Blair Waldorf, Elle Woods and Miranda Priestly Are All Back. Hollywood Clearly Missed Its Real It Girls
Blair Waldorf is coming back to New York in her forties, which feels correct because Blair has never believed a social ranking should continue without her. Elle Woods has gone back to high school. Miranda Priestly is back at Runway, where the magazine business is in trouble and her former assistant now controls the money she needs.
None of them has returned for a polite little wave.
Blair's comeback is already the messiest because there are two Blairs. The new novel, Blair, continues Cecily von Ziegesar's original books, not the television series. Book Blair and TV Blair share a name, expensive taste and several emotional problems, but their lives are very different.
The TV ending gave Blair a marriage to Chuck, a son named Henry and control of Waldorf Designs. The new book owes us none of that. Chuck was never her great love in the novels, and Gossip Girl's identity was never revealed. So if you are waiting for forty something Chuck and Blair to terrorise school parents together, please lower your expectations until Cecily tells us what she has actually written.
What we know is that Blair returns to New York twenty years later and tries to climb back to the top of Upper East Side society. The most interesting word there is “back.” Where did she go? Who took her place? Did she lose her status, leave New York or finally discover that being queen becomes harder when everyone at the table has their own money and lawyers?
None of those theories has been confirmed. Leighton Meester has read the first seven chapters, which means she currently knows seven chapters more than the rest of us. Annoying, but very appropriate for Blair Waldorf.
The premise already understands what made Blair fun. She never wanted to attend the best party. She wanted to approve the guest list, choose the flowers and quietly ruin the evening of anyone wearing the same dress. Her plans were often terrible, but they were never random. Every scheme came from her need to control the life she had planned in her head.
Elle Woods has a different problem. We already know exactly who she becomes, so her prequel has to explain her without making Legally Blonde feel unnecessary.
Prime Video's Elle takes us to 1995, when she is sixteen and living in Bel Air. Then her plastic surgeon father ruins a high profile nose job, his career falls apart, and the family moves to Seattle. Honestly, that is such an aggressively Legally Blonde reason to relocate a family that I have decided to respect it.
The risky part is that Elle already had a perfect fish out of water story. She left her comfortable California life, arrived at Harvard in pink, and discovered that everyone had confused her cheerfulness with stupidity. Giving her the same experience in high school could make Harvard feel like a repeat.
The creators found a better way into her past through the bunny costume scene. In the original film, Elle arrives at a party in costume, realises she has been tricked and looks embarrassed for about two seconds. Then she recovers and walks through the room like the ears were completely intentional. The series asks where she learned to recover that quickly.
That is the Elle Woods story worth telling. She did not suddenly become intelligent at Harvard. Harvard simply gave her a problem serious enough to use everything people had dismissed about her. Her knowledge of hair care solved a murder case. Pink was not placed beside her intelligence as a cute contrast. Pink helped win the trial.
Miranda Priestly has been given the most satisfying problem of all: the world has changed, and it forgot to request her approval.
In The Devil Wears Prada 2, Runway is struggling while Emily has become a powerful luxury executive with control over the advertising money the magazine needs. The assistant Miranda once sent racing across Manhattan can now decide whether Miranda gets paid. I imagine Emily waited twenty years for that meeting and arrived early.
Miranda has also become so culturally real that Vogue placed Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour together on its cover. It looked less like a magazine cover and more like a long overdue HR meeting with much better coats.
Of course, Miranda is still an awful boss. No amount of excellent tailoring changes that. But she knows exactly how her industry works, and the famous cerulean speech proves it. She can trace one ordinary blue sweater through designers, department stores and millions of dollars while Andy is still pretending fashion has nothing to do with her.
That complete confidence is why Miranda remains fun to watch. Meryl Streep recently said that if Miranda were a man, there would be no film. People would hear the same rude instructions and call him a demanding genius. Miranda is cruel, brilliant and impossible to dismiss, which gives us far more to argue about than a perfectly nice boss ever could.
This is what Blair, Elle and Miranda have in common. People do not remember them only when they want outfit inspiration. They borrow these women for specific situations. Blair appears when it is time to study, plan or hold a completely unnecessary grudge. Elle appears when someone has underestimated you. Miranda appears when an email should have remained a draft.
That is the blueprint for the next real it girl. Give her something she wants badly enough to embarrass herself. Give her a flaw that creates actual problems, a skill that changes the story and rules she follows even when those rules make her life worse. Her clothes should tell us who she is, but her decisions should prove it.
The next great it girl does not need Blair's headband, Elle's pink or Miranda's stare. She needs enough personality to make a mess that nobody else could have made.
The outfit gets copied. The woman gets remembered.