“We had to get bigger and better,” Jess Gonchor says, the production designer of the most anticipated film of the season, The Devil Wears Prada 2. Twenty years have passed since the film's first instalment and times have changed. Podcasts are taking over, stories break online as they happen and video is racking up views like Miranda Priestley raises eyebrows. Its fitting then that the publication’s New York City home base has changed floors within the fictional Elias-Clarke company building and has expanded to include digital and video operations.
That shift also changed the scale of the sets, which were built on a soundstage at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, and expanded to roughly eight times the size of those in the original film. “Back then, the set was much more contained, hinting at a larger world rather than fully realising it,” explains Jess Gonchor, the seasoned production designer (known for No Country for Old Men and Little Women) who also worked on the first film.
Is Miranda Priestley under threat?
Though this sequel may have had a bigger budget, the storyline centres around the decline of the magazine industry and what that means for Miranda specifically. With her status threatened, she no longer confidently walks a runway-like straight line from the elevator to her office. “There’s no more direct path for her,” Gonchor explains. “Miranda is the same character but not the same person.” In turn, the assistant area has “more of a friendly” and warmer vibe, Miranda even hangs up her own coat. “We knew we wanted to keep the sight lines from her office out to the front because it’s what the audience remembers,” he says. “So while the geography is the same, these are different assistant characters. We tailored that to the new movie.”
The editor’s office is also a mix of familiar and fresh, and is loosely based on Anna Wintour’s exact one in the World Trade Center (Gonchor watched videos for research). The layout is similar to Miranda’s previous space, and a few of the same vintage Runway posters and framed photographs hang on the walls. Still, it’s now roomier with a new wood-accented desk, plush chairs and couch. “I wouldn’t say it was an upgrade because the first office was amazing,” he says. “But this looks a little fancier. We elaborated.”
When she’s not at her Midtown Manhattan office, Miranda still resides at her marble-and-limestone townhouse. The elegantly decorated interiors remain, including a gallery entrance, spiral staircase and palette touches of, cerulean. “We were able to get back in the same exact townhouse on the Upper East Side,” Gonchor says. (There’s also a fresh glimpse at her luxurious summer estate in the Hamptons). Andy, meanwhile, receives a mid-movie upgrade to a new abode complete with a large bedroom, open kitchen and wall of windows. No wonder she starts dating the apartment’s contractor (played by Patrick Brammall).
Roman opera painters and cathedral catwalks
For the film’s international flair, it’s au revoir to Paris and hello to Italy. Last fall, the cast and crew filmed key scenes throughout Milan (such as the Dolce & Gabbana fashion show) as well as at the breathtaking Villa Balbiano on Lake Como. For an all-important sit-down dinner set inside Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper Museum, a team of Italian scenic painters, led by a woman who manages backdrops for an opera in Rome, built and painted a replica on a local soundstage that was about ¾ the size of the original. The dazzling Runway fashion show took place at The Accademia di Brera, a fine arts school in the city; a local crew that puts together Milan fashion shows spent five days constructing the catwalk. FYI, the scene was originally set to take place in front of the densely populated Duomo cathedral, but it was scrapped in favour of a more private place to keep a pop star cameo in the film under wraps.
And while Miranda may never be completely satisfied in her world, Gonchor boasts that there was plenty of triumphant joy in his own. “Everybody got in a groove” while filming, he says. “The actors all hung out when they weren’t on camera, and we had a lot of laughs. It was a really cool sight. It doesn’t always happen like that.” That’s all.
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