Naomi Fry: OK, guys. We need to talk about the Chanel sandals, which only has kind of, like, the heel nestled in a little basket with straps, and then the rest of the foot is kind of flying free. 
Alex Schwartz: It had a heel and a strap and then a bare foot. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know what? I don't hate them. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, Vincent. 
Naomi Fry: Would you wear them, Vincent? I mean, I know they're 
Vinson Cunningham: women's, but- I wouldn't.
I, I don't think I would wear them. But think about the beach, think about a garden party, where, a place where, um, someone might go barefoot, and you wouldn't mind too much, uh, and it's as a sort of fashion move. Now all of a sudden you've got a little extra sprezzatura. 
Naomi Fry: There's something, uh- Okay ... weirdly sexual about them.
And when I say sexual, I mean, like, like, pro- perverted. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's like fetish. And this is the other thing. Yeah. It's, it's the other thing. This is, like, w- the way fashion comes to us, right, from above and from below. No one can deny that feet are sort of in right now, and it has to do with weird, like, OnlyFans stuff.
It's got all this, like, all these, I don't know, these reverberations in the culture. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Vincent, you gave me an important reframe, which is that I should not be thinking about this as a shoe missing three-quarters. I should be thinking about this as a foot that's gained a little something. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's barefoot plus. 
Naomi Fry: It's the glass- Right ... half foot. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: There, 
Vinson Cunningham: there you go. 
Naomi Fry: This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker.
I'm Nomi Fry. 
Vinson Cunningham: I'm Vincent Cunningham. 
Alex Schwartz: And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got 
Naomi Fry: here. Hello, friends. Hey. Hello. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, we've been wanting to do a fashion episode for truly what feels like forever, and this week, finally, the stars aligned to give us two huge fashion world events to discuss.
We are taping this episode the very morning after the Met Gala. 
CLIP: Met Gala news clip 
Naomi Fry: The looks. 
Alex Schwartz: The looks. The 
Naomi Fry: drama. 
Alex Schwartz: The drama. 
Naomi Fry: The carpet. The Bezos of it all. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, we will get to that and more. And we are also fresh off the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2.
It had a huge opening weekend. It made more than $233 million worldwide. Am I reading that number accurately? That is more than Oppenheimer. People are watching this film. 
CLIP:. Devil Wears Prada trailer
Alex Schwartz: The iconic original Devil Wears Prada came out two decades ago, 2006, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 is, I think it's fair to say, darker than its predecessor.
It dramatizes some of the real world shifts that have taken place in the fashion world, and dare I say, the magazine world over the last two decades. Guys, hit me with them. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, the decline of magazines- Mm-hmm ... and the rise of online, of course, as the main driver of, of, of content. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. And then with that, the sort of changes in audience structure.
The curational aspects of what magazines do, sort of like direct people to certain, uh, I don't know, not just trends, but also pieces of writing, has almost totally reversed to where the, lots of publications are just trying to chase clicks, et cetera. That was one of the points of anxiety in there too. 
Naomi Fry: And the rise of fast fashion, which also makes an appearance in Devil Wears Prada 2, as a kind of thing to contend with ethically and, and, uh, commercially.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely. Fashion is in the midst of a huge transformation. It's an industry, of course, built on taste-making, but the institutions and the figures who've done that in the past are now having to adapt to new ideas about who taste-makers should be. So today we are talking about fashion and about the art and the ethics of who decides what's stylish.
And one thing I love about this topic is that it's political, but it's also deeply personal. I wanna know about your senses of style and where they came from, and how they're evolving, how you see yourselves in fashion, because let's face it, you gotta wear clothes every day. And so that's today on Critics at Large, the Met Gala, The Devil Wears Prada, and the state of style.
________________


Okay, let's start with the Met Gala. This is a tradition that's been going on for 78 years. It shows no sign of slowing down. Is this something you look forward to? Are you aware of the first Monday in May? Tell me about it. 
Naomi Fry: I am always aware of the first Monday in May. Even just, like, the branding of that term, the first Monday in May, I'm not only aware of the first Monday in May, but I'm also aware of the last Friday in April or the first Friday in May, as the case may be, which is the, the kind of like pre, the Vogue pre-party that happens before- Mm
and it's always at some, like- quirky venue. but I've never, you know, come within like spitting distance of, of the Met Gala, and yet I am fascinated by it and I kind of always have been.
Alex Schwartz: Nomi, I know that yesterday you happened to find yourself on the Upper East Side. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. I was actually taking the bus up Madison Avenue, and I guess I, because I had never actually been on the ground in the area, I, I- it really brought home to me what a big deal it is on the level of even like organizational city stuff, you know?
There were like, there was like a huddle of like dozens and dozens of cops kind of getting ready, getting a briefing. Uh, you know, all the streets were closed around it, all the blocks were closed to traffic. Then I was like, okay, after I finish my errand, I was like, "I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go by the Met and see what's going on."
And there were hordes of fans already waiting, you know, behind police barricades, and this is again like 1:00 PM or something. Um, there were like K-pop fans, you know, waiting for their like favorite performers who were, I guess, guests at the Gala, and there were, you know, lots of kind of like Instagram, you know, vloggers, like people like that kind of milling around.
