Period show Mad Men’s costume design is famous for its accurate portrayal of 1960s and 1970s fashions. Thanks to the keen eye of its lead designer, Janie Bryant, the show was able to capture both the countercultural movement as seen on Megan Draper, the more conservative trends a la Betty Francis, and an office-appropriate dress code for Peggy and Joan.
While Peggy’s plaid suits were all business, Joan’s used her femininity to make a big splash in a staid office environment while still looking professional. Her costumes were a bridge between the business and domestic worlds, showing us that you don’t need to be one of the boys to be powerful. Below are ten hidden details about Joan’s costumes you probably didn’t notice.
Jewel tones showed her inner strength
Joan is one of Mad Men’s strongest characters. Between her abusive husband, raising a son as a single mother, and her road to partnership at Sterling Cooper, she has had experiences few other characters on the show can claim to know. Throughout it all, she sasses and strategizes her way to the top in a male-dominated industry during a decade when such success was rare for women. Joan’s costumes channeled her inner strength through jewel tones, such as ruby, emerald, and sapphire, that represented her boldness in the face of adversity.
Her trademark was the sheath dress
The fitted sheath dress was quite fashionable in the 1950s, and it showed off every one of Joan’s curves. Janie Bryant took great care to design costumes for Joan with a nipped waist to emphasize Christina Hendricks’ feminine figure. Many viewers found Joan to be inspirational, as she proved that a woman didn’t have to be rail-thin to steal a scene.
She was a fan of early 1960s accessories, like pins
…and scarves! As Joan advised Peggy in their earliest days at Sterling Cooper, “Men love scarves.”
From the very first episode of Mad Men, Joan was strutting along the corridors of Sterling Cooper wearing her signature style: a fitted sheath dress in a jewel tone with a gold pin or colorful scarf to add some flare. She also swept her red hair into her trademark beehive. This style was primarily a holdover from the 1950s, but after several seasons of stasis in her costuming, Joan began to update her wardrobe with prints and patterns and more modern silhouettes.
Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren were her inspirations
In the Season 2 episode “Maidenform,” Sterling Cooper executives compared the women in the office to celebrities. In true male chauvinistic fashion, they created a dichotomy: every woman was a Jackie Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe. It didn’t take too long for one of them to comment that Marilyn is more of a Joan than the other way around.
Janie Bryant looked to women who “exuded sexiness” like Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren for Joan’s costumes. To her, Joan was a character who asserted herself in a very feminine way and understood how to use her assets. Thus, her costumes were all about accentuating her hourglass figure, which Monroe and Loren shared.
She modernized her style with bold prints and patterns
In the second half of the 1960s, Joan began to update her wardrobe with bold prints and patterns. Her costumes earlier in the show’s run were, for the most part, solid colors with only minor details to break up the color. As the series approached the 1970s, she began to add intricate details, like Peter Pan collars and floral prints, that drew attention to her success and her moves up the career ladder. Throughout this evolution, Joan still kept the key elements of her trademark look, such as a fitted bodice accessorized with a small pin or printed scarf.
She eventually started wearing A-line and miniskirts
After maintaining the same style for almost a decade, Joan expanded her wardrobe to include A-line skirts with a higher hemline instead of her fitted pencil skirts. The late 1960s were an experimental time for Joan in terms of fashion. With a failed marriage and several traumatic events behind her, she had nothing to lose with a little extravagance that her partnership allowed. She mixed things up with ruffled blouses and vest and skirt combinations that deviated from the silhouette that made her famous.
The Christmas dress inspired a line of dialogue
Matthew Weiner occasionally had a costume in mind for a character when writing his scripts. Other times, it was the costume that inspired a line of dialogue. One example of the latter is Joan’s bright red Christmas dress, which she wore to Sterling Cooper’s holiday party in Season 4, where she led a conga line. Matthew Weiner loved the dress so much after seeing sketches that he added a line of dialogue where Roger Sterling asks Joan to wear “the red dress, the one with the bow on the back that makes you look like a present.”
Her clothes had layers of meaning
Joan’s costumes reflected her mood and story arc. One example is the hot pink dress with jeweled cuffs that she wore when visiting Sterling Cooper’s offices with her newborn son. Not only did it make Joan the focus of the scene, but the bright, happy color was a cover for the turmoil in her home life. Only the black flowers printed on the dress hinted at how terrible she was feeling. On the surface, she was enjoying her maternity leave immensely, stopping by the office on the way to brunch or a shopping trip courtesy of her husband.
Her pen necklace represented her ambition
Joan’s favorite piece of jewelry is undoubtedly her pen necklace, which viewers have interpreted in different ways. Some attest that the necklace represents her humble roots and her time in the secretarial pool. Others believe that it represents her ambition, her desire to be financially independent and free to make decisions about her life. Janie Bryant believed that it symbolized her fending off all the men in her office with her feminine touch. Whatever the rationale, the pen necklace is undoubtedly another one of Joan’s trademarks and an essential part of any Joan Holloway costume.
Her clothes showed off her wealth
As Joan moved up the ranks at Sterling Cooper, she bought new pieces of clothing that scaled with her income. Like Peggy, Joan was a working woman who would have realistically re-worn wardrobe staples and gradually added new pieces over time. As her stature of the ad agency increased, so did the quality of her clothes. We see her celebrating her success at the beginning of Season 7 in an opulent black dress with elaborate feather detail and, later on, in a dress made from Chinese brocade with a plunging neckline. After everything she’s been through, Joan deserves to enjoy the fruits of her labor.
