Just-graduated Andrea Sachs is hired to work as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly, the chief editor of Runway magazine. Andrea dreams to become a journalist. If she can survive a year working for Miranda this opportunity would fast-track her career in journalism. The first assistant warns Andrea about their boss, and the stylist helps Andrea to dress more proper for the environment. She goes from being a woman with no sense of fashion at all to a woman with trendy, yet classy style. Andrea begins changing her attitude and behavior, since she has been thrown into this crazy lifestyle of being an assistant to Miranda, which begins affecting her private life. Her working 24/7 begins to cause her to lose the relationships she used to have with her boyfriend Nate, her family, and friends.
The main problem Andrea faces is that she does not fit in with the Runway Magazines culture. Her coworkers dress in designer outfits and have this snobby look and feel to them. Andrea on the other hand, wears a comfortable no-name brand top, bottom, and shoes, she’s kind of like the “nerd” of the office. In one scene of the movie Andrea is teased by her coworker Emily for what she wears, but Andrea still sees fashion as pointless and has no intention of becoming stylish. It isn’t until Nigel, who is a stylist that works with Andrea, comments on her lack of conformity saying, “You are not trying. You are whining…You don’t care. Because in this place, where so many people would die to work, you only deign to work” (Frankel, 2006). This is when she decides to change her look. Andrea comes to a realization that Runway Magazine sells an image and that part of her job is to conform to this image that her coworkers portray. She gives up her previous look to seem more stylish and sophisticated in extremely pricey designer items that she once found so useless. She begins to act better than others in her life and conform to the corporate culture at Runway Magazine. Later in the movie as Andrea gets better at her job she gets closer to her boss Miranda. Miranda invites her to come to Paris fashion week over her coworker, Emily. In Paris, Andrea sees Miranda backstab a friend to keep her job. While in the car after that scene Andrea tells Miranda that she could never backstab a friend. Miranda reminds her not to be a hypocrite and judge so quickly, reminding her that she has already betrayed Emily by taking her place on this trip to Paris (Frankel, 2006).
At this point, Andrea realizes her grave mistake as she has conformed so much for this job that she lost herself. The push for conformity was surrounding Andrea, it was an overwhelming force in this movie. The fight to be herself or to fit in with the corporate culture to get her career ahead was strong and in the end she became a person she could not recognize.