Of course, a lot of traditional media, kind of like news teams and stuff like that. And there are like hotels in the area where people are getting ready, so around them, like The Mark and The Pierre and The Carlyle. And just seeing it in action, being that close to it, which I'd never been, I was like, "This is a huge logistical operation.
This is a big deal." It just k- kind of felt a little different. 
Alex Schwartz: Vinson. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. You 
Alex Schwartz: are a man of style. 
Vinson Cunningham: Oh, you know, I do okay. 
Naomi Fry: He's wearing a, what appears to be a linen, a linen, a button-down linen shirt. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. This is the summer uniform. 
Naomi Fry: Summer- summery. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: How does the Met Gala play into your calendar of the year?
Vinson Cunningham: It's so funny. It didn't for many years. I guess I knew that it happened, and I would see the odd image now and then, but I feel that it really came to the forefront of my consciousness about seven years ago when the, um, when the theme was Camp: Notes on Fashion.  Remember that? Yes. I think that was 2019.And there was something about that theme and its many various interpretations, people are notoriously finicky about the word camp and what it actually entails, that it, it really did seem to strike something in the larger culture, that people were sort of looking at- The broadcast of the red carpet sort of parsing the outfits for their adherence to the theme. So to me, a lot of the, uh, my attention to the Met Gala is this issue of interpretation. Okay, there's gonna be a theme, and then how does one faithfully or unfaithfully, you know, correctly or incorrectly adhere to it?
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I mean, let's go right to theme. Theme has been a thing at the Met Gala since the '70s, which is when Diana Vreeland stepped in and had this idea to make each year around a different theme.
Um, and you just gave the example of Camp: Notes on Fashion, Last year, the theme was all about Black dandyism, and this year the theme was Costume Art, and the corresponding dress code was Fashion is Art.
What did we make of that as a prompt, and how do we feel that people did with it? 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. It, it, it was a... Fashion is Art is a very broad theme, and it invited people mostly to make references to artworks. I'm thinking of, um, Angela Bassett's very pretty, I thought, uh, pink dress that referred to, a painting by Laura Wheeler Waring, um, who is a Black painter, Harlem Renaissance era.
Uh, so there was a lot of that, references to specific artworks or sort of to artworks in the abstract. I'm thinking about Sabrina Carpenter's dress that was, like, a, made of a bunch of film re- film reels. 
Alex Schwartz: Right. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um- Of the movie Sabrina ... of the movie Sabrina, the sort of more conceptual approach. Um, There was a lot of, I think, conservatism this year. There was a little bit more subdued vibe. But the ones that did play a little bit more with the theme did point to the extent to which art itself can be a carrier of fashions.
Alex Schwartz: I think some of the- Yeah, I think some of the fun of the Met Gala is trying to see what goes on inside the brains of these celebrities because it's so high-stakes for them. Mm. Like, I think that's what makes... I know that some people watch this, of course, and they wanna know what the looks are, and they wanna celebrate the looks and just surround themselves with sumptuous fashion.
And I watch to be like, "What are you thinking?" Yeah. What is- Mm-hmm ... what, what, what are you hoping to put out there? It's a really interestingly vulnerable moment. Like, you go to an awards show, you wanna look good. Yeah. You wanna look beautiful. But the Met Gala is asking you to do some kind of creative thinking, and I find this theme to be such a fascinating, almost, like, passive-aggressive trap.
Fashion is art. Yeah. First of all, it sounds very defensive to me. Mm-hmm. Like, who's saying it's not? And I guess many people. Mm-hmm. So I found there to be a lot of literalism. Like, I- Yeah ... I was a little bit less into the dressing up as works of art in the museum collection, even though some of the individual looks I really enjoyed.
I really liked Hunter Schafer, who was dressed as a Klimt painting- Mm-hmm ... with these kind of very light, beautiful, like, girlish, um, embellishments, floral embellishments on- In a Pra- in 
Naomi Fry: a Prada dress ... 
Alex Schwartz: in a Prada dress, on the dress[a][b][c][d][e]. Um, there were some really obvious, like, s- talk about camp. Heidi Klum dressed as a-
shrouded sculpture. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, Heidi K- Is a- Heidi Klum was, like, you, we know from Halloween's past that Heidi Klum loves to dress up outrageously in, in ways that are almost admirable because it looks, it's often, like, remember- Yes ... when she was a worm, and she kind of writhed on the floor?
She couldn't stand up, and she was, like, interviewed while lying on the red carpet in this kind of, like, gross, like, husk- Exactly ... of a... You know, so, so it's, it's, it's a way for people, it's... I think, Alex, the vulnerability thing that y- you're pointing to, I think the idea of a theme and, uh, the idea of dressing up does really, it's a risky proposition because you're like, if you're just gonna wear, like, a nice gall dress people are gonna be like, "Eh, boring," you know?
But then if you go all out, and you're like, you know, you go crazy, like you do the Heidi Klum thing, people might be like, "Oh, it's not, she looks ugly. She's not bankable." You know, whatever it is. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, she doesn't care. I mean, Heidi Klum- 
Naomi Fry: No, no, no ... doesn't 
Alex Schwartz: care. 
