Former Vogue editor Filipa Fino is ready to tell all in a new novel that sources claim will be even “more explosive” than The Devil Wears Prada.
That’s quite the bold statement considering TDWP sold over 13 million copies and spawned a $300+ million movie, which resurrected the career of Meryl Streep and made an icon of Vogue’s then-editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour.
Written by Lauren Weisberger and published in 2003, The Devil Wears Prada follows recent grad Andrea Sachs as she navigates the cutthroat world of early-2000s fashion publishing as an assistant to Runway magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Based on Weisberger’s own experience assisting Wintour at Vogue, the novel pulled back the curtain to expose the messy side of an industry obsessed with maintaining its pristine and beautiful image.
But while Weisberger wrote from the perspective of a relative outsider — working for Wintour for less than a year between 1999 and 2000 — Fino was a definite insider, having spent over a decade at the iconic editor’s side before leaving Vogue in 2011.
Presumably, this gave Fino access to stories and details that were above Weisberger’s pay grade. Then again, it’s often the assistants — unseen and unconsidered — who witness the most outrageous behavior.
Filipa Fino
Still, according to Page Six, Best Dressed is full of never-before-shared stories and tidbits about fashion’s top players. And while Fino has dutifully changed the names of her fellow editors, the same cannot be said of the models, designers, and celebrities who peppered her world during her time at the fashion bible. For instance, the book apparently contains new details about a controversial 1998 meeting between Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Fidel Castro, which took place in Cuba when the models were there for a photo shoot.
Also along for the ride on that trip: Leonardo DiCaprio, who apparently was “holed up in a room” at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba with Moss.
Those two were an item? Who know? That said, Moss did attend the Titanic premiere in 1997 and there are pictures of her and DiCaprio as far back as 1993 floating around online. If they were “holed up” in a Cuban hotel together it would have been around the time Moss broke up with boyfriend Johnny Depp, so who knows? Maybe this is just the tip of a much larger and more scandalous iceberg.
Cover art for “Best Dressed” by Filipa Fino
Fino’s novel is expected to be released in May of 2026, which, coincidentally, is when The Devil Wears Prada 2 is set to open in theaters. Whether or not Best Dressed will manage to make waves of the same magnitude as Weisberger’s debut, only time will tell. Part of what made TDWP so exciting was that it was contemporary. Weisberger wasn’t looking back at a bygone era; she was exposing the here and now. And while Millennials love nostalgia and certain subsets of Gen Z seem ravenous for ‘90s and 2000s fashion gossip, the stories Fino tells will have to be pretty salacious for her book to have the same impact. Here’s hoping they are!
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