“I picture the objects being in this world where they’re logical and where you accept that all the objects look like this,” Kahn says, “It’s amazing that this movie, in a weird way, is the opposite. The objects are part of this sort of normal world, but one where everything is exceptional. Everything has to be over the top and fab, and that’s how they get in this context.”
One of Kahn’s sculptural lamps and a large-scale tapestry appear early on in the film in the Tribeca loft of Lily, Andy Sachs’s (Anne Hathaway) best friend who has apparently had a successful career in art after being introduced as a gallery assistant in the first film. They take prominence once the editors of Runway travel to Milan, where his lamps and a terrific couch furnish Miranda’s suite.
To Kahn’s point, the universe in which Miranda Priestly exists, the spaces she chooses to visit and inhabit, are meant to be the epitome of good taste. It was particularly curious for Kahn that his work was contextualized in Milan, a city that each year plays host to Salone del Mobile, the largest, and certainly most popular, trade furniture fair in the world. “I have to go to Milan for furniture things all the time, and I’m such an outlier there,” Kahn says.