Naomi Fry: I'm not 
Alex Schwartz: talking- She went as she, yeah, she went as a large, shrouded sculpture.
Naomi Fry: Yes. You know, you go, Heidi Klum- Heidi Klum is a limit case ... you go. I mean, yeah, no, and I, I actually admire it. But I just mean, you know, just, like, okay, are we, are we gonna- Are we gonna make a pretty picture? Are we gonna push the envelope? And, and it's, it's, it's interesting, for the first time ever, because I knew we were doing this, this recording today, I- yesterday I watched, like, a live feed of, of the carpet.
Um, which, uh, I, I never have. You know, I usually just, like, look at images, either on Instagram or, like, Daily Mail or Vanity Fair, whatever it is, you know, Vogue. Um, and it was kind of one of those, like, I don't even know, I think it was CNN, but it was kind of, like, one of those shaky feeds where you just see the people posing, uh, for, for photographers. And you see assistants scurrying around them, arranging the train just so, and, you know, e- everything around them to make the perfect image. And you see them, like, you know, striking a po- like, you know, smiling and then not smiling, and then looking over the shoulder, and then doing...
And you realize how... I almost had a panic attack just watching it, you know? because it's like the look is, is so, so much, um, kind of the thing, you know? It's not like a premiere of a movie. It's not... It's like kind of the only thing that matters is, like, what look you chose. That's the main event. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I understand that. I mean, what, what, what I'm thinking about is the relationship between the performer, because all of these celebrities on the carpet here are performing, as you say, Nomi, this is the event.
It's not in support of a movie that everyone's about to go see. It's in support of themselves and their own image. Yes. So quite a good, quite an, quite an amount of power is actually with us, the viewers, who could not cough up $100,000 for a ticket to this event, and who are watching from our snarky phone screens and participating in, for me, what the ma- what the mass spectacle of the Met Gala is really about is as a social media event.
Mm-hmm. I, uh, am very skeptical of big pile-ons, et cetera, but I do like participating on social media because I love seeing smart, funny, creative people analyze looks, appreciate looks, and also, uh, do the opposite of appreciate looks.
So much of it is about the bread and circuses. Are we pleased with what we see? And I do think a lot of the discourse around the Met Gala has been exactly that. One thing I noticed quite a bit of this year was people commenting, you know, and they do every year, but even more so now, now that Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, uh, are, are so prominently part of this.
And also, let me say, not the only tech titans there. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were inside. They skipped the carpet, interestingly. Perhaps they were afraid of, um, figurative or literal tomatoes being thrown. But there was a lot of Hunger Games talk. There's a lot of, uh, what is going on? How is this happening? Look at the rest of us. Yeah. Titanic vibes. Major Titanic vibes. 
The event strikes that interesting balance between being mass entertainment provided by a very elite few and something like schadenfreude fuel And that makes it fascinating.
So Vincent, I'm curious, what do you think the Met Gala in 2026 is for?
Vinson Cunningham: Well, I, I think it can't, first of all, be overstated the extent to which it really is just the biggest and most visible night in the fashion industry. I tend to appreciate a refreshing of just, like, seeing what people are, are able to make and w- and, and the ideas that fashion puts out.
I don't know. It kinda still is important to me. And it's a... But it's a great moment to see fashion, and also to hear it discussed, which we don't often do. Um, on the feed that I was watching, the E! feed, uh, there was a moment when the designer Christian Siriano came on, and he's famously been on Project Runway, and besides being a, a, a really good designer, kinda just knows how to speak about clothes.
And he was being really critical of some of the looks, and talking about in this really minute way, and it was so refreshing to hear a, a whole vocabulary, a lexicon pointed at objects that I was looking at, too. Um, weirdly, the theme, Fashion Is Art, is to me, the, the reason for this event. It's like it's the one time where divorced from r- utility and other reasons, it's okay to just look at fashion.
And, um, as somebody who looks at lots of other things that people think of as frivolous, like I'm thinking about sports, the other big event last night in my life was the Knicks game, I tend to defend our opportunities to just look at things that provoke pleasure. 
Alex Schwartz: in our lives. Nice. He's a hedonist, folks.
Vinson Cunningham: That is what I'm trying to 
Alex Schwartz: tell you. When we're back, we dive into The Devil Wears Prada 2. Critics at Large will be right back.
:: MIDROLL:: 
Vinson Cunningham: Before we get back to the conversation, listeners It's that time again. We're working on another I Need A Critic episode. We've come to really love this series because it gives us a chance to hear from you. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, yeah, you all know the drill at this point, but for anyone who doesn't, don't fear. All you have to do is record a voice memo on your phone with a specific cultural question that we can help you with.
Maybe you're looking for the perfect book to read after you just had a baby and you have no attention span or time. Maybe you wanna know whether book clubs are actually helpful. Maybe you want an example in media, the movies, what have you, of an actually happy relationship. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, who can tell really what you come up with, and we can't wait to find out.
