The mythology of The Devil Wears Prada has always extended beyond the screen.
For nearly two decades, audiences have treated its characters as thinly veiled portraits of real figures inside Vogue, with Anna Wintour widely understood as the blueprint for Miranda Priestly, and author Lauren Weisberger drawing Andy Sachs from her own experience working as Wintour’s assistant in 1999.
Emily, however, has remained harder to pin down.
Now, that final piece has fallen into place. Speaking on Vogue’s podcast The Run-Through, celebrity stylist Leslie Fremar confirmed what industry whispers have long suggested. “She’s me. I am Emily,” she said in conversation with Chloe Malle. “I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about it.”
In the late ’90s, just six months into her promotion to Wintour’s first assistant, Fremar was tasked with hiring a junior to work beneath her. Not long after, she found herself reading an early copy of The Devil Wears Prada and recognising her own reflection in its pages.
At the time, the environment she was operating in left little room for softness. “There were rules passed down to me,” she recalled. “You couldn’t eat at your desk. You couldn’t even go to the bathroom, because one of the assistants always had to be there.” When she stepped into the role, she tried to recalibrate where she could.
A pair of Birkenstocks lived under her desk, a (small) rebellion against the expectation of all-day heels. “I think Anna knew I would do that,” she said. “I don’t know if I could survive a full day in them.”
Now one of Hollywood’s most in-demand stylists, with clients including Charlize Theron, Nicola Peltz Beckham and Kamala Harris, Fremar also lays claim to one of the story’s most enduring lines. “A million girls would kill for this job,” she recalled telling her junior assistant, a sentiment she still stands by.
If the film immortalised Emily as cutting and exacting, Fremar suggests the original draft was even sharper. After being summoned into Wintour’s office, where the editor reportedly asked, “Who’s Lauren Weisberger?”, Fremar recalls being told the book portrayed her as “worse” than her boss. “It was actually quite mean,” she said, suggesting later edits softened its tone.
The publication of the novel did little to resolve the tension. “We’ve never talked about it. We never spoke again after she left,” Fremar said of Weisberger, describing the experience as a betrayal. More than two decades on, her position remains largely unchanged. A reunion, she admits, would be “very awkward,” before adding simply, “There’s nothing to be said.”
Speculation around the connection has circulated for years, with figures like Julianne Moore noting the resemblance. One person who did know for certain, however, was Emily Blunt herself. Fremar recalled telling the actor at a dinner party, “I just need to let you know, I’m Emily.” The response was polite, if understated: “Oh, okay.”
Still, her time at Vogue is not defined solely by that chapter. More than 25 years later, Fremar received a call from Wintour that marked a different kind of full circle, an invitation to style an American Vogue cover featuring Harris.
“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and styled many international covers, but never American Vogue,” she said. “It felt like a true full-circle moment, and probably my proudest.”
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