The Devil Wears Primark

Miranda Priestly is back, but this time trying to keep her magazine alive. I spent ten years as an editor trying to do the exact same thing. Here's what the sequel won't tell you

This week it was announced The Devil Wears Prada is returning with a sequel. Except this time around Miranda Priestly isn’t swanning about in chauffeur-driven limousines tossing trench coats over interns’ heads. Instead she is trying to resuscitate a magazine brand clobbered by digital media.

I have no idea if the film will work. From the sounds of it, the film is basically a 90 minute HR consultation meeting with Priestly fighting for her job. But what I do know is what it feels like to be the editor of a glossy magazine when its lustre has dulled and its power has all but evaporated.

So many people ask me why magazines are dying. I edited three of the most powerful ones (Cosmopolitan, Elle and Women’s Health) for over a decade, and so had a ring side seat on the rapid destruction of the glossy world we once all bought into.

It was the strangest of times, the excess of the ‘good old days’ - long lunches, blow dries at dawn, free designer bags, still lingering. But also the realisation that it was all about to come to a devastating end always on everyone’s mind.

So this week I’ve been thinking a lot about that time, and why, in my opinion at least, magazines toppled in the way they did. Of course, it’s not the full story. There are many magazines still going strong and still doing incredible jobs. (I will always buy House and Garden and Harpers Bazaar for example, and have a fondness for thoroughly British magazines like Red, Cosmo and British ELLE).

But this is my story, and I suppose the story of every other magazine editor who got to the top only to find a withered thrown awaiting them when they got there.