You've got questions. We've got answers. Hit us up. Send your voice memos as always to themail@newyorker.com with the subject line, critics. And now back to the episode.
Alex Schwartz: Now on to The Devil Wears Prada 2, which fittingly opens with a lightly fictionalized Met Gala. It's an early scene where we first see Miranda Priestly in a very swooping red gown, off the shoulder, walking into the American Museum of Natural History with Stanley Tucci as Nigel on her arm. Um, but before we delve into the sequel, for, uh, everyone listening has seen The Devil Wears Prada, I'm assuming.
But if you haven't- ... it's okay. It came out in 2006. You can catch up. Um, I re-watched it the other day, guys. 
Naomi Fry: I, I also, I also 
Alex Schwartz: re-watched it. What 
Naomi Fry: a- Yeah ... 
Alex Schwartz: what a good Hollywood movie. Um- 
Naomi Fry: What a great movie. Like, what a perfect confection. It's, like, a snappy, well-written, well-acted, you know, you follow Andy Sachs, the, the beleaguered assistant of, of Miranda Priestly, who has to kind of find her way in the world through this, like, apprenticeship, I guess, uh, under this very, very difficult woman, but it also has kind of, like, the, the glamorous benefits of these sufferings are happening in, in a milieu that is easy on the eyes.
It's, it's just, like, a great kind of, like, a perfect movie of its kind, I think. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, 20 years later, the wait for Miranda Priestly to return is over, and the new film came out last Friday. All the major players are there. We got An- Annie Hathaway back, Meryl Streep back, Emily Blunt, who became a star from this movie, back, Stanley Tucci, and the director David Frankel and the writer Aline Brosh McKenna are back also.
There were a lot of repeats from the first. You are going through exactly the same dynamic. Andy has to again ingratiate herself to the forbidding Miranda Priestly. 
CLIP: “The Devil Wears Prada 2” 
Alex Schwartz: In my position of ultimate power as host, I'm gonna tap Vincent Cunningham to give us a synopsis. Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Thank you very much. Um, well, in Devil Wears Prada 2 we pick up with a sort of very different kind of Andy Sachs. She's a journalist at a gala about to accept an award, and bz, bz, bz, bz, bz, all around the table that she's sitting at, phones are buzzing and chirping wildly because, as it happens, she and all of the colleagues, uh, with whom she came to this gala have been laid off.
So we enter into this movie in a mood and an environment of precarity in the journalistic world. Um, she's lost her job, so what does she have to do? Of course, by hook or crook, she's recommended to go back to Runway Magazine and once again work under Miranda Priestly, this time as she's sort of forced upon Miranda by the, um, owner of the company that also owns Runway, but has other magazines.
Naomi Fry: Elias Clark. Elias Clark. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um, as it turns out, that same feller dies at yet another gal- Uh, um, at yet another gala. 
Naomi Fry: 75th 
Vinson Cunningham: birthday celebration. Seve- 75th birthday. He, he unfortunately croaks. All of a sudden, his son, played by, uh, I thought a pretty funny BJ Novak, is in charge, and the Emily Blunt character, she has become betrothed to a billionaire who he, uh, very mu- he's very Bezos-like in his orientation. Emily Blunt and Andy come together to say, "Maybe we should get perceived good billionaire to buy the, buy the magazine so that the BJ Novak character who's sort of, like, you know, obsessed with consultants and efficiencies and wants to kill all the things that we like about the magazine, so that he can't do that."
And this plan Goes awry 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I would say the thing that is very notable about this movie is, Nomi, as you were saying, the first one takes place when fashion and certainly, uh, fashion magazines are at the apex of their power, and Miranda Priestly is in an unquestioned position of dominance and prominence.
She is it. To work for her means to serve her, and that is just an unquestioned reality of the world, and a huge difference here coming into Devil Wears Prada 2 is that she's vulnerable. There's a very memorable moment early in the movie where Stanley Tucci says... Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci, who plays her, her number two, her consiliary, Nigel, um, are talking about how the whole business has changed since Andy was last at Runway.
Now they still have what they call The Book, which is the physical magazine, but it's shrunk down to a tiny portion of what it was. Their job is to make content online, and Stanley Tucc- Tucci whispers, "The people scroll by as they pee." Um, there's a sense that everything is vulnerable and that a new world order has come in.
The billionaires who it is implied strongly in the movie are totally tasteless, but wanna buy their way into taste, which of course is the dominant criticism that was made of the Bezos presence at the Met Gala. Mm-hmm. So did you like the movie? 
Naomi Fry: I didn't really. Hmm. I mean, I, maybe I wanted to like it too much because of my experience with the beloved first movie, and there, there was no way to make the sequel without contending you know with how the world has changed, how the internet has changed everything, how fashion and media are no longer what they were, et cetera, et cetera, all the things we know.
But I just felt that it was like a very kind of odd and awkward balancing act between trying kind of admirably or at least honestly to portray the way things are now and how they're different from the way things used to be. It would be absolutely insane to make a movie about this milieu and, and argue otherwise, so that's great.
