Molly Rogers’s Well-Worn Path to Costuming “The Devil Wears Prada 2”
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On a recent morning in Manhattan, the veteran costume designer Molly Rogers, a cheerful blonde with a honeyed Southern drawl, was standing outside Saks Fifth Avenue, waiting for the store to open. She needed to return a pair of Stella McCartney heels she’d bought, about a week before, to wear to the New York première of her latest project, “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” They had a gold chain across the front, which echoed a gold-chain collar that she planned to wear in honor of the late fashion editor Diana Vreeland. But, as any good costumer knows, if the footwear is wrong the whole ensemble goes sideways. These were too matchy-matchy, Rogers had decided. “Back they go,” she told me, swinging a Saks bag on one arm. In the end, she wore a “vintage shoe by no one.”
For the Saks outing, she was wearing a black bucket hat emblazoned with the word “Runaway” in white—a gag gift, she explained, from the “Devil Wears Prada 2” costume department to the rest of the cast and crew. In Milan, where the denouement of the film takes place, Rogers explained, the Italian crew members continually misspelled the title of Runway, the film’s fictional fashion magazine, and the typo became a running joke. Rogers had paired the hat with a Kelly-green Tibi sweatshirt that had large cutouts in the sleeves where elbow patches might be, and she’d shoved her arms right through these holes, so that the lower half of each sleeve dangled off her forearms like the sode on a kimono.
Rogers has a gift for making people see garments in a new way—and for seeing the potential in items that others might write off as merely ridiculous. Take Rogers’s work on “And Just Like That . . ,” the sometimes beloved, sometimes maligned “Sex and the City” reboot that ran for three gloriously campy seasons on HBO Max. Rogers put Carrie Bradshaw—never the sartorial wallflower—in some of her wackiest pieces to date, including a JW Anderson bejewelled pigeon purse and a ginormous Moncler sleeping-bag coat, not to mention the show’s most virally divisive item, a flamboyant, gingham sun hat, as wide and poofy as a dog bed, by the milliner Maryam Keyhani. “I got death threats for that hat,” Rogers told me. “People thought she looked like strawberry shortcake.”
Rogers, who grew up in a small town in North Carolina, did not set out to work in fashion. The women in her family were quilters, but she never got the hang of sewing. What she wanted was adventure—a desire that took her first to London, where she immersed herself in the punk scene of the early nineteen-eighties, sporting dreadlocks in the hopes of looking like Boy George. One day, she saw an article in a magazine about a woman named Patricia Field who ran a clothing store in Greenwich Village that had become a gathering place for the downtown demimonde. “I suddenly thought, I need to go meet this person,” Rogers said. “I packed up everything and got on another plane.” She got a job at Field’s shop, in accessories, working with clients such as Madonna, Courtney Love, Chaka Khan, Keith Haring, and Farrah Fawcett (who, Rogers said, once came into the store to politely request that Field stop selling T-shirts printed with a picture of Fawcett in her iconic red swimsuit).
When Field began working in costume design, she brought Rogers along. Together, along with the stylist Rebecca Weinberg, they created the costumes for “Sex and the City” and its subsequent film extensions, and, in 2006, Field and Rogers worked together on the first “Devil Wears Prada” movie. Both “Sex and the City” and “The Devil Wears Prada” became era-defining cultural properties, in no small part for their daring approach to outfitting their stars, from Sarah Jessica Parker’s opening-credits tutu to Anne Hathaway’s thigh-high Chanel boots. In 2020, after nearly three decades of collaboration, Field and Rogers, decided to go their separate ways; Field went off to work on “Emily in Paris,” while Rogers stayed in New York to do “And Just Like That . . .” Rogers told me that she and Field remain “best friends,” but that she felt it was time to, as she put it, “leave the nest.” On “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” her maximalist, technicolor sense of style comes through in the looks she pulled for Meryl Streep, who spends the film clad in a series of gorgeous bejewelled jackets, and whose character, the high and mighty editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly, generally seems to be having more fun with fashion than she did in the first. For the sequel, Rogers created new mood boards for both Streep and Hathaway, taking in current trends (stacked necklaces, tailored vests) and her own obsessions (hats, hats, hats), but, as a bit of fan service, she also slipped in sartorial callbacks to the original.
