Two decades after Miranda Priestly first terrorized Andy Sachs in the original film, the long-awaited sequel exploded onto screens with a production scope that made the first movie look modest. The crew didn't just return to familiar New York corners. They decamped to Italy, commandeered a Gilded Age mansion on Long Island, and even filmed inside a building still under construction. For devoted fans and curious travelers, tracing these locations has become its own kind of pilgrimage.
New York City: Where It All Still Happens
The American Museum of Natural History steps became ground zero for one of the film's most crucial scenes. The Runway Gala sequence transformed these iconic stairs into pure mayhem. Production designer Jess Gonchor explained the difference between then and now: "Twenty years ago, nobody really knew the movie existed, and social media was basically nonexistent. This time around, someone posts a photo, and suddenly crowds are sprinting over to watch." When they returned to film, the steps genuinely became the mob scene the script required, though not exactly in the way they'd anticipated. The gathered crowd of curiosity-seekers played a perfect stand-in for Met Gala onlookers.
The recently reopened Waldorf Astoria became another crucial set piece. After six years of restoration, the hotel's lobby was barely ready when cameras rolled through, creating an intentional friction between the elegantly refined interiors and the ongoing construction chaos. It's the kind of operational tightrope that only a major studio production could have walked.
Hudson Yards, which didn't exist when the original film was shot, gets its own moment. The neighborhood appears during a brief but telling exchange when Miranda drops Andy off at the 7 train station, a reminder of how dramatically New York continues to reshape itself.
The Dior flagship store presented perhaps the production's strangest logistical puzzle. The location hadn't finished renovations when filming began. Construction workers and film crews occupied the same space, essentially working around each other. As Gonchor told ELLE Decor: "It was exhilarating but genuinely stressful. Workers were polishing surfaces and installing window displays simultaneously with us filming the exact same scenes, right up until the final second." The result feels authentically chaotic in a way no soundstage could replicate.
For casual meals and smaller moments, the production moved to Marlow East on the Upper East Side, where Andy and Emily share fries between conversations. Across the East River in Brooklyn, The Long Island Bar hosted the film's sweetest date scene. The bar's history already made it a destination; the movie should push it into must-visit territory for anyone walking Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue.
Long Island's Hidden Estates
Beyond the five boroughs, Long Island provided some of the production's most opulent settings. A sprawling mansion in Oyster Bay, formerly owned by Billy Joel and on the market during pre-production, became Sasha Barnes' home. Miranda's own residence was shot at a waterfront estate on Centre Island Road. Most audaciously, the Palazzo Parigi Hotel scenes in Milan were actually filmed at the Woolworth Estate, also on Long Island. It's a reminder that sometimes the most convincing European glamour can be found just outside New York City.
Milan and Beyond: Italy's Fashion Capital
The film's Italian sequences required an entirely different kind of location scouting. Milan became the heart of the European shoot, with the Accademia di Brera serving as the anchor location for Runway's fashion presentation. Beyond that, the production utilized several iconic Milanese spaces: the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (that soaring glass-and-iron shopping arcade everyone recognizes), Villa Arconati, Palazzo Parigi Hotel, and Palazzo Clerici. Each location carries its own architectural swagger, the kind of backdrop that requires no cinematography tricks to look magnificent.
Lake Como's Villa That Almost Wasn't
Lake Como gets the film's most romantic treatment. The production faced a specific challenge: finding a waterfront villa that looked spectacular from both the grounds and the water itself. Gonchor spent considerable time on the lake, scouting every promising property by boat to understand how each structure would appear from the water. The team settled on Villa Balbiano, the same location that once hosted James Bond in "Casino Royale." The production added lawn and sculpture garden elements specifically for filming, meaning what appears on screen is part real estate, part moviemaking invention.
For travelers planning their own fashion-world pilgrimage, navigating Europe's border systems has become more complicated lately, so plan accordingly if you're hitting both the New York and Italian locations. The journey between continents is steeper these days, but the destinations themselves remain unmistakably worth the effort.
