The Best Press Tour Looks From The 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' — what the tour shows about jewelry choices (including pearl moments)

Pearls at the red carpet have always been a power move. What the Mexico City launch of The Devil Wears Prada 2 proved, across two costume changes per star and four complete looks at Museo Frida Kahlo and Museo Anahuacalli on March 30, is that the form of the pearl matters as much as its presence. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, styled by Micaela Erlanger and Erin Walsh respectively, deployed jewelry with the deliberateness of film dialogue: every setting, every silhouette, every metal finish was saying something specific. For anyone tracking what fine jewelry looks like when it operates as genuine character punctuation rather than dressing-room afterthought, this press tour is a masterclass.

1. Streep's Schiaparelli premiere look: gold and pearl "teeth" earrings

The single most consequential jewelry moment of the tour arrived at the Anahuacalli premiere. Streep stepped onto the red carpet in a midnight-blue Schiaparelli shirtdress, its razor-sharp collar and gold eye-motif buttons already doing considerable narrative work. The earrings, gold and pearl "teeth" pieces from the same house, sealed the look as something more than fashion. These are not pearl drops in the conventional sense. Schiaparelli's surrealist anatomical jewels position the pearl as a tooth, a body fragment elevated to ornament, which inverts every classical association pearls carry. In the original 2006 film, Miranda Priestly's pearls were about immaculate reserve: the single strand, the near-invisible stud, the kind of jewelry that announces power by being entirely unthreatening. These 2026 earrings borrow pearl's luster and heritage weight, then reroute it through a surrealist lens that signals something more unsettling and contemporary. The pearl is no longer inheritance. It is provocation.

*Recreate the look:* For a pearl-and-gold drop earring that carries surrealist edge without the Schiaparelli price point, start with a sculptural pearl-drop in yellow vermeil or solid 14-karat gold from a fine jewelry atelier such as WWake or Mateo New York, where baroque pearl drops are set in asymmetric gold frames. For more accessible alternatives, Mejuri's lustrous pearl Demi Hoop earrings (around $98) pair a freshwater pearl element with a gold hinge setting that reads as architectural rather than traditional, and BaubleBar's pearl and gold drop styles in the $40-65 range offer an entry point with comparable visual impact. When wearing a high-collared or button-front shirtdress, let the earring be the only jewelry: no necklace, no stacking, no competing hardware at the wrist.

2. Streep's Dolce & Gabbana red suit: gold hoops as editorial anchor

Streep arrived at La Casa Azul brunch in a custom Dolce & Gabbana fire-engine red suit composed of the label's Turlington jacket with sharp peak lapels, wide-leg trousers, and a coordinating pussy-bow organza blouse. Her jewelry choice was emphatically not pearl: large gold hoop earrings, finished with maroon cat-eye sunglasses and a custom Olympia Le-Tan book clutch. This is important context for reading the tour's overall jewelry language. Where pearls appeared at the premiere and signaled editorial complexity, the daytime power look reached for bold, unambiguous gold. The hoop is Miranda Priestly's daylight register: commanding, unfussy, immune to trend. In the original film, that register was expressed through structured pearl studs and chain-link necklaces glimpsed under immaculate collars. Here, the stylist Erlanger updated it to oversized gold, reflecting two decades of shifts in what "power jewelry" looks like on a woman of Streep's stature. The absence of pearl in this look is itself a pearl statement: it marks the difference between daytime authority and evening wit.

*Recreate the look:* The large-hoop-with-a-power-suit formula translates to pearl via the classic pearl-drop-on-a-gold-lever-back format. For a high-end reference, Mikimoto's lustrous Akoya pearl drop earrings in 18-karat yellow gold remain the benchmark for this specific pairing of formality and femininity. At a more accessible price, Kendra Scott's pearl drop in gold-tone brass captures the same dress-up/dress-down versatility from around $65. For neckline rules: a pussy-bow or open-collar blouse paired with pearl drops calls for no necklace. The bow itself is a throat statement and competes with any pendant.

