.jpg)
Dear reader, it is a rarity in the modern world to find oneself slap-bang in the middle of a case of mistaken identity worthy of an Oscar Wilde farce, but find myself misidentified I do. I’m in a tight spot: Millions of TikTok followers have put two and two together—by which I mean one viral TikTok video, one novel, and one movie—and concluded that yours truly is the real inspiration for one of the snootiest fashion girls ever created: Emily, the hoity-toity English assistant to Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada.
A silent victim, I have suffered this slur quietly. I feared that speaking out—despite many brave women in the Vogue sisterhood urging me to—would only invite further cruel scrutiny from the bullying tweens of TikTok. But there was a moment, which took place in a London cinema just a few weeks ago, that made me realize I must come forward.
Picture the scene. I had just ensconced myself on a red velvet sofa in the Everyman Cinema in Bayswater to watch Wuthering Heights with my daughter Tess, 15, and her schoolfriend Ernie. They had insisted on going to the cinema early to watch all the trailers, so I settled in for a quick doze while the trailers smashed their way across the screen. I was startled when Tess suddenly shot up in her seat and yelled, “Mum! It’s you!”
I looked up to find myself confronted by the sight of Emily Blunt, dressed head to toe in Dior, playing Emily in the trailer for DWP2. “Do my eyes deceive me?” she scathingly utters, squinting at Anne Hathaway’s Andy. The two are meeting again for the now-much-anticipated second installment of the movie franchise.
“Don’t be silly, that’s not me, darling,” I reprimanded Tess.
“No, no, it is,” Tess went on. “Everyone at school knows it’s you.”
“What? But Emily was so mean. I’m not mean.”
Ignoring this, Tess continued, “Mum, it is you. I searched it up.”
“Own it, Plum,” Ernie chimed in. “It’s a flex to be Emily.”
After a traumatic supper during which Tess and Ernie listed all the Google data that “proved” I was Emily, I realized that if I was to reclaim my innocence, a full inquiry was required. Thankfully, I watched a lot of CSI: NY in the 2000s when I used to get home from parties late at night, so I knew exactly how to launch a detective investigation: Secure the crime scene; locate the witnesses; interview the persons of interest; make an arrest; assemble a handpicked jury who agrees with you.
First, let us visit the original crime scene: 4 Times Square was an innocent skyscraper that housed Condé Nast on one side and a bunch of lawyers on the other. (Neither side ever spoke to each other, obvs.) In the early 2000s, the Vogue office was invaded by a questionably dressed BBC TV crew making a documentary called Boss Women about Anna Wintour. I can’t be entirely sure, but I suspect that Anna, having little time for the cameras, told them to follow me around for a bit, and so I featured in the show talking about the importance of wearing cocktail attire for work if one was a Voguette while swanning around the office in a chiffon Dolce skirt.
The show aired in England in 2003: No one in New York took the least bit of notice of it. But a couple of decades later, when segments of this show went viral on TikTok, newspaper articles started appearing suggesting that Lauren Weisberger, who wrote The Devil Wears Prada (the novel was published in 2003, the movie came out in 2006) and was once Anna’s assistant, had based the Emily character on me. This conclusion rested on two key “facts”: Firstly, that Emily has an English accent (which I do); secondly, that I had been Anna’s assistant. (It didn’t matter that I never had been Anna’s assistant.)
I admit, working at Vogue instilled in me some Emily-ish habits: I booked hour-long blowouts at John Barrett at Bergdorf’s, which I counted as work (I justified this by telling myself this was the only way I could observe the Park Avenue princesses in their natural habitat); I only wore high heels—105s, natch—to the office and disparaged the girls who wore flats as highly unprofessional; I waltzed up and down the corridors flicking my ironed hair from side to side with nails that were manicured on a biweekly schedule; like Emily, I believed that attending the Paris shows was the prize, but when I did get there, I usually went down with life-threatening strep throat due to the exhaustion caused by preplanning my wardrobe for the week. I often spent about 50% of Fashion Week in bed at the Hotel Costes, being tended to by handsome French doctors: This was standard procedure for Voguettes.
But still I had my suspicions about who the real Emily was. Prime suspect was Kate Young. I’d always secretly thought that Kate, then one of Anna’s assistants and now one of the most successful celebrity stylists in Hollywood, had inspired the character. It made sense: Kate was immaculately groomed, her blonde hair on a par with Carolyn Bessette’s, and she was usually neatly turned out in Helmut Lang or Chanel. She guarded the entrance to the editor’s office as though she were a human portcullis; spoke with a chic English twang, having spent her junior year abroad at Oxford University; and had an English boyfriend. She was also completely terrifying.
This week I finally asked Kate point-blank. “I was never scary, was I?” she replied, clearly in denial. “I was a task rabbit. I did coffee, lunch, dry cleaning, shopping, party planning, kids, logistics, the book, ran down the hall to fetch people for meetings.” She made herself sound far lowlier than she was: “I spent a lot of time smoking in cool editors’ offices when Anna wasn’t physically in the office so I could figure out how to be more like them.” She then claimed to have concrete proof that she wasn’t the real Emily: “I wasn’t ever the first assistant, so Emily definitely wasn’t based on me. I was second for one year. Leslie was first when Lauren was second.” (As in the book and film, there is a hierarchy of assistants that is very real.)
Leslie? Leslie Fremar, whom I recalled as a stern but beautiful brunette, was most certainly a person of interest. I wondered how I could track down Leslie, who is now, coincidentally, another hugely influential Hollywood stylist.
I swiftly telegraphed fellow former Voguette Amy Taran Astley, who’d been beauty director during my time and is now editor in chief of Architectural Digest. “I swear on my extensive circa 1990s Manolo collectsion that it’s never occurred to me that you could be Emily,” she said. I was relieved—momentarily—until she continued: “You might have developed some outfits that had cocktail-party vibes. You might have gone from no maintenance to high-maintenance in the blink of an eyelash extension. And the thing you and Emily have in common is a posh accent, brunette hair, and being sharp and clever. Okay, there is a bit of Plum in Emily.”
I stopped her right there. Amy was hitting a little too close to the bone for my liking. What about Leslie, who was first assistant when Kate Young was second (and is still Amy’s BFF)? I asked. “In general, I found A.W.’s assistants very intimidating,” Amy responded. “They were so busy and protective of the secrecy of the office. The vibe was ‘you can’t sit with us.’ I used to do my business with them and then scamper away.” Then she added, “I feel like Leslie could have influenced Emily quite a bit. She likes things done correctly.”
Amy’s testimony was definitive. I located Leslie, who, under intense questioning, made a statement via email. “Lauren worked for me, and unfortunately, it all tracks (except the mean part).”
Except the mean part? Emily is all mean parts. I was no closer to an answer.
I returned to Tess with my findings: that the real Emily was inspired by multiple Voguettes, but “the mean part”—well, I couldn’t pin that on anyone. Tess, now judge and jury, eyed me wearily from behind her chemistry homework. “The whole point is that all movies need a villain,” she sighed. “And Mum, they have to be English.”
Thanks, Tess, I get it. Case closed.
P.S. When I contacted her office for a comment, Lauren Weisberger did not respond.
Tune back in next week for the official Replica Handbag Store conclusion of this bilateral investigation. Was Plum correct? Return for the answer.