But then to kind of have the movie be enjoyable and kind of tonally in some ways echo the first movie, um, I mean, it's... This is not the Dardenne brothers, right? Like, it's not like a movie about collapse, right, or decline, right? It can't be, because then it wouldn't be, like, a Devil Wears Prada sequel. So, so how do you mix these two tendencies?
And I think it's, it's a very hard thing to do, and perhaps even impossible. 
Alex Schwartz: Vincent, what did you think? Uh, 
Vinson Cunningham: I, I liked it a little bit more than Nomi seems to without totally having- Liked it. You know, I, I think I'm a little bit higher on the spectrum. I thought it kind of admirably did try to be about decline.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: In its best moments, it did sort of try to engage with a, a real environment of precarity, and I thought that was really interesting. But so much so, though, that I think it was a movie that was often more interested in its thematics than the execution of those thematics. Mm. And so it like, it was really trying to set things up.
You know, at the beginning, it's like, boom, she loses the job. Boom, somebody gets it. I mean, it just all- everything is happening so quickly in this movie, and I think it's because, to your point, Nomi- Mm-hmm ... it's trying to do a lot, a lot of things at the same time. Mm. There's this useless boyfriend character- 
Naomi Fry: Oh my God
Vinson Cunningham: where it's like, oh, she meets a guy at an op- a showing of an apartment. It's like they only did that because they wanted some, some love interest stuff that, you know, maybe maybe echoes the Adrian Grenier stuff from the first movie, which I thought is way better than th- It was just like a kinda useless person.
And, and it- I think those minutes, those precious minutes- ... came at the expense of more development of the relationship between Miranda and Andy, which there was, there's one good scene in the Hamptons where, um, Miranda, in her stress about all of this, whether she's gonna get this big promotion, whether, um, this series of corporate misfortunes mean that she'll kinda go out in the wash, actually kinda opens up to Andy, and I think that there needed to be more of that in this film.
I really wanted to see them, uh, Streep and Hathaway really play against one another in ways that they really didn't get to do as much of. Um, but again, I will say that I was kinda shocked at how this movie really did engage with political economy- Mm-hmm ... and the way we live now. I don't think I've seen a mass entertainment treatment of, uh, what's going on in, in culture industries.
I don't, I just don't think I've seen it really. I was happy to see it. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: How about you, Alex? Alex, what 
Naomi Fry: did you think? 
Alex Schwartz: Okay, so I am here as a Devil Wears Prada 2 apologist. I- Um, I wouldn't say love the film, but, but I'm close to loving it compared to you guys. I thought it was fun, and I l- I, I especially liked, um, Andy's fashion in the film.
I know the big look that everyone remembers from the first Devil Wears Prada is when Andy has had her glow up, and her hair has been blow-dried, and she looks kind of like the way that a poodle, if it's just, if it had had its whole, you know- Mm-hmm ... hair sleekified. It's, and she's wearing those super high thigh-high Chanel boots, and frankly, I'm sorry, I know I'm on the wrong side here, hideous little page boy cap.
Um, and that's like- You're not on 
Naomi Fry: the wrong side. 
Alex Schwartz: I mean, that, that is just, no. That's, that's a no for me. Um- But I, I really liked Andy's fashion in this movie. The blazers, where are they from? Please share. I want to know. The, the stripy dress that she wears to get on the jitney to the Hamptons. W- um, I loved seeing this movie in a theater.
It was a communal experience in a way that I found satisfying. I was pleasantly surprised by how I felt that the magazine dynamics were depicted because, without getting into detail, um, the way that those anxieties are expressed in the movie I did feel was very true to life for the way that they're felt.
And I appreciate that. Mm-hmm. It's a hard balance when you're trying to sell and, uh, enjoy a confection to also deal with, um, these, like, very real anxieties about the state of the business. And I liked the balance that the movie struck with those things. Uh, and, you know, the film is making an argument again for where things are in the state of fashion.
I think what people will probably remember most vividly from the first movie is the cerulean monologue- Mm-hmm ... where Andy chuckles at a session where Miranda Priestly is choosing between two, what seem to Andy to be identical belts. On the back. 
CLIP: The Devil Wears Prada
Alex Schwartz: She gets a stern dressing down when she's told about basically how she is essentially the product of the fashion industry, and every choice she made, she makes in her own life that she thinks she has independence- On, uh, has in fact been decided for her in this very room where she now stands, and here the dynamic in the movie is all- is more about the shifting locus of power where it's, that is no longer the case.
So let's talk about power and fashion. A big point in this movie, which echoes reality very closely, is that Benji Barnes, the billionaire played by Justin Theroux, wants to essentially gain social acceptability for his—well, his girlfriend, played by Emily Blunt, Emily Charlton, there is this idea that if they can only appear as the owners of Runway, they will have ascended to the very white hot center of the culture and have gained something that money alone cannot buy them, which is cultural prominence.
I will just say, I thought that the Justin Theroux character was one big mistake of the movie because these people are very powerful and very dangerous and very intelligent. And Jeff Bezos himself smiling with his unwrinkled forehead backstage at the Met Gala- ... because he declined wisely to walk the carpet, sent shivers down my spine.
