Meryl Streep used a Vogue cover interview to call out Melania Trump’s much‑debated 2018 “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” coat and to critique broader expectations around how women in power present themselves on television. Speaking with Vogue editor Anna Wintour in a conversation moderated by director Greta Gerwig ahead of the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2, Streep framed the coat episode as emblematic of how dress can send powerful political messages.
“I think the most… powerful message that our current first lady sent was in the coat that said ‘I Really Don’t Care, Do U?’ when she was going to see migrant children who were incarcerated,” Streep said, invoking the moment in June 2018 that reignited debate over the Trump administration’s family‑separation policy. The former first lady later described the jacket as a provocation aimed at critics rather than the children; Streep referenced that explanation in the interview while emphasizing that clothing operates within “larger historical and political sweeps of expectation.”
Streep broadened the critique from a single garment to a pattern she sees on screens and stages: an expectation that women in authority reveal vulnerability through their appearance. “I’m stunned at how women in power have to have bare arms on television while men are covered in shirts and ties or a suit,” she said. “There’s an apology built into women. They have to show their smallness. It’s compensatory: The advancements of women in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of this one have been destabilizing. It’s as if women have to say, ‘I’m little. I can’t walk in these shoes. I can’t run. I’m bare, not threatening.'”
The interview comes as Streep returns to her Oscar‑nominated role as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada 2, a sequel that places Priestly at the center of a media world grappling with upheaval. In the film, Priestly must steer a print magazine through an era in which traditional institutions and news models are being “undermined or exploded,” Streep said. Anne Hathaway reprises her role as Andy Sachs, now the magazine’s features editor, and the new film explores the managerial and cultural pressures of keeping a legacy publication afloat.
“I was interested in the business part of it, that thing of carrying the weight of many, many people’s jobs, running a big organization, keeping it going somehow,” Streep told Wintour, saying the filmmakers sought to capture “something true about the business now.” The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens in U.S. theaters on May 1.
The Vogue conversation—available on the magazine’s website as the cover story—pairs Hollywood star power with fashion‑industry gatekeeping in a discussion that ties the sartorial to the political. Streep’s remarks add a high‑profile voice to ongoing conversations about gendered double standards in public life and the symbolic power of dress when worn by figures in the spotlight.