Once Rogers was inside Saks, she knew exactly where to go. In the “Sex and the City” days, she and Field would spend entire days there on the hunt for new looks for Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda. “I have the whole floor plan memorized,” she said. Still, Rogers found herself distracted, as we walked through the sales floor, by a shimmery sequin skirt the color of a new penny. “I can’t resist a shiny thing,” she said. “It must be my inner drag queen.” Over coffee and oatmeal at the Saks café, we discussed her early years in the downtown scene, the “And Just Like That . . .” hat controversy, and her time rummaging around Italian alta moda archives for “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Pat Field’s shop was such a scene in the early days. Can you tell me a little about it?
The store was like an answering machine—you came in every day to find out where everyone was going that night. We all moved in a group, to this art gallery, or that club. It was Grand Central for downtown, where everyone came to gossip and gather news. For a period of time, there was a strong Southern contingent working there; I don’t know how we ended up among all these super-cool New Yorkers, but we did. There were three of us, and we were superfast friends, and that is how I met my best friend, Melody Danielson. She was in the makeup department, and I was in accessories. The other Southern kid was named Allen, who was also a drag queen, who performed at Area and Pyramid using the name Tangella. He was addicted to the color orange. I remember when Stephen Sprouse came out with his Day-Glo collection, he really bet the farm on that.
I really want to say something just about Pat’s store, and I hope I can vocalize this well. It was an unruly clubhouse, and Pat kept us in line, but she also had this incredible eye for talent, and had this way of knowing exactly what someone would be good at. A lot of us working there were misfits—and the thing about misfits is they might be super talented, but they aren’t the most reliable folks. I don’t want it to sound like Pat hired only black sheep. But, if you have incredible, innate left-brain talent, you may not know how to get to work on time or whatever. There was one particular person, Joey Napierkowski, who Pat adored, and who obviously got deferential treatment because he was in charge of window displays. He was living fast and on the edge; he was one of the first people I knew who died of AIDS. He was incredibly dressed. I remember once, Pat had come back from London, and she had brought these what I call “pimp coats,” that gorgeous fake fur on the collars in crazy, beautiful colors. Joey was styling that look hard-core. He drew on a pencil thin mustache. He took a derby hat from England, and stuck a feather in the top, in homage to God knows what.
So you were surrounded by eccentric characters.
If you were at that store, Pat saw something in you, and she wanted to cultivate it. She always said that she got her inspiration from being around young people. And we were the cool kids. We always knew where the coolest place was. That, to me, is a tiny part of what we brought to “Sex and the City,” when Pat, Rebecca, and I worked on it. People in production meetings would say, O.K., we need a location to shoot a dinner. We could say, This is the place right now—nobody knows about it yet, and there’s no sign outside. And Darren Star was the kind of person who listened to us.
So what happened in the decade between you working in retail and you starting to work on “Sex and the City”? How did you transition into costuming?
At Pat’s we were always styling people. MTV bands were coming into the store looking for looks. Phoebe Legere was a downtown artist and musician who got a Playboy spread, and Pat and I styled it. It’s funny, I remember now that I put an Eiffel Tower hat on Phoebe’s head in Playboy, and then later I gave Carrie an Eiffel Tower bag in “And Just Like That . . .” There are all these connective tissues. But things started to evolve. We did a ton of music videos, and then that led to commercials. Candy Pratts Price, [the legendary Vogue editor], was the first person who came to Pat and said, “You are such a visual person. I know of a movie shooting in Philadelphia. You should do the costumes.” So we did this movie in 1987, starring Diane Lane, where she plays a window decorator with a freaky stalker. It was called “Lady Beware.” Later, I tried to convince Sarah Jessica to use “Lady Beware” as the name of her company, but she didn’t go for it. [Laughs.]
Was there ever a time that you thought about leaving Pat’s store and striking out on your own?
Yes, I did leave, for a while. The store was a wild place. People would order drugs to the store in Chinese takeout containers, and Pat would think they had ordered lunch. Pat did not believe in a security system. She did not want things to beep. So if there were shoplifters, she would just lock them in. They would chase us around the store, threatening to hurt us, until the cops came, which could be forever. There’s a famous picture of Pat standing in her store with a cigarette and a pitchfork. Melody and I decided that we needed to get out of town, to get a change of scene, and just to rest. At the time, Robert Mapplethorpe was in love with her.
We wanted to go to Los Angeles and try to be stylists there. She went out first. I went back to North Carolina to save money, and I worked at a mall, which was a little humiliating. I got out to L.A. in 1990, and Melody and I had cute little apartments above Tower Records on Larrabee Street. Dolly Parton’s aunt lived across the street, and we would see Dolly a lot. Angelyne, the billboard model, also lived there. Melody called it the “street of blondes and boobs.”
