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In The Devil Wears Prada 2, former (first) assistant Emily Charlton has left Runway magazine for a senior role at Dior. So when the movie’s production needed a Dior store for Andy Sachs’ and Miranda Priestly’s advertising meeting with Emily, they went straight to the source. The plan was to capture Emily (Emily Blunt) in Dior’s four-story flagship at 57th and Madison, newly redesigned by ELLE Decor A-List Titan Peter Marino. What nobody anticipated was that the store still wouldn’t be open when it came time to film.
In early 2025, a flood pushed the store opening back several months, forcing the shoot to collide with the final days of construction. The crew ended up filming while workers around them finished up. “It was fun, but a little bit nerve-wracking,” production designer Jess Gonchor tells ELLE Decor. “They were polishing things and putting in window displays, just like in the movie, to the last second.”
20th Century Studios
Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada 2.
That it worked out is largely a testament to the Devil Wears Prada franchise’s lasting power. Dior worked directly with the sequel’s production team from early in its development, and gave the crew access to the store despite its unfinished state. “The name of the movie and the prestige of the movie opened up a lot of doors for us,” Gonchor says.
They ended up filming on the monumental staircase lined with the Diorama, an installation of some 500 miniature shoes, bags, perfumes, and hats arranged in a sweeping gradient of color, a nod to the display at La Galerie Dior in Paris. The crew shot the stair sequence and the merchandise floor but then built the interior meeting room, where Andy, Miranda, and Emily sit down together, on a soundstage.
The store itself, which ELLE Decor covered in our September 2025 issue, resulted from an extensive renovation of the building Dior had occupied for nearly three decades, merging two existing retail spaces into what Marino calls a “Maison.” It is now part 18th-century French grandeur, part 1950s Dior couture, and part Marino’s own sensibility.
Jason Schmidt
Delphine Arnault, real-life CEO of Christian Dior Couture, and architect Peter Marino in the Dior flagship in Manhattan, which his firm designed, in front of the archival display seen in the film. The photograph was featured in ELLE Decor’s September 2025 issue.
Inside, visitors find a living indoor tree grove kept alive by an Austrian irrigation system never before used in New York, private client rooms outfitted with hand-embroidered curtains, a dedicated home boutique, and the first Dior spa on American soil. The project had been years in development before a film crew ever entered the picture.
The Dior scenes are just part of the fashion world the movie seeks to capture. The crew also filmed at Marc Jacobs’s showroomand other fashion spaces, like Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Where the original film largely recreated the fashion world on a soundstage, the sequel embedded itself directly in it.
Though the Dior scenes are brief, they are among the most visually distinct in the sequel—partly because of Marino’s architecture, and partly because no set can truly replicate what a space looks like when it’s actually the real thing.
Julia Cancilla is the social media & news editor at ELLE Decor, where she oversees the brand’s socials and covers design, pop culture, and emerging trends. She also authors the monthly ELLE Decoroscope column. Her work has appeared in Inked magazine, House Beautiful, Marie Claire, and more.