Um, Vinson, can we go back a little bit to the reality and the fantasy mixing element of the way that this movie depicts something that just happened in reality? What, what do you make of the presence of Lauren Sanchez Bezos at the Met Gala? 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, here's the thing about, uh, the, the, uh, presence of the Bezos clan i- is that, um, it's, it's a strange and, uh, sad paradox because what do we want from rich people to do stuff like this instead of, you know, build products that threaten to vaporize the, you know, attention, literacy, agency of a whole generation, et cetera, et cetera.
The, the other things that these people do preclude us from appreciating when they do things that they, you know, when we think of the benign gestures of the rich, like their tendencies toward philanthropy and s- uh, and, uh, stewardship of various sectors of the arts. I, I didn't really pay too much attention, um, to Lauren Sanchez Bezos one way or the other.
But what it was though, was it, it seemed to me her presence was more of a symbol of things, which is that our world these, these days, and I think this is part of the message of the sort of tectonics of Devil Wears Prada too, is that you have to be hoping for the good billionaire to come along. Mm-hmm.
You have to be, uh, there, there is some level of, of surrender to plutocracy that says, um, we just hope that- They decide to pay attention to the right things instead of the wrong things. 
Alex Schwartz: I, I certainly think this year is gonna be remembered. No one's gonna remember the theme of the gala this year. It's, it's, it's almost a non-theme.
Yeah. No one's gonna remember that. Everyone's gonna remember this as the year that the billionaires bought their way into the Met Gala, and that, um, and, and got in bed with it. And for better or for worse, that is what this year represents, and I just find the look fascinating. The Lauren Sanchez-Bezos look, fascinating.
Um, the dress itself, it really could have been out of The Devil Wears Prada 2. It, it's not a good dress, guys. She didn't look good in it. Yeah. She looked, she looked like she was, she'd been physically immobilized and had to kind of like hop, hop, hop because things were so tight. She did her, like usual, very cleavage-forward look.
And so I w- I think we, we find ourselves in a pos- I'm almost like, did she, did she do it so that, so that people would, would be entertained by tearing her apart? And, um, and, and that was like a little bit of bread thrown to us on the ground, and we can all feel really good about saying she looked bad, she looked bad.
Naomi Fry: No, I think she looks good, and I don't think she cares what we think. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, one of the things that was cracking me up was, uh, an online discourse saying that Law Roach, the stylist who dressed her, was, quote-unquote, "Part of the resistance," because of the styling failures of Mrs.
Naomi Fry: Bezos. Welcome to the resistance. Yeah. Law Roach, welcome to the resistance. 
Alex Schwartz: Fashion is political, yes, but of course, it's also deeply personal. In a minute, we're talking personal style. This is Critics at Large from The New Yorker.
:: MIDROLL:: 
All right, I'm opening with a story. Here we go. Get ready, guys. Let's 
Vinson Cunningham: do it. Let's 
Alex Schwartz: do it. Wow. Gather 'round. 
Vinson Cunningham: Boom. 
Alex Schwartz: I'd like to give you a little bit of, um, a childhood fashion history. Like, if there was an in... If this was a session and we were, like you were my therapists, this is the intake, okay? I was not allowed to wear pants for a long time.
That's my accounting of it. What? I was dressed like a little French girl in my mother's- Until what age? ... imagination. Well, I'm just saying little skirts, little leggings maybe, things. I remember being devastated in the first grade before picture day when I was given what I was supposed to wear, and it looked like it was on backwards to me.
It had, it was a little jumper thing with an X in the front. And yes, I recognize now I probably looked chic, and but I, I was, I was being told how to look, as kids are, and did not like it. So a huge revolution happened when the blue jean came my way, and I realized this too could be mine. Bell bottoms were very big.
Mm-hmm. It was the '90s. There was a big '60s re-envisioning happening. So I would say I came into my own sense of personal style around the age of eight, wearing big bell bottoms. And one day, one day, thanks to the Delia's catalog and a trip to Bloomingdale's, I walked into Hebrew school on Shabbat, 'cause we had to go there on Saturdays in our fancy clothes, wearing a full salt and pepper black and white...
It looked like a checkerboard. Black and white little skirt, black and white little top, neat- just 100% polyester, and these huge platform shoes. 
Naomi Fry: Oh. 
Alex Schwartz: And a boy looked at me and said, "Is it Halloween?" 
Naomi Fry: Oh, God. 
Alex Schwartz: And you know what? It wasn't Halloween, but I was feeling it. And that- ... is my memory of what can happen if you just try to express yourself through clothes.
You gotta 
Naomi Fry: own 
Alex Schwartz: the gas. Okay, so 
Naomi Fry: what happened after? Like, what, what happened? Like, did you, were you shamed into conformity? 
Alex Schwartz: Well, I became a feminist. Or- And 
Naomi Fry: Wow. 
Alex Schwartz: And I said, "I do not care." No, I was not shamed into con- into conformity. I think what, what makes... I, I'd love to hear about your own personal relationships to dressing.
