Best Fashion Looks and Outfits Explained

Emily is now in a senior position at Dior, and she revels in the power she yields.

Meanwhile, Andy is back at Runway as the magazine’s features editor after it comes under fire for endorsing a fashion brand whose items are built in a sweatshop. With advertising dollars under threat, Miranda, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), and Andy come face to face with Emily.

This look was bought in a secondhand store. Rogers says, “We tried very hard to wear that blouse backwards. She was going to turn in that hallway and waltz them back to her office, and that’s when I wanted you to see that Dior brand on that shirt.”

But it didn’t work out. So, she wore it front ways.

Rogers turned to the luxury fashion house Balenciaga to find Miranda’s return.

When Rogers and Streep met for the first time, there was no question. “The devil comes back in red. We were both like, ‘There is no other choice.’”

Miranda makes her grand entrance at a red-carpet event wearing a Balenciaga red ballgown made from silk taffeta. It was perfect and was paired with a red heel. “It was so malleable, and it just framed her like a picture frame in that white hair.”

At one point, Rogers says they had played around with the idea of a hat. “Balenciaga sent a couple, but that framed – a hat, we knew, was not the correct choice. It would have added something and taken a lot away.”

even with the threats facing print journalism, Miranda Priestly is still at the top. She’s still powerful and her global reach has grown, and that was something Rogers wanted to express.

Rogers moved away from the cropped jackets and pencil skirts, giving her a softer look with a clean silhouette. She was “someone that has nothing to prove,” Rogers says.

In one scene, Miranda sports a tassel jacket by Dries Van Noten. It was from a runway show that Rogers became fixated on, but she didn’t know where to put it.

And then, it came to her. Miranda has to go down to the cafeteria, a place she has never been. But it’s where the bankers and accountants are meeting to discuss Runway’s future.

The tasseled jacket spoke volumes amid a sea of tailored men’s suits. Rogers says, “It spoke, ‘This is an editrix. She’s wearing a jacket with tassels.’”

It also served as a bookend to a previous outfit. In the first film, during the Cerulean soliloquy, Miranda is in a cropped Bill Blass jacket with dangling coins. “It’s really ornate. That tassel jacket, for me, was the sister of that jacket in the first movie. It made a connection for me.”

The first film’s costume designer Patrica Field drew distant inspiration from Diane Keaton’s look in “Annie Hall.”

When audiences first met Andy Sachs 20 years ago, she was Miranda’s newly hired assistant, and a fish out of water. Since then, she’s traveled the world and has become an award-winning reporter, and that was something Rogers and Hathaway discussed when putting together Andy’s closet.

Says Rogers, “From the beginning, I said to myself, ‘A reporter needs a messenger bag.’ It was the props department that found a beaten-up Coach bag. “It belonged to her the minute she slid it on her shoulder.”

Now that Andy is a reporter, Rogers noticed feminine menswear was in stores, and she found a “Giorgio Armani vintage jacket that hung like a boyfriend jacket” on Hathaway, and it was a perfect place to start with the character.

Asked which look she was yearning to talk about, Rogers picked a moment that pays homage to fashion designer Giorgio Armani who passed away last September.

In one scene while they’re in Milan, Andy and Miranda are both dressed in Armani Privé. Rogers explains, “We were supposed to film an Armani fashion show, and he was ill.” She adds that the crystalized suspenders worn by Andy and the Armani Privé looks sported by both women ended up becoming an homage to the fashion designer.

Spoiler alert – Rogers biggest callback is the return of the cerulean sweater, in the bright blue shade with a touch of turquoise that became a ubiquitous part of the original movie. For reference, Rogers tracked down the sweater from the archives, complete with the corn chowder stain.

And the costume designer found the perfect spot to feature a new sweater made to dupe the original. The sweater was a meaningful item to Andy, so the idea was that she had hung onto it. “It had gone through the years,” says Rogers. She wanted to look a little like Margiela and wanted to do something extra with it, giving it raw and unraveled edges. In the fitting, “We lopped the sleeves off its stunt double and she (Hathaway) took scissors and it became a sweater vest.”

The Chanel boots do not make a return. “I felt it needed to stay in its own glass bird cage.”

Rogers observed it was “pitiful” that only men wear ties. So, look no further than this film to see a smorgasbord of ties on the women.

She noted the many ways a tie or a scarf could heighten a look. Roger says,  “They’re a little clue to a character in the way you tie them.”

At the end of the film, Emily no longer works for Dior. She’s working at Coach. Her final punk look “fit Emily’s character.” “That tie was important that it was either skinny leather or it was chain mail because she’s edgier.”

With Hathaway, Rogers incorporated them into her wardrobe, but there was one scene where it didn’t quite work out. “We did a loosened tie and we took it away. It just was too self-conscious.”