The Ultimate ‘Mad Men’ Fashion Gallery
<p>Don and his suits, Betty and her boxy jackets, Peggy and her transformation, Joan sirening above them all: the best styles from seven seasons of Mad Men</p>
Photo Illustration, AMC
Mad Men’s drama is in its subtlety—the inscrutable looks and pauses, the characters’ mysterious inner lives—and also its occasional outrageousness, like the time that the lawn mower ran amok, smashing glass and causing injuries, or the unhinged lady who got into Don and Megan’s apartment, or Ginsberg’s severed nipple. There is also drama and messaging in what the characters wear.
We have seen Janie Bryant’s designs segue from the stodgy and constricting early 1960s to the free-flowing, color-injected hippie era—from browns to swirls. Hair has gone from tight and bunched-up to big, sleek, and bouffant. Mousy jumpers have given way to power suits. Don Draper has remained a suave constant, but even he has experimented with plaid. And now, its final style hurrah is here as the stretch of episodes begins to air on Sunday night. We can already see kipper ties, sideburns. The 1970s seem to be here. The sight of Don Draper in flares? Surely then we’ll know it’s all over.
Betty Draper (January Jones), season one: just a regular 1960 suburban housewife. Not. Evacuate the store, especially impressionable pre-teens.
Carin Baer / AMC
Eternal, unbreakable fashion rule: There is only one way to wear a suit. It is called The Don Draper Way.
Carin Baer / AMC
Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), in season one: the Queen Bee of the Secretary Pool, the Madonna of the Staple Gun.
AMC
Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)—a symphony of sludgy brown and shapelessness—hitting every wrong style note, proudly, in season one.
Carin Baer / AMC
Don Draper (Jon Hamm) Goes Casual. A lesson to us all.
Sigh.
Carin Baer / AMC
In season two, Peggy escaped the shackles of clinging wool and discovered glamor + lipstick.
Carin Baer / AMC
The forever-glacial Betty: find the woman a cigarette, or shotgun.
Carin Baer / AMC
Betty, brilliantly working the intersection of pretty summer dress and femme fatale.
Carin Baer / AMC
The man, the beard, that cardigan: we love you Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis).
Carin Baer / AMC
It’s beatnik-a-gogo from season four: Joyce Ramsey, played by Girls’ Zosia Mamet, and Peggy, feel the Beat in plastic overcoat and countercultural yellow jumper.
Michael Yarish / AMC
Men’s Mad Men fashion is not all about Don, and it’s not all about charcoal greys: Don Draper, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), and Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) caper about in plaid and colors in season five.
Michael Yarish
'Fat Betty’ at her most WTF in season five.
Michael Yarish
More plaid and sixties Paisley swirls as Pete and Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie) socialize in season five. Groovy, kids!
Ron Jaffe/AMC
Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) and brother Bobby (Mason Vale Cotton) in their usual "the adult world is around us is screwed, how an we effectively avoid their damage damaging us?" pose on the couch.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
By season six, Joan wasn’t just sirening around the office in purples and reds. The 60s was getting to her—here with headscarf.
Michael Yarish/AMC
Peggy discovers the power-suit: a million miles from the sludgy browns of the early years of the show.
Jaimie Trueblood
Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman): the angsty and ultimately dangerously loopy ad-man at his most adorably put together. Before the, er, severed nipple.
Michael Yarish
Freed from boxy suits and fitted dresses, the no longer 'Fat' Betty goes country-casual in season six.
Michael Yarish/AMC
The impeccably impeccable silver fox, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) meets hippie culture in season six in Los Angeles, with Danny Siegal (Danny Strong) and Lotus (Evan Lorene).
Michael Yarish/AMC
Outside of Manhattan lies color! Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) working mellow yellow, as the ad-folk hit LA in season six.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
Dawn (Teyonah Parris) and Idara Victor (Nikki): black characters enter the story in season six.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
Floppy hats and richly colored swimming trunks: Megan (Jessica Paré) and Don in season six.
Michael Yarish/AMC
A fedora can squash many a man’s head. But not, obviously, Don’s—in season seven.
Michael Yarish/AMC
He's got the beads if you've got the time. The office goes to hell-in-a-hot-hippie-handcart, thanks to the likes of Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson).
Justina Mintz/AMC
Dawn, the world’s best secretary, shows how to wear a boxy jacket.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
More L.A. shenanigans in season seven. NY suits jettisoned, blonde, sun-kissed casual in: Pete Campbell, with disappearing hairline, and Bonnie Whiteside (Jessy Schram).
Jordin Althaus/AMC
Roger Sterling remains reassuringly sharp in this gorgeous suit.
Michael Yarish/AMC
Oh, what fun it must be to one of Betty’s children, picnicking with mom in one of her drop-dead day-suits, and watching her as she—ignoring the sandwiches and bucolic surroundings—snarls at you and at the world with her nicotined weapon of choice.
The power of big hair, as exemplified by Megan.
Justina Mintz/AMC
Bold patterns are not the only choice for the late sixties starlet. Megan’s baby-doll-nightie-influenced dress hits the party circuit.
Michael Yarish/AMC
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