3. Hathaway's Schiaparelli Casa Azul look: Bvlgari Tubogas earrings and the hardware moment

Hathaway's daytime La Casa Azul appearance in a black Schiaparelli Fall 2025 fringed western shirt and pencil skirt, anchored by the house's Eye Bijou Belt, was a lesson in jewelry-as-architecture. Her chosen earrings were Bvlgari Tubogas, the iconic coiled gold tubular design that traces back to ancient Roman goldsmithing. No pearl, no stone: pure sculptural metal. What this look confirmed is that the tour's jewelry strategy deliberately bifurcates pearl and hardware into two distinct modes. Pearl appears at the formal, evening, character-loaded moments. Hardware, whether that is an eye belt or a coiled gold earring, carries the daytime, agency-forward language. Andy Sachs, as a character, began the original film in no-jewelry territory. Her evolution into fashion was marked by her acquiring statement pieces. Hathaway's 2026 version of that evolution arrives fully formed: the jewelry is not decoration but decision-making made visible.

*Recreate the look:* The Tubogas coil earring translates beautifully into pearl territory via the baroque pearl-and-chain hoop, where a single off-round baroque pearl is suspended inside a continuous gold hoop, a form popularized by jewelers including Sophie Bille Brahe and Chan Luu. For a high-end reference, Sophie Bille Brahe's Perle de Rosée drop earring sets a baroque Akoya pearl in a delicate gold-wire hanger that reads as effortlessly sculptural. For attainable versions, Gorjana and Jenny Bird both produce pearl-inside-hoop designs that sit below $80 without looking budget. With a high-necked, cowboy-collar shirt and a belted silhouette, this shape of earring draws the eye upward and elongates without competing with the collar line.

4. Hathaway's Stella McCartney premiere look: silver jewelry and the sequin question

For the Anahuacalli red carpet, Hathaway switched to a Stella McCartney Fall 2026 pink sequined mini dress from the label's Paris Fashion Week runway debut, finished with thigh-high heeled boots, Wolford tights, and silver Bvlgari jewelry. This is the tour's most overtly playful jewelry register. Where Streep's pearl "teeth" earrings asked for close reading, Hathaway's silver pieces at the premiere functioned as straight-ahead shine: a deliberate contrast choice against the hot-pink sequin ground. From a gemological standpoint, silver and white-metal settings against heavy sequin work serve to not compete with the garment's reflective surface while still marking the ears and wrists as accessorized. The pearl equivalent here would be a white or cream freshwater pearl stud in a bezel setting, which would achieve the same light-catching economy without the harder edge of polished silver.

*Recreate the look:* For pearl styling against a sequin or heavily embellished dress, the bezel-set round pearl stud is the single best choice: it completes the ear without adding visual noise. High-end: a Tasaki 18-karat white-gold bezel stud with an Akoya pearl sits at the intersection of restraint and craftsmanship. Attainable alternatives include Catbird's pearl studs in sterling silver (around $88) and Madewell's pearl-set gold-tone studs in the $20-28 range. The neckline rule for a sequin mini is firm: no necklace. The dress is the necklace. Stud earrings only, and if you stack earrings at the second or third hole, keep those companions as metal rings, not additional pearls.

What this tour tells us about pearls in 2026

The four Mexico City looks collectively map the current state of pearl jewelry with unusual precision. Pearls appear here in their most architecturally complex, highest-conversation form: not as heirlooms, not as bridal defaults, but as the material chosen when a costume needs to register "sophisticated disruption." Schiaparelli's gold and pearl teeth earrings are a form that the original film's fashion vocabulary had no room for. Miranda Priestly in 2006 wore pearls as composure. Miranda Priestly in 2026 wears pearls as something that bites.

The global press tour continues through Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai before the film's world premiere in New York City and European premiere in London. Each stop will add new jewelry data points. Watch for whether baroque and drop pearl forms hold as the editorial-facing choice for premiere events, or whether the tour's later legs shift toward the strand and the choker: the two remaining pearl forms with the clearest legacy-versus-modernity tension to resolve.