Fashion industry professionals unsatisfied, film at eleven

Just spotted this review of the fashion on display in The Devil Wears Prada. As Ruth La Ferla (isn't that the name of a show on Univision?) reports, fashionistas who have seen advance screenings of the movie give it low marks for verisimilitude and understanding of the industry it purports to depict/satirize. Apparently, hold your breath, a Hollywood movie doesn't present the fashion industry in a manner that meets with the approval of those in the industry, and the New York Times has a story about it before the movie even appears.

Like I (or anyone) should care. First off, the movie is (as I understand) something of a satirical take on the fashion industry, so it should surprise no one that its presentation indulges in caricature or excess. Second, nothing short of hagiographic boot-licking adulation ever satisfies the mandarins of the fashion industry, so their opinion is a poor signal regardless. Beyond all that, however, is the most important point: Hollywood so rarely gets anything "right" as the most knowledgeable would recognize it that it shouldn't be news that another movie is about to be released that arguably fails to conform to reality. Are we now to be treated to a story saying that the Strangers With Candy movie, also opening this week, doesn't accurately reflect the modern high school? Perhaps the Miami Vice movie will bear little resemblance to actual police work? Next, they'll be telling me Pirates of the Caribbean is a misleading depiction of life at sea.

Really, if I had a nickel for every time I saw some appalling distortion of the political or legal process, American history, or math and statistics, I'd be able to give up teaching all that stuff. Frankly, I think it's a tad more important that popular entertainment floats a ton of ignorance about important subjects than whether they get the accessories right on a fashion magazine editor. Unfortunately, fashionistas have little more to do of significance than monitor how they're portrayed in popular entertainment, so we're treated to their opinions.