Elegant. Throwback. Sexy.
While it's impossible for me to conjure the early 1960s without also confronting the spectre of fire hoses, barking dogs, and black bodies swinging in Birmingham, AMC's "Mad Men," now in its third season and unfolding in 1963, transports, leaving the historical ugliness largely off-set.
These days the scripted television landscape is rife with sociopaths, blood-suckers, and men in their prolonged adolescence, but with "Mad Men" there are ad-ults (you have to put the emphasis in its proper place, laughs). The writing is impeccable of course, and the exceptionally polished fashion (pencil skirts, jumpers, shifts, red lipstick, men's suiting and cardigans...) makes me yearn for something bygone.
It's been an added bonus to watch as the writers revisit iconic American brands and businesses in the guise of Sterling Cooper accounts: John Deere, Madison Square Garden, even the little-known "Patio," which was featured on one of my favorite epis so far this season.
Patio, in real-life, marked Pepsi's foray into diet cola in 1963, an appeal to women watching their waistlines. Execs changed the name from Patio to Diet Pepsi after winning thumbs for the low-cal beverage. And I only know this because the Queens Museum mounted an exhibit on it - but Pepsi Co. was also the first to train and hire an all-black Sales team during the Jim Crow era to market and sell to African-American customers. The advertising they created is fascinating to examine. Those gentleman became the first of a generation of black corporate Ad Men in the 1940s and early 1950s.
Posts
2 comments:
Haven't seen the show. Intriguing. I'll have to peep it.
This show is one of my favorites! The first time I stumbled upon it, I had no clue that it was a television show. The lighting and colors of the show are so beautifully done and historically accurate, that the show feels less like a period piece and more like it's been pulled from AMC's archives. And don't get me started on the wardrobe - high-waisted pencil skirts, ballet necklines and elbow-length gloves. I die!
I have read a fair number of pieces about creator Matthew Weiner, whose creativity and attention to detail has been well-documented by any and every journalist who's visited the set. However, my favorite article is not on the creator but on another one of his other "works." Peep his youngest son being interviewed by GQ on style! http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8377
Post a Comment