I Was The Real-Life Andy From The Devil Wears Prada

Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us.

Andy and I both had a cerulean blue fashion moment.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 sent me spiraling down glossy magazine memory lane…

Wagga Wagga is a long way from the rarefied world of haute couture and the runways of Paris. But that’s where I was born and grew up — in rural Australia, riding dirt bikes, not reading glossy magazines. A tomboy, I don’t think I even owned a dress. And my mullet game was strong — this was the early 80s, long before it ever became a trend.

I did have aspirations beyond a small country town. For Hollywood, actually — I wanted to be an actress. I practically ran the drama department in high school. So when I graduated, I applied to university to study acting. As cutthroat as any Hollywood audition, thousands of kids were vying for a handful of coveted spots. Rejected. I applied the next year and made the final cut — only to be left on the cutting room floor once more.

Dream shattered, I took a job at a medical center. I literally filed physical files all day. Back-breaking, brain-rotting work. Every night, I’d dream about patient names.

Nightmare.

I needed a Plan B. I racked my brain, and it drifted back to how enamored I was with letters when I first learned to read and write. I devoured books, wrote poems for friends, and at lunch held court—regaling my eight-year-old fans with passionate storytelling sessions.

Journalism.

Writing, I figured, was the next best thing, so I enrolled in part-time journalism and made plans to move to Sydney (the big city). To keep the lights on, I signed with an agency to get some part-time admin work. I’d barely made it through the front door of my friend Nicky’s place, where I was temporarily camped, when the recruiter called. She had a job I was “perfect for.” No thanks — I wasn’t after a full-time gig. But she was like a dog with a bone. I caved.

Here’s the kicker: I didn’t even want the job, and she wouldn’t even tell me who it was for. I had three interviews before she confessed.

It was Vogue.

She hadn’t wanted me to be seduced by the name. After all, “a million girls would kill for this job.” To be brutally honest, given that high-end style was not exactly part of my DNA, I wasn’t all that fussed — but like Andy, I figured it was better than working at Auto Universe.

I interviewed these schoolgirls/supermodels and scored my first Vogue byline.

I called my mum for a temperature check. “Tash, this is it! Your name up in lights.”

Working at a glossy fashion magazine wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I’d declared that at age three. But I was ambitious.

And broke.

The night before the interview, Nicky — who, unlike me, lived and breathed fashion and happened to work in HR — gave me a crash course on the who’s who of high fashion. Nic always had her head buried in a magazine and made it her business to know every designer and every trend. I vaguely remember her saying something about someone called Galliano, and Lagerfeld something or other.

The role at Vogue was assistant to the editor, just like Andy at Runway. So I decided to dress a little secretary-chic. Simple black shift dress, a strand of pearls, Mary Janes, and pantyhose. Yep, the old-lady kind.

Only I wasn’t meeting Miranda. I was meeting Marion.

Marion Hume was a British fashion journalist who was transported to the colonies to elevate Vogue. It was the late nineties, and the Aussie fashion scene wasn’t exactly on fire — but a flame had been lit.

Before you ask — no, she wasn’t wearing Prada. Marion wore Yohji. Her signature uniform was a navy trouser-and-shirt set by Japanese avant-garde designer Yohji Yamamoto, accessorized with flat Bally loafers. She’s tall. She knows what works.

And she didn’t seem like a devil. Nor did she declare, “You have no style or sense of fashion.” She did, however, assume I was a religious nut — maybe because of my holier-than-thou aesthetic. Though she swears it was because I made it very clear I could never work Sundays.

Fashion is a religion. Vogue is the bible.

Except back then, my religion was Byblos nightclub, and I worshipped at its altar — hard. Every Saturday night.

A few days later, I got the call. Marion couldn’t decide between me and another candidate.

F*ck.

Ten torturous days later, I was appointed assistant to the editor at Vogue Australia. Maybe it was the pearls, but I’d landed the dream job I hadn’t even wanted. I went out that night, got shitfaced, and danced on tables to celebrate. Elegantly wasted, if you will.

Left: In my ‘Vogue Girl Era’ (23), pearls and all. Right: Marion (aka my Miranda)

Then my baptism by fire began.

Walking into the Vogue offices was like stepping into a world where black is always “the new black”. This was the late nineties, minimalism was raging, so the only things editors would be caught dead in were kitten heels, pashminas, Fendi baguettes (it’s a bag, not a sandwich), and ironed hair slicked back into a Marc Jacobs pony. No, that’s not a horse.

And if you’ve seen the movie, you know the moment…

The fashion cupboard.

Rails of heartstopping designer fashions—delicate Collette Dinnigan lace, sexy Zimmermann swimsuits, enough late-nineties leather to stock a rock concert — and walls of shoes that would make even Carrie Bradshaw weep.

