Everything That Inspired 2025’s Answer to 'The Devil Wears Prada'

Please welcome to the stage... Mood Board, a new ShelfMAG series highlighting need-to-know creative people with new projects — and all the books, films, shows, and more that went into the making of them. It's not procrastination if it ends up in the final draft.

In the nearly two decades since its release, The Devil Wears Prada has been thoroughly dissected, continuously quoted, and pinpointed as the film that launched a thousand social-media-manager careers. But while we wait for 2026's sequel, there's somewhere else to get your fix of elegant cruelty and current-season Courrèges: Caroline Palmer's Workhorse, out now. Ahead, the Vogue alumna speaks with ShelfMAG about how both Tom Ripley and Liz Lemon show up in her debut novel.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

“Without my knowledge, I’m a very big Patricia Highsmith fan. I'll find that I'll be interested in themes and ideas, and then I'll look them up and Patricia Highsmith has already written a variation of this idea … As for Ripley, I've always loved it. It's very similar [to Workhorse] to me. Tom Ripley comes into a world of money, privilege, and leisure. The movie opens up, and he's wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket. It's just a jacket, but it says so much about who he must be, which I've always found really interesting. I think we do that in different ways every day.”

Manhattan When I was Young by Mary Cantwell

“It's less dark [than The Talented Mr. Ripley], but she moves to New York and gets a job in publishing, and has this exciting, complicated young life. In Workhorse, Clo is a part of this environment at the magazine of well-connected, wealthy, and beautiful "Show Horses," and her status as a Workhorse — or a less-connected, less wealthy, and less beautiful staffer — gives her the drive to do whatever she can to get ahead.

30 Rock 

“30 Rock did not inspire this book directly, so much as it inspires all my life decisions … It’s like humor we suddenly don't have anymore. I watch it now and I think, ‘I don't think you can say that anymore.’  I think Tina Fey is brilliant. I think she's funny, and the book I have written is supposed to be funny. I always think about creating something that is fantastic in that unflinchingly funny way.”

Fleabag

“Fleabag was life-changing for me. The Fleabag character couldn't be more different than me, [but] we’re all walking around with a molten center that is our pain. And the way it was communicated to me was just so, so powerful. And I love that it was a character that was very specific and very original, so part of me strove for some variation of that. I was hoping to create a character that felt new and complicated and textured in the same way I found that character to be.”

Rear Window

“When I was writing this, any time I got stuck, I thought, ‘Well, what would it look like if it was a TV show? What would it look like if it was a movie?’ I had a lot of fun imagining the clothes, and in my opinion, nobody does clothes better than Grace Kelly in Rear Window.”

“New York” by Ryan Adams

“When I was writing, I sort of put on some music sometimes and [“New York”] came on. And I was like, ‘Oh! This song was on all the time back then!’ That Ryan Adams album came out right when [the book takes place]. It was sort of like the Lower East Side anthem, but it was very popular. It was that, and it was The Strokes album Is This It. Anytime I hear any song from that album, I am in the back seat of a cab at 4 a.m.”

Curious about what else Caroline is into? Get real-time updates at shelf.im/carolinepalmer