How Real Is The Devil Wears Prada? 8 Documentaries That Show How The Fashion Industry Actually Works
Earlier this year, The Devil Wears Prada 2 sashayed its way to the top of the global box office charts.
This was just days before the internet exploded with the now annual deluge of images and takes from the Met Gala, and, later, the first Cannes red carpet of the year; it felt as if the world of fashion was inescapable. With the film now available to buy or rent, and headed to streaming on Disney+ on July 29, you can either relive the experience at home, or see what all the fuss was about if you missed it in theatres.
Movies and fashion have walked hand in hand since the early days of cinema, with one art form usually reflecting the glamour of the other with all the dazzle of a sequin dress. However, for fashion fans interested in exploring some of the darker truths about the industry — even at its loftiest peaks — there is no shortage of documentaries to choose from.
In the list below, I’ve noted eight of the very best of them. These include biographical studies of some of the industry’s most famous names as well as more panoramic views on the business as a whole. Read on to learn a bit more about each of them and use the guide to find out where to stream them on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Fans of classic rockstar documentaries or biopics — in other words, stories about generational talents who rise like a rockets without realising how close they’re getting to the sun — will feel right at home with this fascinating 2018 study of Alexander McQueen, a designer who went from designing boundary pushing garments in his early career to creating shows later on that wouldn’t have looked out of place alongside the latest Hirst’s and Emin’s in the Saatchi gallery.
McQueen was a similar character in some ways to the likes of Amy Winehouse or Heath Ledger: an artistic prodigy from a humble background who made it to the top of his industry before dying tragically — leaving his fans to wonder and dream about all the work they never got to see. If you’re interested in those kinds of figures, make sure to check this movie out.
If you’re more drawn to documentaries that seek to give the industry’s unsung heroes a little more spotlight, Bill Cunningham: New York from 2010 should be just the ticket. This is a movie about the titular photographer, a man who essentially created the idea of fashion street photography in the 1960s before becoming a regular contributor to the New York Times style pages in the 1970s — a job he continued to do pretty much until he died in 2016.
The movie beautifully captures Cunningham’s dedication to his craft and the way that he gradually became — thanks in part to his iconic blue coat — a beloved mascot of the New York fashion scene. It also takes the time to show how solitary a figure he was in his private life. It’s terrific stuff.
Up until his heartbreaking if relatively timely passing earlier this year, Frederick Wiseman was considered among most cinephiles to be the most important living American filmmaker. The great documentarian started making movies about American institutions in the 1960s and continued to work steadily for the next six decades, even producing a late flourish of masterpieces in the 2010s (with At Berkeley, Ex Libris, In Jackson Heights and National Gallery). When it comes to fashion-specific works, however, his documentary Model is still one of the best.
In typical Wiseman fashion, the movie is an un-narrated, fly-on-the-wall study of the Zoli Modelling Agency during the early days of New York’s flashiest and most excessive decade. Filmed in black and white and ending on an Oscar de la Renta catwalk show, it’s a gorgeous time capsule of the era — all hustle, bustle, cigarettes and chunky mobile phones.
Now 11 years on from its release, I guess enough time has passed to say that 2015’s The True Cost maybe didn’t affect the industry that the filmmakers had hoped for. Fast fashion continues to be the dominant force in our clothes-buying lives, but it’s to the film’s credit that it attempted to do for the industry what Supersize Me had done for fast food 10 years earlier.
If you’re interested in seeing an exposé on the human and environmental cost of the fashion industry, it is certainly worth seeking out — just don’t expect too much in terms of subtlety or style.
High & Low - John Galliano is another documentary that tells the story of a fashion world legend whose mercurial rise in the industry was later overshadowed by an abrupt fall. Similar in some ways to Alexander McQueen, Galliano was one of the key fashion figures (and one of the most provocative) of the 1990s and 2000s — at least until an infamous antisemetic outburst in 2011.
Directed by Kevin McDonald (The Last King of Scotland, One to One: John and Yoko), High & Low is a documentary that jumps compellingly back and forth between the designer's dizzying rise and his post-outburst rehabilitation. For fashion fans and newcomers alike, it’s a fascinating story.
If you’re a Devil Wears Prada super-fan who wants to know a little bit more about the woman who inspired Miranda Priestly (and the magazine that inspired Runway), the 2009 movie The September Issue is the doc for you. It’s odd to think, but non-industry people really didn’t have a whole lot of interest in Vogue editor Anna Wintour before the release of the first DWP movie, but Streep’s performance burnished her image to such an extent in 2006 that it’s no surprise that a documentary on Wintour arrived just a few years later.
The September Issue offers a behind-the-scenes look in the offices of Vogue as the magazine’s staff work towards that titular edition. The movie was directed by R.J. Cutler, who went on to make Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry and Elton John: Never Too Late — so if you’re a fan of either of them, you can probably guess what kind of approach to expect with this one.
Outside of directing, Cutler also worked as a producer on several celebrated celebrity docs, including 2015’s Listen to Me Marlon and last year’s Marc by Sofia, in which the designer (whose surname is Jacobs) is profiled by the filmmaker (whose surname is Coppola).
If you appreciate intimate documentaries on public figures, I’d highly recommend it, as Coppola (who directed movies like The Bling Ring and Marie Antoinette) and Jacobs are friends — and that bond, as well as the sense of shared artistic appreciation, gives the movie a rare and unique sense of warmth between the filmmaker and subject.
The last fashion documentary on our list, Westwood: Punk. Icon. Activist., offers a portrait of one of the most trailblazing and influential designers of the 20th century — so if you’re interested in a figure from a little further back who managed to stay relevant right up until they died in 2022, I recommend giving this one a try.
Westwood will also be of particular interest to fans of the punk scene that blew up in the late ‘70s in London — think safety pins, spiky hair, lots of plaid — but it’s also wonderful to see how the designer carried that anti-establishment ethos into her various causes as a campaigner and activist. Icon indeed.
