The Look of Mad Men
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine
As the US TV drama Mad Men returns to British screens, viewers are steeling themselves for a series in which the narrative is often overtaken by the sheer style of the show. What is it about the look of early 1960s Manhattan that is so appealing?
The 60s were cool. No, not the flower power, tie-dye, beads in your hair end of the decade, but the beginning of the 60s, when people worked in stark, smooth modern offices, and wore sharper clothes.
Or so Mad Men would have you believe.
Since the show was first shown on the American cable network AMC in the summer of 2007, it has caused a flutter among style aficionados on both sides of the Atlantic.
And although this tale of hotshot Madison - the "mad" in Mad Men - Avenue advertising execs in 1960s Manhattan has only been watched by a small proportion of the possible primetime audiences in the US and UK, it seems also to have sent ripples through the world of fashion.
But what's so noteworthy about the look of Mad Men?
The Men's Suits
If there is a spiritual predecessor to Mad Men, it surely comes in the form of Hitchcock's North by Northwest, released at the tail end of 1959. The protagonist is also a Manhattan adman, Roger Thornhill, but his suit features in so much of the film it nearly qualifies for a nomination for best supporting actor.
Slate grey with a slender, but not skinny, slate grey tie, the suit has thin lapels and is fitted.
It's not dissimilar to the suits worn by Don Draper, the complex and brooding chief Mad Man in Mad Men.
As well as the slender ties and the tailored but not tight suits, there are handkerchiefs folded into pocket squares, trousers worn high, collar pins, and unusual fabric patterns like windowpane - a wide check - materials like mohair and colours not seen as often in the modern palette, such as petrol blue.
"In the 50s and 60s men became body conscious, wearing suits showed off your figure," says Jeremy Langmead, editor of Esquire.
"The advertising industry really blossomed. That is why they looked good. They were selling a dream so they had to look as though they were part of that dream."
In today's slightly scruffier office environment, where smart and even semi-smart office attire faces a constant war of attrition, there are many who are pleased to see a harking back to a more formal era.
"We have all got scruffier and dressed down over recent years," says Langmead. Suddenly seeing a TV series where everybody is smart is a reminder of how good we do look in a suit. There is a return to it. The power of what a suit can do for you. Smarter, healthier, younger."
In the current straitened times, people in fear of redundancy may be consciously dressing smarter to help them in their battle to avoid the axe, says Langmead.
And having just been to the latest round of fashion shows, he says the Mad Men's influence can be seen in the domination of the suit. But more significant is the influence at the other end of the market, where High Street and Main Street traders brand their suiting as "Mad Men".
"It has obviously had a big influence and permeated from the top to the bottom."
The Women's Fashion
Then of course there's the extraordinary outfits some of the women are wearing in Mad Men.
There are two competing female style icons in the show. At one extreme there is Joan Holloway, the scheming, Machiavellian alpha female of the office, dressed in figure-hugging dresses that even Jayne Mansfield might feel were a little on the tight side.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is Betty Draper, the protagonist's troubled blonde wife, veering between hard-pressed mother and prom queen.
Holloway in particular, has generated acres of column and blog inches. She is the antithesis of the size zero trend, a red-headed Amazon.
"There's all that exaggerated femininity," says Langmead. "Most men really like that. We have got her in the current issue because she's the favourite woman in this office. Not just because she is cocky and confident, but because she looks like a woman, confident in her curves."
Apart from the super-glamorous Holloway, there's a fair slice of how women dressed in 50s and 60s America. There are pyramidal bras, puffed out dresses, and acres of bright lipstick.
The Decor
The look of the sets is dominated by the style known as mid-century modern, says Wallpaper* features director Nick Compton, with designer George Nelson being one of the dominant figures in the rendering of the period.
From the coloured glass ashtrays to the wacky cigarette dispensers and the gold-banded tumblers, it's hard to spot anachronistic items in any shot.
"Every single thing in it has to be period correct," says Amy Wells, set decorator on the show. Along with production designer Dan Bishop, Ms Wells is responsible for the look of the sets.
"We were not trying to idealise the period in any way. We didn't want it too clean, we didn't want it too stylised."
While the office was super-modern and swish, the Draper home is a realistic slice of early 1960s well-to-do interior decor.
"These are people who live in Connecticut - upper middle class, Waspy," says Ms Wells.
So one sees a colonial reproduction kitchen, a lavish living room and some items that are older than the period.
"People kept things much longer than they do now. Every item in your house had a great value. It was not easily replaced. When I was growing up we had cupboards like that, linoleum floors."
And the reason the look has been so much talked about is partly because interest in the design of the period has been intensifying in recent years, says Mr Compton.
"Over the last 10 years people have become more and more interested in that period. Designers like Eames from that period have become pretty popular. The show does it really well, it looks very convincing. They get beyond the cocktails to the furniture.
"It is very clean and it is a rejection of everything too fancy and ornamental and stuffy."
The Smoking and Drinking
Much comment has been passed on the smoking and drinking in the series.
The characters get up, they smoke, they finish breakfast, they smoke, they have a meeting, they smoke, they smoke in between mouthfuls of lunch. They smoke a lot.
And when they're not smoking, they're usually lining up a whisky to go with their elevenses biccy.
The portrayal comes at a time when anti-smoking activists are starting to take a dim view of characters smoking in mainstream television drama. But the realism is welcomed by Neil Rafferty, of smoking rights campaign group Forest.
"It looks really authentic - they have captured the look and the feel very well.
"Obviously, smoking, whether you like it or not was an absolutely integral part of life in the 1960s. They smoked in offices, they smoked pretty much all day. Television and film-makers shouldn't have to pretend life was different."
It leaves the casual observer thinking that a lot of the appeal of the show is the naughtiness of the portrayal of the smoking and drinking, as well as the appalling sexual politics.
"A lot of men can't help but wish that today wasn't a bit more like that time," says Langmead. "[Even though] we know it was wrong."
of course not, its not set in the modern times.
