When Lauren Weisberger was 22, she landed the job that would make her famous throughout her life. Because she had “literally never had a job outside of working at a frozen yogurt place with a little babysitting and rescue work” but had hopes of becoming a writer, she secured an interview to be an assistant to Anna Wintour, then editor-in-chief of American Vogue. To the general dismay of the Vogue office in New York, she arrived with a résumé and writing samples in a sensible, unfashionable leather briefcase that her parents had given her as a graduation present. “I was fresh out of college—four years of studying, partying, and wearing sweatpants all day. I had no interest in fashion, so Vogue was a completely foreign culture to me.” To everyone’s surprise, she got the nod.
The role was “demanding, fast-paced, stressful, and mind-bending around the clock. I would wake up every morning to voicemails left overnight, endless tasks that had to be done immediately.” It was 1999, and “Anna didn’t have a computer. As her assistants, we were her computers. And everyone in the office was tall, beautiful, thin, and completely fascinated by this world in a way that felt toxic to me. Every minute in that office felt like an emergency. I was just a kid. I went into survival mode.”
„Anna said, „Your hair, I can’t even -” Then with a gesture of displeasure she sent me to the salon where I still go”
Twenty-five years later, in the lobby of the elegant London hotel where Weisberger was staying, there’s a huge red stiletto shoe with a pitchfork for a heel. She turned that first work into a fictional novel that became a film that became a cultural phenomenon. Now a spectacular West End musical, with music by Elton John, that opens Dec. 1. When we talk, Weisberger has just attended a preview, watching Georgie Buckland as Andy, the fictional story assistant, walk on stage (with a briefcase, to huge laughs) and warm up the audience with a story that begins with that first work.
Today, in a black sweater and dark jeans, discreet, shiny earrings and an expensive white coat, Weisberger looks successful, chic, sophisticated. She still doesn’t care about fashion, she says, ignoring compliments on her clothes: “I wear black because it’s easy.” But her life is still tied to the boss her bestseller helped turn into a legend. She owes her perfectly wavy, long blond hair to Wintour. “One day, soon after I started, she looked at me and said, ‘Lauren, your hair, I can’t even —’” Weisberger mimics the gesture of displeasure, like someone who has just seen a spider in the sink and wants to remove it. “She sent me to a good salon in New York to get my hair colored and cut. And I still go there. They are my hairdressers and my dear friends, to this day.” Her hair looks great. Say what you will about Wintour, she knows her stuff.
Weisberger has had the kind of career that most writers struggling to survive in the tough world of fiction can only dream of. Although none of her seven subsequent novels have matched the success of her debut, she earns a good living and has a comfortable home in Connecticut with her family. But it was no fairy tale. It’s hard to remember, given the momentum she’s had now, the furor The Devil Wears Prada caused when it was published in 2003. The New York Times called it “bite-the-boss fiction,” criticizing its protagonist for having “an inappropriate superiority complex [that] is one of the major problems with this inchoate book.”
Weisberger says the backlash “traumatized me. Powerful women, journalists, whom I respect to this day, were offended. They thought I hadn’t paid my dues, that I was whining and complaining about having to get up early and buy coffee. The response was basically: Who did she think she was? All that noise did wonders for book sales, but if I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have written the book. I didn’t understand that Anna would ever find out about the book or that anyone in the media would be even remotely interested in it. Of course, from where I am now, I know that the book allowed me to do what I love more than anything else, which is to devote my career to writing. But at the time, if I had the chance to take it back, I would have.”
The really funny thing is that she never really intended to write a book. “I didn’t think about it for a second—as long as I had this job.” After she left, she enrolled in a writing class where “everyone else was an adult writing first-person accounts of really serious things, like divorce and drug use. I didn’t have any of that to report, but I had this crazy experience that I hadn’t had time to process. The book I wrote wasn’t a critique—it was a fun romp about my experience. I came up with the title in class, on the spur of the moment.”
Nieświadomi Weisberger jej wydawcy podsycali plotki, wysyłając kopie próbne zawinięte w zwykły brązowy papier do każdego asystenta w Condé Nast, właściciela Vogue. Dalsze zamieszanie wywołał fakt, że wydawca, obawiając się gniewu Condé Nast, wydał bezsensowne zaprzeczenia, że postać Mirandy Priestly została oparta na Annie Wintour. „Teraz wydaje się to śmieszne, ale wtedy mówili: »Niech nas nie pozwą«”.
