Emily Blunt Wore This Polarizing Shoe Style on Devil Wears Prada 2 Set

Emily Blunt joined her costars in New York to begin filming for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” on Tuesday. The actress stepped back into her role as “Runway” employee Emily Charlton in a pair of sneaker heels by Brandon Blackwood.

The actress was spotted in the designer’s Paloma Sneaker Heel in black, which are slingback pumps, with straps and velcro across the mesh uppers that give it a sneaker appeal. The shoe features a sculpted wedge heel measuring 100mm and a pointed toe with crisscross laces decorating the vamp. The shoe retails for $120.

While the pin-striped, wide-legged Jean Paul Gaultier corset suit pants Blunt wore for the scene obscured most of the shoe, the shoe was easily identifiable thanks to the unique sculpted heel. But as unique and trendy as the shoe may be, would the Emily Charlton fans know and love really wear these?

Blackwood also offers the Paloma Heel in a smooth leather design with a sleek silver buckle on a slim slingback strap, without the mesh uppers or sneaker feel. The sleek style would have paired well with Blunt’s ensemble, so opting for the sneaker version seems like an intentional choice.

The athletic-inspired silhouette may not seem like a fit for the character’s fashion-obsessed personality in the first film. But with the film set in 2025, the costume department seems to be adhering to the current boom in hybrid sneaker-heels and sports-adjacent footwear for women. And the sneaker heel, in particular, has had quite a run in the past year.

Last year, Sarah Blake launched her Sneex company, releasing a line of hybrid sneaker heels that aim to target women searching for comfort while still getting the boost of a stiletto heel. The Sneex designs look like a traditional sneaker on the upper but are balanced atop a slim heel. The hybrid sneaker heels blend the style of a traditional stiletto with the performance and comfort of a sneaker.

Sneex took home the award for Launch of the Year at the 2024 FN Achievement Awards, and have become a go-to for celebrities like Oprah, Gayle King, and Kathy Bates, for red carpets and events, often pairing the sporty shoes with formal attire.

Sneaker heels and wedges are not a new concept and brands like Balenciaga, Isabel Marant, and others, have explored the design and turned the street style creation into high-fashion. Now that they have entered the pop culture zeitgeist through this movie, the sneaker heel might go from being a shocking and polarizing shoe style to one that footwear enthusiasts embrace.

The recent sighting on “The Devil Wears Prada 2” set is further confirmation that the costume designers for the fashion-focused movie are focusing on incorporating newer designers and brands into the characters’ looks. Since fashion and footwear is ever-evolving, including fresher styles and recent trends is fitting to the movie’s fashion magazine plot.

Brandon Blackwood is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year after the designer launched his first line of handbags in 2015. However, the New York-based designer is still new in the shoe space, releasing his debut footwear collection in March 2023. The first collection aimed to deliver “cool” shoes with modern twists from boots to sandals to pumps, and the designs were all priced for under $600.

Blackwood opened up to FN in 2023 about all the work it took to release his shoe collection, which he said took a year to create. “I don’t have any formal design training and I think it’s worked well for me because I just make things I like. With shoes, we just thought about what’s cool, what’s interesting, what’s going to shock people,” Blackwood said to FN. “When brands have a very strong aesthetic or theme, they can get really boring really quickly. I love the fact that the shoes definitely have their own life and their own kind of identity, but the DNA is still there. I want the footwear to make its mark.”