We met a music-video director named Jeff Stein, who worked with Warrant and the Cars, and he kept us employed for a long time. Then we finally got a Nike commercial, and just as we were starting to graduate into that Melody got really sick. I couldn’t believe, just as we were starting this new life as friends and business partners, she was ill and couldn’t work. I just remained in denial. I was writing bad checks for her breathing apparatuses. We were both in terrible debt, and she didn’t have health insurance. Every now and then, Jeff would muster up some work for us, like a job on a Brian Setzer Orchestra video, but I was so checked out. I remember shopping for Brian Setzer and not knowing how to pick anything.
Melody died, at home, in 1994. Two days later—I don’t know how it happened, because I was in shock—I just walked out of our apartment building and left everything there. The only thing I took was a draft of a book that Melody and I were trying to write together. I went to the airport, flew to Miami, and went to Pat’s place there, on Ocean Drive. I said, “Pat, I need to get it together.” She let me live there for free, and I slowly began to assist on movies that were shooting in Florida.
How did you make it back to working in New York?
Pat called me, I think in 1996. She said, “I’ve just read this book called ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s going to be something, and you need to come up here and help me.”
I know that in the early days of working on “Sex and the City,” you shopped a lot at consignment or discount stores, like Century 21.
I lived at Century 21. We would go there when it opened, at seven forty-five in the morning, and stay until it closed. Maybe Pat would let us have a hot dog from a stand during lunch. We were killing ourselves for all these years. Like here at Saks, we’d start on the top floor and look at every fucking garment. We stopped only for a cigarette. But, yeah, I think I have spent more time in Century 21 than any other place in my life. That’s where we found that green Vivienne Westwood skirt, with the white tutu in the back, that S.J. wore on the show.
What was the overarching vision for the clothes in “S.A.T.C.”? The costumes are incredible, but a lot of people thought they were a bit . . . out there.
People thought they were not realistic. But Pat always said [mimes dragging on a cigarette], “We’re not making a documentary.” It was about the characters, and getting a gut feeling for what they would wear. I could have a rack of forty white blouses, and I bet you and I could go through it, and we could both say, That’s not a Miranda—it’s got ruffles. Or, yes, that one is a Samantha.
Did you have any trouble, in those early days of the show, getting designers to lend you clothes?
Yes, a lot of showrooms didn’t understand, because they had never worked with television before. They were used to sending clothes out for magazines, and having them come right back. But we needed to borrow things and hold on to them, in case we had a reshoot, or wanted to repeat something. A lot of it was about training people. People assumed a show called “Sex and the City” was going to be some red-shoe, erotic thing. But Sarah Jessica, to her credit, knew exactly what was going to happen with Pat there at the helm. We knew from the first fitting.
What was the first fitting like?
It was at Pat’s loft, above her store. She had all rubber flooring because it was so easy to mop, and incredible art work. Keith Haring did a “Free South Africa” store window for Pat in the eighties, and she cut the glass and kept it. Though now she doesn’t know where it is.
Wait, she lost a Keith Haring?
She doesn’t really miss stuff like that. She has a kind of Buddhist, no-attachment attitude.
So the fitting . . .
Well, S.J. just had this Spidey sense, that was, like, We’re on to something here. Darren had written out every character’s backstory, and went deep on them with Pat, and from the first meeting we walked out with a clear idea of what the clothes were. That just doesn’t happen anymore, where you get that kind of quality time with someone who created or wrote a script. And you could say, I am going to do this with Carrie, and they wouldn’t try to stop you.
There did seem to be a lot of trust put into your team on that show, inasmuch as some of the outfits were bonkers, but everyone was so committed that you pulled it off.
There was only one outfit we did that Pat later turned on. I don’t know why we were talking about it, recently, but the only time that Pat felt like she was trying something that she can’t really stand up to now was the time that Carrie wore a belt around her naked waist.
Oh, I know it well. She had a belt on her bare stomach, and her shirt tucked into her bra. And, I think, pipe cleaners in her hair?
Girl, she had everything on. But you know what? Darren never stepped into the fitting room and said, “I need you to change that outfit.” Sarah Jessica as well. She would try everything on, even if she was, like, That looks too flammable for me, and I don’t like that fabric. She’d say, I need to see why you brought it in here. She realized that there was something magical happening. That is such a rare, rare thing—to not have interference, and to feel that you are the authority that they hired you to be. The more every single business in this world turns into a corporation, the more the money people are going to come in and say, “I don’t understand that outfit.” It feels like censorship, when you need to feel free to create. And, you know, back then, no one was checking if there were paparazzi when we shot outside. We were in this bubble where nobody was noticing anything. We were just doing it because we loved it—we loved the belt on the stomach.
Did you feel that it was harder to do the work once things started to be more public?
Things got more expensive, And by Season 5 or 6 it was, like, I want to see couture. I don’t want to see ready-to-wear.
Like the eighty-thousand-dollar “Mille-Feuille” Versace dress that she wore in the finale.
You know, Pat believed that would work for Carrie, because the character would have had access to people in fashion, and was phoning in clothes for herself long before people knew how to phone them in. Carrie lives for fashion. I mean, on “And Just Like That . . .” I put this hat on Sarah Jessica . . .
O.K., let’s talk about the hat.
That hat has a name. It’s “Head in the Clouds.” Everything about it was such artistry. I warned Michael Patrick King about the hat before we shot it. Nobody likes surprises. I told him something was coming his way. But I did not expect to get death threats. I can’t believe that people were that invested. I guess the alternative would have been a baseball cap on Carrie, and, I’m sorry, but that’s just not her character. I don’t think you could ever satisfy anyone that would judge a hat like that in an unfavorable way. I just think that people really, really, really wanted those three ladies to stay in the time capsule. They wanted them frozen in time.
So many items from that show became lightning rods. The pigeon purse . . .
That was a hit. I knew from the minute I saw it. For years, I’d been looking for a bag that honored New York. I would look at apples, and they were corny, and I would see a rat, and that was depressing. I saw that pigeon, and I was, like, talk about a mascot for New York. That’s the one. And what she did with it in that scene, where she takes a stick of chewing gum out from it! Her comic timing is incredible. In my wildest fantasies I would never guess that she’d have a stick of gum in there. But I loved watching her do that. It is like when Meryl did that tassel shake in the new “Devil Wears Prada.”
I want to talk about gaining an actor’s trust in fittings. Because that seems like half the battle of your job.
They need to know that you have their best interests at heart. And I’ve found that the best thing is to be honest with them. You have to say what you really think.
Was there anything you had to ever convince an actress to wear?
Never. That’s one rule of Pat’s: You cannot talk someone into an outfit. It will show in the scene, if they are uncomfortable. I can tell when Cynthia Nixon’s feet are gagging her in a walk and talk.
What was it like when you and Pat went your separate ways?
When you work that long with someone, you develop a twin language. I took Pat’s point of view through my skin, through osmosis. You know, “What would Jesus do?” For me it was “What would Pat do?” One thing about Melody dying is that it felt like abandonment. We were supposed to be partners in crime and fashion and build this whole life. So it was really tough to say goodbye to Pat, because I just so enjoyed being around her. I didn’t have the big title, but I didn’t care what they called me. I just wanted the check, and I wanted the joy of having these experiences with Pat. It’s not as simple as I didn’t think I could function outside the nest. It was that I was still carrying the feeling of loss of my best friend. So why say goodbye? Why give something a funeral if it’s still alive? When “Emily in Paris” came along, I wanted to go. But “And Just Like That . . .” presented itself, and that felt like the chance to go back to summer camp.
I want to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” There were so many looks in it that I don’t know where to begin. I think a lot of people will be talking about those sequin culottes that Anne Hathaway wears.
I can’t believe you clocked those. Those were knickers.
What shifted for you, in terms of the costuming approach, between the two films?
Well, I remember during the first movie, Pat said that in some distant corner of her mind she saw Andy Sachs as Annie Hall. So when I was thinking about what Andy has done over the past twenty years, the first words on her mood board that I showed the director were “feminine menswear.” And it was all in the stores—like a high-waisted pant. And, the more I thought about it, the more I was, like, that tracks with her working in a newsroom, where you roll your sleeves up and you’ve got a vest on, and you’re making the deadline. Then things would present themselves, like those Valentino knickers. I was interested in exploring that menswear space. Andy wears a lot of suspenders.
Oh, yes. I’m thinking of a killer black dress she wears in a dinner scene in Milan.
That was Armani Privé. We were supposed to film his fiftieth fashion show while we were in Milan. I was so excited. But he died that month. Even though we didn’t get to shoot that, it was important to Meryl and Anne to wear Armani in that “Last Supper” scene.
Oh, yes, I love Meryl’s coat in that scene. So shiny!
We have to have our glitter. That’s the magpie in me.
Meryl was very bejewelled in this movie. She wears a lot more bling than she did in the first film. I’m thinking of a sparkly collar she wears that looks a bit like R.B.G. but make it fashion.
That collar was the first thing I bought for the movie. I didn’t know where it would end up. I put another collar on her initially, but Meryl saw that one, and she said, “Diana Vreeland.” I was, like, I was thinking Cleopatra, but O.K., that’s cool, I could meet you there.
One thing I thought was inspired was how you made Emily Blunt’s character, who now works at Dior, a kind of fashion victim. She is wearing so much branded Dior gear, and these baroque outfits.
Well, you know, what’s funny is, those outfits were not necessarily meant to be funny. At the funeral scene, where she’s wearing that Dior beret, with the lace-face covering, I just thought it was her being in high fashion. But the director, [David Frankel], thought that the outfit was hilarious. I was, like, Oh, my God, we’re not making the same movie. Help me. But he is not savvy—he’s not reading Women’s Wear Daily. And he saw something else in it, and it helped him in that scene.
I also want to talk about what Anne wore for one party scene. It’s a blue sequin dress that almost has an eighties prom feel to it, with the ruffles and the draping.
That was Paco Rabanne. I mean, for me, that kind of gave me the feeling of the thigh-high Chanel boots from the first film—like the fish out of water has gotten access to the closet.
At the end of the film, Andy is wearing the infamous cerulean sweater that Miranda mocks in the first film, but she has cut it up into a vest shape, and recontextualized it. What made you think of that?
I am such a fan of the first movie, as is everyone, I think. It’s a cult thing. And so when I closed the last page of that script I picked up the phone, and I called the studio and said, “Does that sweater exist?” The original one had a corn-chowder stain on it, but we had many multiples. I knew it had to come back, and I told David, and he was, like, That hadn’t even entered my mind.
And you cut the sleeves off!
Anne did that in the fitting! The result was she turned it into a menswear vest. And the outfit looked like the way she ended the first one—in that brown leather coat and jeans. It was so connective.
The style in these movies is so much about labels, in a way that I don’t even know is probably your own personal taste, right? How do you approach a project like that where you need to be, like, These are people who are informed about this world?
My approach has always been to look for things that are timeless. I don’t know what jeans Anne is wearing in that scene, or whose bolero jacket Meryl had on in the first film. I can’t say, “That’s look 11 from Spring ’26.” I don’t want the clothes to look like advertisements. These are women who know how to put looks together. There is a Dries Van Noten tassel jacket that Meryl wears in the new film—that was not something I had ever seen in a store. They must not have even put it into production. But I thought if anything says “editrix” that’s it. I showed it to Meryl, and we agreed we had to find a place for it somewhere. And it made so much sense in that scene where she goes to meet the suits, the consultants, in their pinstripes. It says everything about her world versus their world. And maybe the director thought that was a funny jacket. But, to me, it is the sister jacket as the gold-coined one she wears when she does the cerulean speech. It’s a statement piece.
The montages you shot at Fashion Week in Milan are really something—so many looks in so few minutes.
I have a story about that. I am a crazy Gianfranco Ferré fan. We called them, and they invited me to the museum, and they had gotten permission from the Italian government for me to take things from the museum to use in the movie. There was a moment in the film, at a fashion show, where Meryl and Anne walk by a group, and I thought, Oh, my God, this can be a place to showcase twenty Ferré looks that have not been touched by human hands—white gloves only. They could be standing in a line, like they’re going out onto the runway, and the actresses could trot past them.
So on set, I invited the director and the first A.D. downstairs at this Palazzo, where we were shooting the montages, and they saw the white gloves and the magnitude of what I had spun out of control and done. But I guess they needed bodies in the room [for a party scene], because they took the girls upstairs and just kind of scattered them in different places drinking champagne. We tussled a bit over it, and we ended up clumping the [models] in corners. The camera goes by really quickly, but look for it—there is this amazing red dress, all beaded, that reminds me of Maasai warriors. Naomi Campbell wore it on a runway with nothing underneath. Anyways, you win some, you lose some, in moviemaking. But, as they say in the film, a million girls would kill to be where I am. [Laughs.]
What are some lessons you might pass along to young people looking to get into costume design?
You know, it’s about having experiences, not just aesthetics. I lived a lot of life. I earned my eye, because I was in gay bars in Istanbul, seeing things that maybe later inspired a Carrie look. Kids come up to me and say, “I love to shop.” And I’m, like, I bet you do love to shop—for yourself—but that’s not what we do. Instead, I ask, “Are you well read, and have you travelled?” Because if they’re living through an algorithm, they’re no help to me. You can own every Vogue since blah, blah, blah, but what are you bringing that I haven’t seen? ♦