There is nothing accidental about a pinstripe suit. Not in fashion. Not in film promotion. And certainly not when Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt step back into the world of The Devil Wears Prada 2. The moment those sharp lines appear, we are no longer talking about a pretty red-carpet dress. We are talking about authority, control, money, publishing, luxury and the kind of woman who does not need to shout to dominate a room.
That is why the pinstripe matters.
With The Devil Wears Prada 2, the fashion is not just costume
It is a continuation of the story. Disney’s own synopsis places Miranda Priestly back in a changing magazine industry, facing a mature Andy Sachs and Emily Charlton, who is now described as a major player at a luxury brand. The film arrives almost twenty years after the original made Runway magazine a fictional fashion empire people still quote today.
Emily Blunt’s return as Emily Charlton in pinstripes is especially telling. In early set images, she was photographed in a black-and-white pinstripe look layered with a white shirt, corseted structure, wide trousers, sunglasses and a large black bag. Entertainment Weekly described it as a shoulder-to-toe black-and-white pinstripe jumper, while InStyle noted the corseted pinstripe trousers, Dior shirt and vest top.
This is not the young assistant starving herself for Paris anymore. This is Emily grown into power. The pinstripe tells us she has moved from the frantic outer office into the boardroom. She is not just taking messages. She is making decisions.
Meryl Streep, meanwhile, has used suiting throughout the press tour as part of Miranda Priestly’s visual vocabulary. W Magazine noted that suiting has been a staple for Streep during the promotional run, including black tailored Celine and a Prada double-breasted red suit with wide-leg trousers. Even when she is not wearing a literal pinstripe, she is speaking the same language: disciplined tailoring, control, luxury and command.
Why The Pinstripe?
The pinstripe suit has always carried weight. It began as one of menswear’s great power symbols. Its origins are often linked to British banking culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where stripes were supposedly used to distinguish employees from different banks. The Rake notes that this Savile Row story is probably partly legend, but the association between pinstripes and finance certainly stuck. The Guardian also describes pinstripes as traditionally connected to Victorian banking and later reclaimed from their stuffy business associations.
From there, the pinstripe crossed the Atlantic and became louder. In America it belonged not only to bankers, but to gangsters, entertainers and men who wanted to look untouchable. GQ traces pinstripes through baseball, Wall Street, Prohibition-era mobsters and Hollywood glamour, noting how the pattern signalled team identity, business power and flamboyance.
That is the contradiction that makes pinstripes so seductive. They are respectable and rebellious at the same time. They can say banker. They can say gangster. They can say barrister. They can say Broadway. They can say Wall Street. They can say: I own the room.
For women, the pinstripe becomes even more interesting. When a woman wears a pinstripe suit, she borrows the uniform of male authority and rewrites it on her own body. This is why Emily Blunt’s corseted pinstripe is so clever. It is not a man’s suit copied onto a woman. It is tailoring with tension. The shirt is crisp. The stripe is corporate. The corset is historical, sensual and controlling. It turns office power into fashion armour.
That is perfect for The Devil Wears Prada. The whole franchise is built on the idea that clothes are never just clothes. A belt is not just a belt. A blue sweater is not just a blue sweater. A pinstripe suit is not just a suit. It is a cultural code.
The Sell
Miranda Priestly understood that better than anyone. Her power was always quiet. The silver hair. The sunglasses. The perfect coat over the shoulders. The barely raised voice. The terrifying pause. In the sequel, suiting allows Meryl Streep to age Miranda without softening her. She does not need to become playful, girlish or desperate for relevance. She remains architectural.
That matters because Hollywood is often unkind to older women in fashion narratives. It either makes them invisible, ridiculous, sentimental or overdone. Miranda is none of those things. In tailoring, she becomes even more formidable. The suit does not hide her age. It sharpens her authority.
Emily Charlton’s pinstripe does something different. It shows ambition fulfilled, but perhaps also hardened. In the original film, Emily was anxious, competitive and desperate to be chosen. She worshipped the system. In the sequel’s visual language, she appears to have become part of it. The pinstripe says she is no longer outside the room begging to enter. She is inside, and possibly guarding the door.
That is why the promotion works so well. It is method dressing without looking silly. The press tour is not merely selling a film. It is extending the mythology of Runway. Every suit, every coat, every pair of sunglasses becomes a headline because the audience has been trained to read fashion as plot.
History Of Pinstripe
The history of the pinstripe also adds another layer. During the 1980s, the pinstripe became the ultimate power suit, closely associated with Wall Street masculinity and characters like Gordon Gekko. Vogue has described the pin-striped suit as a symbol of authority, power and masculinity, later deconstructed by designers who wanted to take apart the old Wall Street uniform.
That is exactly what is happening here. Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep are not simply wearing suits like men. They are turning a male-coded financial uniform into a female-coded fashion weapon. The result is not office wear. It is cinema.
Pinstripes also photograph beautifully. On a red carpet, they create movement without sparkle. On a talk-show sofa, they give structure. In paparazzi images, they make a body look longer, sharper and more intentional. In a world of soft gowns and predictable sequins, the pinstripe cuts through. It looks expensive before you even know the label.
For The Devil Wears Prada 2, this is the right message. Fashion media has changed. Magazines have lost some of their old power. Luxury brands now control their own storytelling. Influencers sit front row. Print editors compete with algorithms. A pinstripe suit brings that business reality into the wardrobe. It says fashion is not only fantasy. It is contracts, advertising, boardrooms, survival and money.
And that is where Miranda and Emily belong now.
Mordern History
The brilliance of the pinstripe is that it carries history while still feeling modern. It has survived bankers, gangsters, Hollywood stars, politicians, 1980s greed, 1990s bad tailoring and fashion’s endless reinventions. It refuses to die because it always finds a new person to wear it with attitude.
On Emily Blunt, the pinstripe is ambition sharpened into adulthood. On Meryl Streep, suiting is authority polished into legend. Together, they remind us why The Devil Wears Prada still has power. The film was never really about clothes. It was about what clothes reveal: status, insecurity, taste, ambition and who gets to decide what matters.
So why are they wearing pinstripe suits to promote the film?
Because pinstripes are Runway magazine in fabric form. Because they say power without needing a logo. Because they honour menswear history while rewriting it for women. Because Miranda Priestly and Emily Charlton do not dress to be liked.
They dress to be obeyed.