You know, I've had, I've had phases. Uh, my freshman year of college, I didn't, again, wear a pair of pants, but that was by my own choice. I was doing skirts all the time. Long skirts, uh, boots with bells on them. Some hippie shit was going on. Yep. Who, who knows? And now I can't imagine that because I want nothing more than to look kind of, um, as unrumpled as I can in a nice blue jean and a white tee.
What's interesting about fashion is, is it does remind you, and I guess this goes back to the Met Gala theme, every day you must confront again the fact that we are embodied, that we gotta deal with that. And there are days when it feels like a big, wonderful celebration, and I'm flaunting my stuff and feeling great.
And there are, of course, many days where I just feel like a sack of potatoes in my little mesh bag, trying to just jangle along- ... until someone can get me home from the market. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: How do you relate to this, my friend? 
Naomi Fry: Well, I really, I really relate to that, Alex. Surprise, surprise. I really relate to that.
I think I have a very hard time being embodied and, which as a woman, I, I've always felt was a failing because I n- kind of never slipped into conventional femininity in any easy way, you know? But the, the kind of... I, I think I've come to realize over the years that it's, it's... I mean, my husband Han always says, "You really like to dress conceptually."
And by this, he means not, like- Kind of in any kind of like interesting Japanese designer way, but more in the sense of like dressing as an idea rather than- Mm-hmm ... you know, like, oh, this button-down shirt reminds me of a shirt that like, I don't know, like Robert Smith of The Cure wore in like some video in 1982, and I- when I was like 12.
I always loved that, and this r- You know what I mean? So it's not necessarily what's like flattering to me or what would look like especially good on my body, which has to do with the kind of like the difficulty of embodying this, but more of kind of like an idea, a kind of a cultural idea. And I've at least tried to relax into that w- way of dressing in recent years, and kind of accept that that's, that's what it is- I love that
if that makes sense. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Um- Yeah, and it's really important to me even though like if, if someone were... if pe- you know, people who see me probably are like, you know, I don't like strike a pose.
You know what I'm saying? I'm not like one of those people where you would be like, "Oh, she really cares about fashion. Look at these like special shoes she's wearing." You know what I mean? But it's, but I do really care about fashion actually, but in a way that's kind of, um, I don't know. It's just interesting for me on the level of culture and memory I guess.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Vincent, I know you care too, and you've talked, you know, many times about the influence that Ralph Lauren had on you when you were a kid and kind of- Mm-hmm ... like coming into your own sense of style. Where does your sense of style come from? 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, I think it... I, I'm, I am relating to many things that everybody's saying.
Um, but especially when I think about Ralph and I think about another of the, uh, great heroes of my youth, Dapper Dan, the great- Mm-hmm ... sort of cultural remixer and fashion designer, uh, from Harlem who I used to see walking around when I was a kid- Oh, wow ... in Harlem, and I would also see people wearing his designs.
Um, for me s- style is always, is like about two things. Nomi me- mentioned memory, and then I would also just add the street to that. Mm. Just seeing... This is one of the reasons I don't think I could ever successfully live away from New York for a really long amount of time. Just something about- Just sort of ideating outfits and I see little things on other people, or the experience that you have when you walk on the street and every storefront, uh, window is a little bit like a mirror.
There's a weird kind of self-absorption, at least f- uh, visually that happens. You look over, um, at this w- and you see yourself a little bit and you're like, "Oh, these jeans don't look the way that I thought they did." Mm. Something about just sort of the spectacle of other people, but then also kind of, uh, the many different mirrors that the city gives you to see yourself.
Um, but what you said, Nomi, about culture, dressing for me is also really about personal memory. It's like for many years I dressed only in black, and it was like... And I would think about it. It's like, it's about the way that I like how priests dress. Like, I just think it looks cool. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's about the way that I love living in Brooklyn. I think that Hasidic Jews are the s- most stylish people in the world. Wow. There's always a woman who's, like, 35 years old who's wearing a very shiny bubble jacket and a flowy black dress, and, like, flats that look like Tory Burch and a, just a perfect wig. And I'm like, "This lady is so stylish, man. She's killing it."
I just think, like, there's just so many different ways of dressing in black that I admire, and I'm like, I'm trying, I'm, like, thinking about these things. Like, I'm thinking about being a kid in the choir and, like, youth Sunday was always black and white. I'm wearing black and white. I think about that every time I wear black and white.
So I'm just like the way you kind of... Impressions stick to you. They, like- Yeah, you 
Naomi Fry: metabolize 
Vinson Cunningham: all these different things ... 
Naomi Fry: stuff in movies. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. I'm still for, for instance, thinking about, uh, that show, The Studio, which I really liked. Seth Rogen looks great in a double-breasted jacket, and he's wearing them all through that, and I'm still wondering, "Okay, how am I gonna...
W- would I look okay in a double-breasted jacket?" Just like you see things and they just stick to you, and you, you work your way to them. Um, but what both of you guys said also matters to me a lot, which is, like, it's so much about gender, you know? And, and I do think that dressing is a way to try to achieve gender euphoria in a weird way.
Mm-hmm. It's like, "What kind of man am I?" Mm-hmm. And so y- and, and so it's all these ideas that are, like, implanted from childhood. One of my friends, shout out to you, Lovia, one day I was wearing all linen and these leather sandals, and she was like, "You look like an old African uncle." And I was like, "Thank you so much."
