The internet’s memory is short.

Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour posed together for the May cover of Vogue, Streep in costume as Miranda Priestley. Vogue is treating this like it has never happened before (“What happens when you bring Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour together?” the magazine asked on Instagram).

Anna and Meryl, of course, have been together before. There was the video of the two of them from 2017 when Anna was editor-in-chief of Vogue. Then their Reels meet-cute at September’s Dolce & Gabbana show, Streep in character as Miranda to film scenes for the The Devil Wears Prada 2, out May 1, a few days before the Bezos-funded Met Gala.

The May cover story is a brilliant move by Vogue’s new Head of Editorial Content Chloe Malle, who oversaw the discussion between Anna, Streep, and Greta Gerwig that accompanies the images. (Gerwig directed Streep in Little Women. Plus, why not just add boldface names to this extremely boldface mix?)

The photos, shot by Annie Leibovitz and styled by Anna’s longtime creative director Grace Coddington, are great, and being heralded in countless social media posts as iconic. Never before has Vogue’s editor — excuse me, Condé Nast Chief Content Officer and Vogue Global Editorial Director — appeared on the cover of the magazine. Anna leaning into this movie like she may have never leaned into anything relating to her personal brand before seems likely a win for her. These moments help people forget about all the controversies associated with her, thereby allowing her to edit her legacy.

In the accompanying article, Anna addresses the movie directly, which she seemed loathe to do when the first one came out in 2006 (though she famously put on her Prada and went to a New York screening).

Anna speaks publicly like a practiced politician, seldom giving away much. I couldn’t imagine why someone so famously closed off would want to participate in a roundtable chat like this — aside from the impressions it would drive to Vogue — except for this comment:

In her intro, Malle goes out of her way to note, “Who can forget the parade of [coats] flung on the assistant’s desk? Though for the record, I have only seen Anna politely hand hers off.”

André Leon Talley told me the same when we spoke for Anna: The Biography. Anna didn’t fling her bags and coats at people because that would be poor manners. There are other differences between Anna and the film. In my recent rewatch for the Back Row podcast, I noticed another glaring difference — which was how much Miranda divulged compared to Anna. I cannot imagine Anna telling an assistant she disappointed her more than any of her other assistants, or revealing in the back seat of a black car, in a moment bordering on intimate, that she reminded her of herself. Anna is such a powerful corporate foot soldier because she generally gives you nothing. She seems not to struggle with concealing her true feelings where others would be unable to hold them back.

But back to the internet’s short memory. As I’ve been watching the movie promo unfold, from the popcorn purse to the Oscars stunt to the international theme dressing featuring red and black outfits and that gargantuan red high heel with the pitchfork, I’ve been wondering if we’re just over the whole premise — that Andy Sachs has to endure A LOT to succeed in Miranda’s eyes. Being regularly called fat and unstylish until she loses weight and begs Nigel for a makeover; acting as a dog walker, waiter, errand runner, and secretary for Miranda; being treated as a failure for being unable to book a flight during a hurricane; missing her boyfriend’s birthday (lol to that one, but still) and lots of other personal events.

The movie gets one thing exactly right: Anna’s assistants have historically served as her personal assistants — they’re there to fetch her lattes and organize her life more so than they are to get clips for their portfolios or serve as budding young editors. Condé Nast faced a whole reckoning over this beginning in 2020.

Anna went through so many assistants that, she told people around her, she didn’t remember Lauren Weisberger when she learned of her plans to publish The Devil Wears Prada as a novel based on her experiences as her assistant.

I loved the movie and cannot wait to see the sequel. But in many of her actions and general vibe and the fear that exists around her like an invisible orb, preventing anyone from getting too close, Miranda hews so very closely to Anna. Anna is a visual editor above all else — a brilliant one — who understands that these images and viral moments have the effect of washing the other stuff away. The way Hillary Clinton’s 1998 Vogue cover served as a corrective around the time of her husband’s scandal. Or the way Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s in 2014 made audiences forget about Kim’s tackiness, anointing her (to great personal profit) a fashion person.

While Anna never said the book and movie bothered her (based on my reporting, I don’t think it did), it offended her staff. Coddington addressed this in her 2012 memoir:

I like Coddington. She’s a generational talent. But this writing encapsulates the long held attitude at Condé Nast toward underlings — that they are forgettable voices on the phone, inhabiting rotating human bodies situated outside the offices of editors like Anna.

The irony, of course, is that one of those voices ended up having the definitive word on Anna’s legacy. For she will be remembered above all for her persona — the chilliness, the forebodingness, the workaholism, the iconic hair and sunglasses, the commitment to her particular vision of chic to the point of rudeness to those who don’t embody it. A persona so oddly fascinating Meryl Streep decided to tackle it in two movies.

Is it toxic? Does it matter? The photos really are iconic, aren’t they?

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