Weisberger nie słyszała od Wintour, odkąd przestała być jej asystentką. „Nie sądzę, żebym była choć punkcikiem na jej radarze” — wzrusza ramionami. „Ale kto wie. Ona jest zagadką”. Wintour widziała film w momencie premiery w 2006 roku: słynnie ubrała się na pokaz w Pradzie, co sugeruje, że diabeł przynajmniej ma poczucie humoru. Ale nigdy nie skomentowała tego, ani książki, która uczyniła z niej powszechnie znaną postać.
„To były inne czasy. To było coś w stylu: „Zamknij gębę, zapłać składki, weź się w garść”
Wydaje mi się, że Weisberger zrobiła więcej niż ktokolwiek inny – poza samą Wintour – aby zbudować legendę, która istnieje wokół redaktorki Vogue, która stała się ikoną kobiecej siły. Ale Weisberger się waha. „O nie, nie tylko ja. Dwa słowa – Meryl Streep. Wykonała niesamowitą robotę. Kiedy kręcono film, pomyślałam: „O, to jest fajne. Fajnie jest oglądać, jak powstaje film i może niektórzy ludzie pójdą go obejrzeć”. Ale Meryl wyniosła postać Mirandy Priestly na inny poziom dzięki swojemu geniuszowi. Miranda jest w książce dość jednowymiarowa: twarda, zimna, niesamowicie kompetentna, u szczytu swoich możliwości. Ale Meryl Streep nie jest jednowymiarowa. Ona tchnęła życie w Mirandę”.
Diabeł ubiera się u Prady nie dotyczy jednak tylko Wintour, Vogue, mody czy Nowego Jorku. „Wiele osób utożsamia się z tym jako historią przerażającego szefa” – mówi Weisberger. „Wszyscy mieliśmy takie doświadczenia”.
I odwoływało się do konfliktu pokoleniowego w miejscu pracy, w czasach, gdy pokolenie wyżu demograficznego wciąż rządziło żelazną ręką. Czytając to teraz, nastrój buntu przeciwko nierozsądnym żądaniom – wykrzykiwanym z narożnych biur – wydaje się proroczą przepowiednią sposobu, w jaki pokolenie Z domaga się teraz zresetowania kultury biurowej i równowagi między życiem zawodowym a prywatnym.
“It was a different time,” Weisberger says. “It was like, ‘Shut up, pay your dues, accept it.’” The book is also very accurate about society’s myopic view of beauty. Andy is embarrassed in the Vogue cafeteria for the crime of ordering cream soup, while a coworker who wakes up feeling like he can’t live up to the Vogue office’s unwritten dress code of thinness considers “reporting in as obese.” Weisberger says, “It seemed very normal at the time. It was definitely emphasized at Vogue, but it was much broader. It was in the culture, in the way I was raised. It was all about being thin. I think we’ve made progress there. I hope so. It’s definitely still a priority to be thin, but at least we’re learning to control ourselves.”
As a West End musical, The Devil Wears Prada — first a scandalous book, then a darkly comic film — gets a third act that lifts the mood. Vanessa Williams, playing Priestly, enters the stage through a trapdoor in sunglasses to rapturous applause: a nuclear Wintour, but with a sugary edge like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé in stadium mode. Assistants parade arm in arm, tossing their hair like supermodels on the Versace runway. Andy gets a Chanel makeover. After an aborted first run in Chicago two years ago (“It just wasn’t ready to go to Broadway, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn’t know if the project was going to die at that point”), the show had, as the modern-day parlance goes, a flare-up. More jokes, more energy, more of the subversive irreverence that made the book a hit — and much better clothes. “It’s funny, right?” Weisberger says. „And joyful. We need joy now.”
Once, when she was being yelled at for not picking up Wintour’s coffee order quickly enough or for sending Donatella the wrong flowers, Weisberger would call home and her mother would tell her to hand in her notice. “But my father would say, ‘This is an incredible opportunity, a bird’s-eye view that no one your age has.’ I wish I had the emotional strength to have more perspective, because I could have learned so much more. Because, apart from all the hype about Anna, she is extraordinary, the best at what she does. And I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. But if I had, I don’t know if I could have joked about it. And then none of this would have happened.”