Because I... That is like the... There's a Black American uncle who's just like that uncle who I'm referencing with this shit, you know? It's just about loose things that have been rattling around in your mind forever. And if you can, like, realize ideas about yourself and about the world through the way that you dress, I think that's cool.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I love what you're saying, Vinson, and it, you know, it, there are so many ways to try to embody yourself as most purely and as the pure expression of who you are, but who you are can change, and it can change from- Yeah ... day to day. What you, what you say about gender euphoria, um- Is, is true. You know, we're all talking about this as, as cisgender people.
But it doesn't mean that we can't, you know, push whatever that means for us. Like, I, I tend to have, I tend to be most comfortable dressing in what I consider to be a sort of boyish way. Mm-hmm. But that said, it's then really fun to go in a totally different direction.
Um, the first time my son saw me in a dress, he was flabbergasted. Like- ... he couldn't understand what was happening. And he was really excited. And he said, "That's beautiful." And it was so- Aw ... interesting to me- ... that that just struck him. Then he wanted a dress. We got him a dress. He, he, he loves wearing his dress every so often- Aw
and getting fancy. And I, I love that we live in a time when those things are just fun. And they- Yeah ... can mean something or they don't have to mean something. It's just, it's interesting to see a little person figuring out who he is. Someone who doesn't... I mean, he does not care, 99% of the time, what is on his body, as long as it feels comfortable. But then he'll have a really strong, striking notion. You know? That's how we know, um- ... we're alive. That we can play with ourselves in these ways. That's what it's all about, I think, when you, when you get away from the status and the money and the cost and the... It's about, it's about celebrating being alive.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: How much does the ambient fashion industry and its workings, I don't know, infect your way of, of dress? Like, do you feel that you're making all of your decisions? I had this really alienating thing happen to me, uh, as an anecdote and maybe the, as a way of asking the question. I got these glasses that, you know, like thin-rimmed gold glasses that, of the kind that really hadn't been in style since I was, like, in second grade. I'm, I'm pretty sure these are very much like the, the glasses, the first pair of glasses I ever got in second grade. Um, but then I saw some thing on GQ that was like, "This kind of glasses," you know, "Men wearing slutty little glasses," I think is the way they did it. 
Naomi Fry: You liked that. 
Vinson Cunningham: It was something like that. Um, and they're like, "They're, they're back in." And I, and you know, it's like whatever, I got them a year before this thing came out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it, it just made me question whether I was a fashion victim instead of the captain of my fate. 
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know what I mean? Does that happen to you? Or do you, d- are you, is there any anxiety of influence for you in terms of your clothes and the fashion industry? 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I know totally what you mean. And Vincent, you were talking before about noticing things on the street. Well, things on the street are filtering down to us from somewhere else, from, from the industry.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's j- it's just like the cerulean monologue that Miranda Priestly gives. Um, and so you start noticing, ooh, I want something like that. I wanna do a little more, like, you know, a k- k- kind of chunky sneaker or, um, I, I remember deeply coveting a perfectly round sunglass that looks hideous on my face.
And you think, oh, no one's done that since John Lennon, and then suddenly everyone has done it. But you know what? I'm actually happy with that now. There are maybe more opportunities if more things are being made and sold in that vein to experiment with it, to try it out. So that I feel okay with. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I feel okay with it, too. Like, there's no way in anything that I do that I'm the captain of my ship. Like, there's just no way. Even if I feel, and o- of course, often I feel like I am the captain of my ship, but I know that there are so many forces working on us that it just, it simply can't be. It can't be. You know? It might be a, a, a choice other people are making and other people have contributed to making for me, but I also have my own entire world of associations that are linked to that choice, uh, in a complementary way.
So I, I think that's fine. 
Vinson Cunningham: That is a really mature way of thinking about it. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, who knows? But ... 
Vinson Cunningham: I really, I, I have much more attachment to being on my own shit than you do. I'm like, "No- 
Naomi Fry: No, I used to- ... I made it 
Vinson Cunningham: up. 
Alex Schwartz: You know, I made this up. This look is mine." 
Naomi Fry: No, I used to be that way, but I feel, but it is, I think you are the only you, Vincent, ultimately. So true. Even if, even if the choices you make, and all of us are, even if the choices we made are, are, you know, influenced in many ways by forces outside of us, the way we combine these choices are Are still singular, I think Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah
Alex Schwartz: Beautiful. This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Cuadrado composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost, with mixing by Mike Kuchman. And as always, you can find each and every one of our episodes at newyorker.com/critics.
​
[a]@mike_kutchman@condenast.com can we cleanup?
_Assigned to mike_kutchman@condenast.com_
[b]tell me what you think here -- in a way this might be the best way to say this 


Alex is confirming that she was in a Prada dress, and then finishing the thought that those embellishments were on that dress


but yes it sounds funny -- what would you like to cut ?
[c]I think we can cut
[d]@mike_kutchman@condenast.com I know what you're saying, but I think it'll read more cleanly if we trim as marked!
[e]done