Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston, Last Night at Chateau Marmont
but to ask her to clarify.’
‘Oh, no, not that! However will she react?’
Emily, as usual, didn’t appreciate my sarcasm. ‘She’ll be in at noon. If I were you, I’d figure out what you are going to say ahead of time, because she is not going to be happy if you don’t have that review. Especially since she asked for it last night,’ she pointed out with a barely suppressed smile. She was clearly delighted that I was about to get abused.
There was little left to do but wait. It was my luck that Miranda was at her monthly marathon shrink session (‘She just doesn’t have time to go all the way over there once a week,’ Emily had explained when I asked why she went for three straight hours), the only chunk of time during the entire day or night when she wouldn’t call us and, of course, the only time I needed her to. A mountain of mail that I’d neglected to open for the past two days threatened to topple off the desk, and another two full days’ worth of dirty dry cleaning was heaped under it, around my feet. Huge sigh to let the world know just how unhappy I was, and I dialed the cleaners.
‘Hi, Mario. It’s me. Yeah, I know – two whole days, no talk. Can I get a pickup, please? Great. Thanks.’ I hung up the phone and forced myself to pull some of the clothes onto my lap, where I would sort through them and record them on the computerized list I kept of her outgoing clothes. When Miranda called the office at 9:45 P.M. and demanded to know where her new Chanel suit was, all I had to do was open up the document and tell her that they’d gone out the day before and were due to be delivered the following day. I logged today’s clothes in (one Missoni blouse, two identical pairs of Alberta Ferretti pants, two Jil Sander sweaters, two white Hermès scarves, and one Burberry trench coat), threw them in a shopping bag emblazoned with Runway, and called for a messenger to take them downstairs to the area where the cleaners would pick them up.
I was on a roll! Cleaning was one of the more dreaded tasks, because no matter how many times I had to do it, I was still repulsed to be sorting through someone else’s dirty clothes. After I finished sorting and bagging every day, I had to wash my hands: the lingering smell of Miranda was all-pervasive, and even though it consisted of a mixture of Bulgari perfume and moisturizer and occasionally a whiff of B-DAD’s cigarette smoke and was not at all unpleasant, it made me feel physically ill. British accents, Bulgari perfume, white silk scarves – just a few of life’s simpler pleasures that were forever ruined for me.
The mail was the usual, ninety-nine percent garbage that Miranda would never see. Everything that was just labeled ‘Editor in Chief’ went directly to the people who edited the Letters pages, but many of the readers had gotten more savvy and now addressed their correspondence directly to Miranda. It took me about four seconds to skim one and see that it was a letter to the editor and not a charity ball invitation or a quick note from a long-lost friend, and those I just threw aside. Today there were tons. Breathless notes from teenage girls and housewives and even a few gay men (or, in all fairness, maybe straight and just very fashion-conscious): ‘Miranda Priestly, you’re not only the darling of the fashion world, you’re the Queen of my world!’ one gushed. ‘I couldn’t agree more with your choice to run the article about red being the new black in the April issue – it was ballsy, but genius!’ another exclaimed. A few letters ranted about a Gucci ad being too sexual since it depicted two women in stilettos and garters who lay together on a rumpled bed and pressed their bodies together, and a few more decried the sunken-eyed, starvation-wracked, heroine-chic models that Runway had used in its ‘Health First: How to Feel Better’ article. One was a standard-issue post office postcard that was addressed in flowery script to Miranda Priestly on one side and read, quite simply, on the other: ‘Why? Why do you print such a boring, stupid magazine?’ I laughed out loud and tucked that one in my bag for later – my collection of critical letters and postcards was growing, and soon there wasn’t going to be any fridge space left. Lily thought it was bad karma to bring home other people’s negative thoughts and hostility, and she shook her head when I insisted that any bad karma originally intended toward Miranda could only make me happy.
The last letter of the massive pile before I’d begin tackling the two dozen invitations Miranda received each day was addressed in the loopy, girly writing of a teenager, complete with i’s dotted with hearts and smiley faces next to happy thoughts. I planned to only skim it, but it wouldn’t allow itself to be skimmed: it was too immediately sad and honest – it was bleeding and pleading and begging all over the page. The initial four-second period came and went and I was still reading.
Dear Miranda,
My name is Anita and I am seventeen years old and I am a senior at Barringer H.S. in Newark, NJ. I am so ashamed of my body even though everyone tells me I’m not fat. I want to look like the models you have in your magazine. Every month I wait for Runway to come in the mail even though my mama says it’s stupid to pay all my allowance for a fashion magazine. But she doesn’t understand that I have a dream, but you do, dontcha? It has been my dream since I was a little girl, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Why, you ask? My boobs are very flat and my behind is bigger than the ones your models have and this makes me very embarased. I ask myself if this is the way I wanna live my life and I answer NO!!! because I wanna change and I wanna look and feel better and so I’m asking for your help. I wanna make a positive change and look in the mirror and love my breasts and my behind because they look just like the ones in the best magazine on earth!!!
Miranda, I know you’re a wonderful person and fashion editor and you could transform me into a new person, and trust me, I would be forever grateful. But if you can’t make me a new person, maybe you can get me a really, really, really nice dress for special occasions? I don’t ever have dates, but my mama says it’s OK for girls to go out alone so I will. I have one old dress but its not a designer dress or anything you would show in Runway. My favorite designers are Prada (#1), Versace (#2), John Paul Gotier (#3). I have many faves, but those are my first three I love. I do not own any of their clothes and I haven’t even seen them in a store (I’m not sure if anywhere in Newark sells these designers, but if you know of one, please tell me so I can go look at them and see what they look like up close), but I’ve seen there clothes in Runway and I have to say that I really, really love them.
I’m gonna stop bothering you now, but I want you to know that even if you throw this letter in the garbage, I will still be a big fan of your magazine because I love the models and the clothes and everything, and of course I love you too.
Sincerely,
Anita Alvarez
P.S. My phone number is 973-555-3948. You can write or call but please do so before the week of July 4 because I really need a nice dress before then. I LOVE YOU!! Thank you!!!!!
The letter smelled like Jean Naté, that acrid-smelling toilet water-spray preferred by preteen girls the country over. But that wasn’t what was causing the tightness in my chest, the constriction in my throat. How many Anitas were there out there? Young girls with so little else in their lives that they measured their worth, their confidence, their entire existence around the clothes and the models they saw in Runway? How many more had decided to unconditionally love the woman who put it all together each month – the orchestrator of such a seductive fantasy – even though she wasn’t worth one single second of their adoration? How many girls had no idea that the object of their worship was a lonely, deeply unhappy, and oftentimes cruel woman who didn’t deserve the briefest moment of their innocent affection and attention?
I wanted to cry, for Anita and all her friends who expended so much energy trying to mold themselves into Shalom or Stella or Carmen, trying to impress and please and flatter the woman who would only take their letters and roll her eyes or shrug her shoulders or toss them without a second thought to the girl who’d written down a piece of herself. Instead, I tucked the letter into my top desk drawer and vowed to find a way to help Anita. She sounded even more desperate than the others who wrote, and there was no reason that with all the excess stuff around I couldn’t find her a decent dress for a date she would hopefully have soon.
‘Hey, Em, I’m just going to run down to the newsstand and