At least once a Mad Men season, we have a brief, mad, completely self-absorbed moment when we entertain the notion that costume designer Janie Bryant is deliberately fucking with the two of us. It passes after a time, but make no mistake, the color story we’ve been documenting all...

It really wasn’t until we looked at the clothes that we realized how much this entire episode was a response to an episode from last season. Okay, let’s get right to it, because we don’t think we ever received so many messages about a hairstyle before in our lives. Yes,...

In an episode entitled “The Flood,” with a closing song of “Love is Blue,” maybe it’s not such a surprise that blue featured prominently throughout the episode. And this gives us an opportunity to float our new “blue and green motif” explanation....

We got embarrassingly excited when the episode opened with a shot of those green and blue room dividers, opening up to a tableau of men all dressed in blue and green. We noted in the season opener that Peggy was working a lot of blue and green and that it was reflected in the men she was...

Lots of stories being told through color this episode. And since it’s 1968, costume designer Janie Bryant had a whole lot of colors to work with. Curiously, she chose to focus mostly on two.   Standard middle class suburban wear. No one’s really wearing the latest anything in...

Onwards. Part one of this episode’s Mad Style is here and our initial episode review is here.   Once again, Sally stands out in a scene. In the living room, she was the only one in a brilliant blue, while the other women wore pink, red, or white. Here, she’s a focus-pulling...

…And we’re back. And boy, are we ever happy and excited to be back here. Before we get started, we’d like to be a little self-serving and obnoxious. When we first came up with the idea of Mad Style and wrote the first couple of entries, Tom said to Lorenzo, “I’m...

Since this is our very last Mad Style until 2013, allow us to take a moment to pat ourselves on the back. We never were very good at false modesty, so why bother attempting it, amirite? We picked up on a few very subtle dialogue cues and one extremely UN-subtle Joannie dress in the first...

We always have two reactions to every episode of Mad Men. There’s the reaction to the story and characters, and then there’s the reaction to the costuming. When this episode ended, Tom turned to Lorenzo and said, “Dammit. It’s almost all men in suits this week.”...

There were other aspects to the story, but for us (and we think, for just about every other viewer), this episode was entirely about Peggy and Joan. Megan had an arc in this episode as well, but it was the weakest of the three and the costuming tended to reflect it. This is Peggy’s...

It feels like we start every week by saying there wasn’t too much to delve into, costume-wise – and then we go off for another 1500 words on the costumes. We’re always pleasantly surprised when we manage to eke out some thoughts, but honest and for true: we really went over...

With families and family trees being so central to the story this time, it’s not surprising that the two branches springing from the Hofstadt-Draper union are both being defined through their clothing, and that subtle points about the differences in each household are being made. Here,...

There were some interesting callbacks to earlier episodes and the ghost of Betty Draper loomed large once again. Let’s get to it. This outfit served as a focal point because an actual story point hinged on the audience realizing that she had changed into a cocktail dress. It’s an...

We’ll start off slow, with a couple snapshots of 1966 teen and tweenhood, upper middle class-style. This episode was the story of three daughters, and while Sally’s clothes definitely played a part and made an impact in this story, the costuming really worked its ass off telling...

Let’s go on a trip, shall we? Before we get into the weeds of it all, we want to point out something that’s not strictly style-related, but since we’re all about the visual motifs here, it’s worth noting. Three parallel, overlapping stories were told this episode....

Because this episode was dominated by men in suits, it’s a little tougher to pull out any sort of inferences or meaning from the costumes. To our amusement, we found ourselves desperately scanning all the ties, looking for something to present itself. To our surprise, something did....

It’s true in every episode, but in this one, color stories really took center stage in the costuming. Walk with us. The staging on this scene was very smart. Don’s coughing caused Megan to move away so that when Andrea entered the elevator she had no idea they were together. The...

Zip yourselves up and let’s get to it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Could there possibly have been a more shocking way to reintroduce Betty? Did you gasp like we did? The combination of the bejeweled cuffs and collar (very much in style for the older crowd at this time),...

Part 1 here.   There’s a lot of signalling here that says “British” even if it’s not obvious. Lane has always had a distinctive style that set him apart from the other partners and subtly reinforced a European vibe in opposition their entirely American ways of...

Wake up, children! The SIXTIES are here! Like most viewers, we were struck by Sally’s newly stretched-out body and suddenly deeper voice. And probably like a lot of viewers, we originally figured this was her new house she was waking up in. The scene was designed to be as confusing as...

As we said in the previous installment of Mad Style, we feel like our best work in this series is behind us and we’ve said just about everything there is to say, at least when it comes to the female characters. Because this is the last episode for a distressingly long time, we chose to...