The beauty brand ditches the campaign playbook and gets woven into Runway magazine’s universe instead.
Lancôme isn’t just advertising in The Devil Wears Prada 2, it’s being written into the film’s DNA. Rather than a traditional partnership announcement or product placement, the brand has embedded itself directly into the fictional world of Runway magazine, the iconic publication at the heart of the franchise. The result is a strategy that dissolves the line between beauty brand and storytelling itself.
The approach marks a significant shift in how luxury brands think about film integration. Instead of a celebrity holding a product or a logo appearing in a scene, Lancôme exists as part of the magazine’s editorial fabric and visual identity within the movie. This means readers of in-film Runway content see the brand as a natural, integral part of that world’s fashion and beauty ecosystem, not as an external advertiser interrupting the narrative.
The collaboration taps into what made the original Devil Wears Prada culturally magnetic: its obsession with how fashion media shapes desire and status. By positioning Lancôme as woven into Runway’s pages and aesthetic, the brand essentially gets to exist at the exact epicenter of that world’s influence, not selling to the characters, but existing as part of the landscape they inhabit and care about. For a beauty house, it’s a far more sophisticated play than a standard celebrity endorsement or red-carpet moment.