The Devil Wears Prada: Andy ‘shops’ the fashion cupboard.

There was something about being “a Vogue girl.” We wore our fabulousness like a badge. And you better believe we rubbed it in — there’s a hierarchy and a snobbery in the magazine world.

Vogue isn’t just the bible, it’s the holy grail.

As for my cerulean-blue sweater moment: not long after I’d started, a senior editor complimented me on my “fabulous” Kenzo floral top. Only it wasn’t Kenzo — it was Kookaï, a cheap high-street knock-off. I didn’t correct him. I took it as a sign I’d made it.

“Florals for spring. Groundbreaking.”

Unlike Miranda, Marion never looked my outfits up and down in disgust. Though I do remember her asking, with characteristic British bluntness, “Have you suddenly turned punk?” when I experimented with a black miniskirt and coloured tights that didn’t quite land.

In the fashion industry — and by proxy in fashion magazines — editors live and die by “the shows.” The international runway collections: that month-long circuit when the fash pack takes up their gilt front-row seats to view the latest seasonal looks by the world’s hottest designers, across New York, London, Milan, and Paris.

So, like Andy, my job was to pack Marion up for her twice-yearly tours of planet fashion. Despite being the first assistant (to be fair, it was only me, myself, and I), the budget didn’t stretch to let me tag along. Instead, I handled every last detail of her trip. I booked flights and hotels, organized a private car, RSVPed for shows, parties, and VIP dinners, and arranged one-on-ones with A-list celebrities and iconic designers. Most of whom I’d never heard of.

It was a painstaking logistical nightmare that took months to plan and was made even more difficult by the fact that email was barely a thing — Marion still sent handwritten faxes. “Fax Karl Lagerfeld,” she would say, and I’d secretly think: Why does that name sound familiar? Of course. I now know him to be one of the most influential designers in the history of fashion.

I may not have gotten a front-row runway ticket, but Marion did always land with a present.

A handbag. Prada, of course.

In the original film, Andy finds herself on the end of outrageous requests, like when Miranda demands that she get her on a flight during a hurricane. And then get her hands on an unpublished Harry Potter manuscript.

Marion wasn’t quite so demanding — though one time she did ask me to source a helicopter when a photo shoot went sideways. And of course, like a dutiful assistant, I picked up her dry cleaning, delivered her lunch at the same time every day, booked her driver, and brought her “The Book” (the mock-up of the current month’s issue in progress). And perhaps my most important role — to supply bottomless cups of tea — black, no sugar, no milk. She’s British. Starbucks? Never.

I now have a nasty tea addiction to show for it. Not to mention an enduring love of French champagne. The Pommery flowed at every swanky party we Voguettes got to attend, and there were plenty, often held in some million-dollar mansion on Sydney Harbour.

And I can thank my lucky stars I never messed up badly enough to be fired — although Marion was, but that’s another story — unlike Andy’s predecessor, who was downgraded to an editor at TV Guide after missing a call between Miranda and Lagerfeld before the designer boarded a 17-hour flight to Australia.

Lagerfeld flying Down Under, Aussie actor Simon Baker as Andy's love interest in the OG film, and Andy falling for Peter, the Aussie property developer, in the sequel. There's an unmistakable Aussie thread running through both films, so I’m going to take that as a sign.

Beyond serving up non-stop glamour, an editor’s job is to land the big exclusives. And in a major coup, Marion secured a then-unknown Kate Winslet to write a diary of her time filming Titanic. They’ve remained friends ever since. Actually, so have Marion and I. She was the emcee at my wedding and, as something of a substitute fairy godmother to my boys, sent a book every year for their birthdays and Christmas when they were little.

After her axing, Marion left magazines to pursue her real love: cinema. In a glorious collision of fashion, film, and Vogue, she went on to work with Winslet on the Golden Globe-nominated film Lee—the biography of Lee Miller, the model and Vogue photographer who documented the liberation of Paris and the Nazi concentration camps under the editorship of the legendary Alexander Liberman in the 1940s. Kate said during their press rounds that, like Lee Miller herself, Marion has an “innate ability to find the truth in every story.”

So I guess there is a Hollywood ending after all.

From the assistant to the editor’s chair and Vogue’s famous rival.

As for me — like Andy, I got my fashion game on and climbed out of the assistant chair and into the editors’, picking up bylines in Vogue, Elle, Grazia, InStyle, Forbes, et al. And I followed in Andy’s Chanel stilettoed footsteps and fulfilled my lifelong dream of living in New York (read my journey here), landing a job at the epicenter of magazines.

As fashion and features director at Harper’s Bazaar — Vogue’s arch nemesis — which is where I met another devil.

Tune in next week for the sequel.

That’s all.