In the nearly 20 years since The Devil Wears Prada premiered, many think pieces have been written about the fashion. How could they not? It’s easy to wax poetic about the Chanel boots worn by Andy Sachs AT (after transformation) and the plethora of fabulous coats Miranda Priestly throws over her assistant’s desk. But allow me to offer a new perspective, Andy BT (before transformation)—with her seemingly endless supply of crewneck sweaters and A-line skirts—was not that bad. I might go as far to say it was good? At the very least, it was authentic.
Before her transformation, Andy’s wardrobe reflected who she was—a serious would-be journalist with ambitions beyond the fashion world. Her style demonstrated her commitment to substance over superficiality. She prioritized practicality and comfort.
Viewed through 2025 eyes—after years of minimalism, normcore, and quiet luxury shaped by the rise of brands like The Row and Toteme and people like Kendall Jenner and Gwyneth Paltrow—Andy Sachs’s pre-makeover wardrobe reads to me less as dowdy and more as genuine. The unassuming knits, practical layering, and oversized silhouettes now echo a kind of subdued cool that aligns surprisingly well with today’s taste for quiet, if not explicitly luxurious, fashion. It got me thinking, Andy wasn’t behind—she was just early.
When I brought this up in a meeting, my coworkers quickly became my skeptics. In order to prove my point, I decided to recreate each of Andy’s BT looks: there was the lilac sweater and tan coat combo she wore to her first interview at Runway, the go-to trench coat and scarf situation for fetching coffee and those Calvin Klein skirts, and of course, the cerulean blue sweater she has on when Miranda Priestly decides to read her for filth during a run-through. I’ll be honest, of all the looks, the latter was by far the hardest to redo. The argyle skirt hits the knee awkwardly, the opaque tights are too heavy, and the chunky clogs weigh down the whole ensemble. But, with a little help from the Bazaar fashion closet and the incredible people who run it, I was able to try cashmere sweaters from Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch, trench coats from Nili Lotan, and skirts from Vince and Goop that honored Andy Sachs’s wardrobe and were not too dissimilar from my own.
In truth, I see a lot of myself in Andy BT. I, too, always prioritize comfort. The highest heel I own is two inches and I always keep a scarf within reach. I have a few oversized trench coats and many plain T-shirts, all of which are always layered over or under a sweater. Back in 2006, Andy was working grueling hours, but she wasn’t fielding Slack messages on the subway or keeping up with Instagram, TikTok, and a breaking news cycle all before breakfast. If her wardrobe—minimal, neutral, repeatable—once signaled a lack of polish, today it reads more like a survival strategy.
There’s a narrative arc in the film that frames Andy’s style transformation as necessary to her professional success. Once she meets Jimmy Choo, she also learns how to spell Gabbana. Still, I would argue it was never about the clothes, but the confidence they gave her. The old adage rings true: when you look good, you feel good. Andy starts playing by the rules of a world she once judged from the outside, and the people who once looked past her begin to look twice. But as she begins to coast through work, she starts to drift from the values—and the people—she once held close. And while her new looks are undeniably glamorous, they come with trade-offs.
In the final scene we see Andy at a job interview, dressed in dark-denim jeans, a black turtleneck, and a brown leather jacket. It’s clearly not couture, but it’s not clogs either. This look will always be my favorite because it’s the one she seems most like herself in. Somewhere between the lost post-graduate and the overzealous assistant she found her balance. So maybe the old adage needs a tweak: when you feel good, you look good.
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