“Can you please spell Gabbana?” Andy Sachs, the character played by Anne Hathaway, asks in the early moments of “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Twenty years later, she seems to have gotten it down.
The movie, released in 2006, starred Ms. Hathaway as the blunder-prone assistant to Miranda Priestly, a fashion magazine editor played by Meryl Streep who has a gaze withering enough to penetrate the darkest of sunglasses. A new sequel considers how their dynamic — and the media landscape they occupy — has shifted after two decades.
At the movie’s premiere in Manhattan on Monday night, Ms. Hathaway and Ms. Streep posed with their co-stars Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt on a red carpet outside Lincoln Center. There was screaming followed by even more screaming from fans who had been waiting outside for hours in hopes of an autograph from Ms. Streep.
“She’s a boss,” said Brielle Fertucci, 15, who was lined up outside to cheer even though she had not yet been born when the first movie was released.
“The Devil Wears Prada,” is based on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, a former assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. It offered an affectionate skewering of the fashion world, poking fun at its excesses while ultimately making a case for its significance.
The crowd seemed to part as Ms. Wintour, now Condé Nast’s chief content officer, swept in with her daughter, Bee Carrozzini.
“This is the star of the show,” one onlooker said as Ms. Wintour made her way toward coat check. She has not shied from her onscreen likeness, wearing Prada to the film’s New York premiere in 2006.
Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, and 20th Century Studios, the Disney-owned company releasing the film, have also been embracing cross promotion. Ms. Wintour appeared alongside Ms. Hathaway onstage at the Academy Awards this year to present an Oscar, and posed with Ms. Streep in sunglasses on the May cover of Vogue. The movie’s release on May 1 will serve as an amuse-bouche to the Met Gala, Ms. Wintour’s red-carpet spectacle, on May 4.
Inside David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, industry figures reflected on how much the movie had in common with the world it portrays.
Chloe Malle, the head of editorial content for American Vogue, said she saw the 2006 movie as more than just a lighthearted comedy.
“It brought home to a lot of people who were not interested in fashion how important the fashion industry is globally,” she said. She spoke highly of the character played by Mr. Tucci, a hyper-competent right-hand man: “We all need a Nigel in our lives.”
Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, was happy to discuss the movie’s similarities to Condé Nast’s glossy magazine empire. One character had immediately reminded her of the media mogul Si Newhouse; the actor Tibor Feldman did a “very good” job, she said.
Ms. Brown was deep in conversation with the tech journalist Kara Swisher, who makes a cameo with her in the movie. (Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic of The New York Times, makes a brief appearance, too.) The sequel explores a fantasy in which tech billionaires keep modern media afloat without weighing in on its coverage, Ms. Brown added.
“It’s a movie of wish fulfillment, isn’t it?” she said.
The movie’s original cast is supplemented with characters played by Lucy Liu, Simone Ashley, Justin Theroux and Caleb Hearon. Pauline Chalamet, who plays a magazine underling in the movie, said she had seen the original just a few blocks away at a theater in Lincoln Square.
“I think I saw it there after a ballet class one day,” Ms. Chalamet said. The sequel features more sophisticated tech — characters have iPhones rather than T-Mobile Sidekicks — but many of its themes remain the same. “Oh, it is so iconic,” she said.
Guests wore highlighter-yellow gowns and cerulean capes; they sipped espresso martinis and carried micro-purses no larger than gerbils. The designer Marc Jacobs rode up an escalator with the Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci to the orchestra level, where they crossed paths with the ice skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.
The world of “The Devil Wears Prada” is both fabulous and harsh; its designer goods come at the cost of impossible demands and frequent humiliation.
Recho Omondi, the host of the fashion podcast “The Cutting Room Floor,” said the movie might not have made the fashion industry look warm and fuzzy, but it still got a lot right.
“It might have been exaggerated a little bit, sensationalized a little bit, as to how cold and curt it could be,” she said. “But, also, maybe not that much.”
The model Coco Rocha was chatting with the designer Christian Siriano, reminiscing on her first casting for Vogue. She was a teenager, and she recalled being sent home almost immediately by a casting director.
“My agent phones me and says, ‘You need to go wash your hair and throw out your pants,’” she said. When she returned, in new pants, “I see the casting director, and she goes, ‘Better.’” She was soon introduced to Ms. Wintour.
Attendees collected water bottles and mammoth popcorn buckets on their way into the theater. Just before the movie began, its director, David Frankel, took the microphone to reveal what he called “the worst-kept secret in showbiz.”
It was a special guest star: Lady Gaga, who bounded onstage while Ms. Streep rubbed her opera gloves together gleefully.
The stars took their seats in the crowd, and Ms. Streep began to bob her head to the movie’s opening song. For some members in the audience, the plot was beside the point.
“Honestly, I don’t even care what happens,” said Paige DeSorbo, the reality TV star and podcaster. “I just can’t wait to see all the outfits.”
Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times.
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