runs Runway magazine, the most important 'zine' in the fashion field.

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger