Three former assistants to Anna Wintour have lifted the lid on what life in the Vogue editor’s office was really like, and some of it is straight out of the film, while other details are rather more dull.
Sache Taylor, Sammi Tapper and Marley Marius, who each worked in Wintour’s office for between one and four years spanning 2017 to October 2025, sat down with Vogue‘s new head of editorial content Chloe Malle for the brand’s The Run-Through With Vogue podcast.
The timing is no coincidence, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is on its way, and Wintour has already posed for the cover of her own magazine alongside Meryl Streep.
The interview process alone sets the tone.
Candidates are advised not to wear black, Wintour famously loves colour and has said it’s the one thing she would never wear head-to-toe.
And don’t expect to be quizzed about your strengths and weaknesses. “She doesn’t want a robot,” Marius said, recalling the advice she was given beforehand. “She wants someone with a personality.”
Once hired, the learning curve is steep.
Marius described inheriting a 21-page handbook passed down from assistant to assistant, a sacred text covering everything about how the office runs.
The day begins early. Wintour herself wakes between 4 and 5:30am on workdays, plays tennis, reads the news and arrives at the office around 8am, where an assistant has already set up her coffee, breakfast and schedule.
All her emails and documents, including every response, are printed out for her to review. Her daily task list sits on an iPad.
On the subject of footwear, very much a theme in the film, the reality is more practical than glamorous.
Marius lasted just two weeks in heels before switching to flats.
“Things are happening at a certain pace and it sometimes involves a bit of running,” she explained. “When she asks for someone, she wants that person very quickly.”
Tapper spent weeks in pumps that gave her blisters before quietly retiring them, though she still wore heels most days. The unspoken rule, she said, was simple: no jeans, no sneakers.
Taylor, who spent four years as an assistant and now plans the Met Gala as Vogue‘s special events director, recalled having to herd slow-moving editors into meetings with Wintour, using a two-assistant system, one on the landline, one physically hovering at the editor’s desk.
“I would just hover until they were ready, if I hover, usually they were faster,” she said.
She also found an unexpected fitness benefit. “I loved the running around because I was so busy that I could never exercise. So I would just run in the office.”
Then there is the take-home bag, an extra-large L.L.Bean Boat and Tote filled each evening with articles awaiting Wintour’s edits, notes and feedback.
“She never wants anyone waiting on her for feedback,” Tapper explained. The infamous “book”, the print dummy of the magazine featured heavily in the film, goes in that bag every night, returned the next morning covered in Post-It notes written in what Taylor described as “doctors handwriting” that “takes a village” to decode.
“I would allow myself to ask her once a week [what one of her notes said],” she recalled.
