What Is With… The Devil Wears Prada 2’s Target collab, Galliano for Zara and luxury going mass?

SINGAPORE – The ongoing buzz over American actresses Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway reuniting on red carpets for The Devil Wears Prada 2’s global promotional tour might have most people forgetting the film’s bizarre misstep just a few weeks earlier.

In March, it was announced that the sequel to the iconic 2006 comedy-drama about the luxury publishing world would have a merchandise line with a baffling collaborator: Target.

Available on the American retailer’s website is a ghastly selection of tees, sweatshirts and hoodies with random quotes from the original film slapped on.

The result: Florals for spring, cerulean and boring someone else with your questions – quips so iconic they have made their way into our shared vernacular – reduced to gaudy words on mass-produced tops.

The only thing more offensive than the pedestrian fonts are the cheap polyester-cotton blends they sit on. Prices start at US$14.99 (S$19).

Cue the Miranda Priestly memes of the frosty editor-in-chief (thought to have been inspired by fashion bible Vogue’s Anna Wintour and played by Streep) shutting down the entire collection with a single, withering look.

“What would Miranda Priestly do? Burn that shirt,” one commenter sniped.

It remains unclear if it is a cash grab by Target or an official 20th Century Studios-backed line for The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opens in Singapore cinemas on April 30. But the release sparked outrage over how the collaboration was the complete antithesis of The Devil Wears Prada universe – and fashion itself.

Many were also quick to point out the irony of using Priestly’s iconic “cerulean” quote – from her monologue on how design decisions trickle down from fashion runways to mass-market shop floors – on a Target sweater.

If the franchise’s fictional Runway Magazine represents the voice of fashion authority, then a partnership like this surely is its death knell.

The drop also came in the same week as Spanish fast-fashion retailer Zara’s announcement that it had signed a two-year creative partnership with legendary fashion designer John Galliano.

Most commonly revered for his stint as creative director at Dior, the 65-year-old Briton represents, to many, fashion’s old guard.

His return to designing after leaving Maison Margiela in 2024 involves “re-authoring” pieces from Zara’s archive and designing seasonal collections for the Spanish brand, debuting in September 2026.

Suffice to say, it was a weird week for fashion purists.

High luxury’s fall from grace

This head-scratching mass-ification of former bastions of luxury seems like writing on the wall. Of late, high fashion has been facing a reckoning – of increasing irrelevance.

Skyrocketing prices and snooty marketing reserved for the 1 per cent have caused the masses to grow disillusioned with the aspirational appeal of luxury.

Meanwhile, trend cycles, now faster than ever, almost suggest to customers there is no point investing in an expensive item when the next hot object is just around the corner.

One could argue that Galliano needs Zara as much as Zara needs him. The co-dependency of a top fashion designer and a fast-fashion brand with a reputation for casually ripping off luxury brands feels somewhat apocalyptic.

Local freelance stylist and fashion writer Bryan Goh thought the luminary would have gone to a house with a haute couture DNA or reopen his brand.

“I’m wondering if Galliano is doing this for the cheque, or as a strategic move in order to relaunch his namesake brand. After all, this collab can test how much his name is in demand today, and pricing thresholds too,” he says.

Designer collaborations have been around for decades. Some are more permanent than others, like Japanese retailer Uniqlo hiring designers Clare Waight Keller and Christophe Lemaire as creative directors. But why does Galliano for Zara feel so different?

Mr Goh, who has worked in publishing since 2014, admits it lacks some of the cultural capital of past tie-ups done by other high-street retailers like Sweden’s H&M.

“It does feel jarring because H&M uses collaborations to stage a designer’s mythology as a special one-off event, while Zara’s system tends to absorb things into its speed and operations,” says the 33-year-old.

Referencing a 2008 H&M collaboration with Japanese label Comme des Garcons, he notes: “What I believe is different for CDG is that (founder and designer) Rei Kawakubo treats fashion as a medium for distortion and critique, which meant pairing it with H&M did not feel especially ‘contaminating’ because CDG’s identity could metabolise that contradiction.

“Galliano’s work, however, was always built on extravagance, theatricality and the fantasy of creation, so perhaps that’s why this is especially jarring.”

That and The Devil Wears Prada x Target line – which Mr Goh calls “textile waste” – are symptoms of the market, he notes. “Sadly, cultural capital is no longer being allowed to sit, build and seduce, because it gets monetised almost immediately.”

He adds: “It’s too early to judge Galliano for Zara because we haven’t seen the collection yet – but what it all points to is a fashion system increasingly driven by nostalgia, IP (intellectual property) and instant accessibility to its customers, where the distance that once made things feel magical and desirable is rapidly disappearing.”

Nowhere is this clearer than in Vogue’s latest issue, which paired Streep and the famously private Wintour on its cover – a first for the former editor-in-chief in her 37-year tenure.

A milestone for legacy publishing, or a thinly veiled attempt at publicity for the movie? Either way, it would have been an impossibility 20 years ago.

The mystique that once kept fashion buoyant has fast dissipated.

Nostalgia as currency

With Zara trying to mine Galliano’s peak years of the mid-2000s and The Devil Wears Prada trying to revive its legacy, nostalgia has become the most coveted currency in fashion today.

It began rather innocuously with stylists reaching into the archives to borrow runway looks of yore for celebrity appearances. There were some niche bragging rights in being able to identify a Balenciaga SS12 look.

But lately, even the internet has begun to tire of constant referencing. With resources at one’s fingertips, anyone can research a brand’s vast design history.

Being able to identify and elucidate a past-season look has become sport for the average netizen, while pulling from the archives has become a stylist’s crutch amid a lack of originality, egged on by a desire to manufacture yet another viral moment in today’s saturated media landscape.

Is fashion running out of ideas?

Mr Goh has this to say: “On the one hand, the fashion industry has applied it in a very formulaic approach – produce what we know people will like so we can earn easy money in the short term.

“But on the other, I also understand that nothing is ever new because the creative industry has to recontextualise the past to bring it into the present. The problem is that very few possess the vernacular to know how to do that without producing just ‘nostalgic’ vibes.”

The art of referencing, when done right, can add immeasurable value to a press opportunity or event.

Take, for example, American actress Zendaya’s press tour for her new film The Drama, which centres on a couple getting married. The dark romcom opens in Singapore cinemas on April 16.

She worked with long-time stylist Law Roach to present four key red carpet looks: a white silk corseted Vivienne Westwood number that she wore to the 2015 Oscars; a custom white Louis Vuitton gown; a plunging black Giorgio Armani dress first worn by Australian actress Cate Blanchett in 2022; and a stunning Schiaparelli couture gown with electric blue feathers.

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. In this instance, pulling from the archives – Zendaya’s own – was necessary to tell a complete story.

Perhaps the key, as always, is respect – for the source material, context and how each party strengthens the other.

On April 7, American clothing retailer Old Navy dropped its own The Devil Wears Prada capsule collection – with a cerulean blue knit sweater more closely matched to the one worn by dowdy aspiring journalist Andy Sachs (Hathaway) in the first film, which you could actually imagine the character picking up from her local Old Navy.

The line has already received more positive response among the movie’s fans compared with its Target counterpart.

When Galliano’s Zara designs drop in five months, Mr Goh will be hitting the stores to survey them.

“I’m looking forward to seeing him produce pieces like bias-cut dresses – his signature at Dior – French guipure lace blouses, and the usual ‘Galliano-isms’ like voluminous skirts, corseted bodices and lavish embellishments,” he says.

“I always believe such designer collaborations are a solid introduction for many people to discover these labels that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible to them.”

As Miranda in her heyday would say: That’s all.