The costume designer behind The Devil Wears Prada 2 has distanced herself from one of the most talked-about fashion moments in the film’s trailers, and the story behind how those Valentino Rockstud heels ended up on Miranda Priestly’s feet is quite the tale.
Molly Rogers revealed to Vogue, explaining that the bold red and gold stud-embellished shoes that appeared in a widely discussed trailer shot were never her choice.
She had already travelled to Milan for filming when the decision was made without her.
“I had gone forward to Milan, where we were gonna shoot some scenes. I was not there that day when they were shooting another scene, and they just popped the shoes on Meryl. I had chosen another shoe,” she said.
What followed was a frantic series of phone calls.
“I got panicked phone calls from assistants saying that the marketing team had decided that they liked this other shoe, which at the time, I took great offense to because I knew that a marketing person didn’t know anything about a Rockstud, and I did not think it was appropriate for Miranda to wear a Rockstud.”
She added, with characteristic dry humour: “From afar, I was sending pins into voodoo dolls.”
Rogers made the point that costume decisions for a character as precisely defined as Miranda Priestly require a level of expertise that goes far beyond liking a shoe.
“You could give most of us, especially me, a rack full of white blouses, and I could choose the one that Miranda would wear and the one that Emily would wear and the one that Annie would wear. There are nuances, just like the two blue belts in the first movie.”
She was measured about the response the shoe received online.
“When I saw that hubbub about that shoe, I was like, I’m innocent. I’m glad if people like it because it’s a callback or whatever, but if you don’t like it, I understand that too.”
The Rockstud, it turns out, was a deliberate marketing placement.
The style originally debuted in Valentino’s Fall 2010 collection and has since been updated by current creative director Alessandro Michele.
Valentino’s head of integrated marketing confirmed the strategic intent on LinkedIn, noting the trailer had generated hundreds of millions of views with the brand at its centre.
Rogers also shared a warm detail about the Valentino connection to the franchise, noting that the founder himself, likely a reference to Valentino Garavani, who died in January, had told Streep while she was on holiday in Italy that whatever she needed, he would supply.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens on 1 May.
