The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

The fashion-magazine comedy everyone quotes, and still the sharpest mainstream look at how editors, assistants and designers depend on one another. Meryl Streep's editor-in-chief is frightening precisely because she is so controlled, and the film quietly makes the case that the industry's taste trickles down to everything in your closet. It is glossy rather than technical: you see run-throughs, previews and a lot of sprinting with coffee, not much actual sewing. As a portrait of fashion's pecking order and its brutal hours, few studio pictures come close.