Kiernan Shipka grew up right before our eyes as Sally Draper, Don and Betty’s only daughter, on AMC’s Mad Men. One moment, she was an adorable little girl playing with a dry cleaning bag; the next, she was a smart and perceptive young woman who knew how to get under an authority figure’s skin.
Her parents’ divorce affected Sally deeply, and by the time Season 7 rolled around, she had toughened up and matured beyond recognition. Her costumes chart her journey from innocent kid to snarky teenager, at times showing influences from all the adults in her life. Keep reading for ten hidden details about Sally’s costumes you probably didn’t notice.
Her costumes represented her divided life
After the Drapers split, Sally and her brothers divide their time between their parents. They live with Betty and Henry in the New York suburbs and visit Don and Megan at their spacious Manhattan apartment on weekends. Sally begins to develop a sartorial sensibility that reflects her double life: she dresses in prim, Betty-approved garb at home and experiments more in the big city.
She takes fashion cues from both Betty and Megan, sometimes combining elements of both women’s wardrobe to create an ensemble that is closer to her taste.
She dressed similarly to Betty as a child
Sally was Betty’s picture-perfect fashion plate, typically covered in delicate pastel shades or refined blues and reds. A former model now living comfortably in the suburbs, Betty felt that being beautiful was her most powerful asset. She cared very much about appearances and extended this concern to her daughter, fussing over Sally’s weight and nose. It wasn’t until their parents’ divorce that Sally was able to leave Betty’s sphere of influence and began dressing the way she wanted.
Sally’s costume also had many childlike details, like pigtails and Mary Janes with socks, when she was younger, playing up the fact that she was just a little girl amid her parents’ crumbling marriage.
She took fashion cues from Megan as she got older
As she grew up, Sally began taking fashion cues from the other woman in Don’s life, Megan. Gone were the Mary Janes and doll-like frocks her mother dressed her in as a child. In their place, Sally wore the 1970s earthy colors that Megan loved and added trendy but unconventional pieces to her wardrobe, such as this plaid poncho.
Sometimes she even wore the Megan-influenced outfits around Betty to irritate her. Otherwise, she kept them in the “city” side of her life when staying with her stepmother.
Her space-age dress showed how just much she had grown up
It was Megan who bought Sally a pair of white, knee-high boots that she styled with a metallic shift dress for a black-tie banquet, making Sally look like a miniature version of herself. The silver dress coordinated with the metallic accents in Megan’s coral evening gown.
This costume is an important one for Sally, as it was more grown-up than anything she had worn before. It represented her maturation from the little girl in the pilot to the young lady the audience sees in this episode. She looked so grown up that Don made her lose the boots before leaving for the banquet, hoping to preserve her childhood for at least one more night.
Her tall boots made several appearances
Sally finally got to wear those knee-high boots on her trip to the Museum of Natural History with Glen Bishop. Upon arriving at Don and Megan’s apartment, Sally switches out of the brown hand-me-down boots from her elder stepsister for the trendy white ones. (She must have been keeping the boots at the apartment, which makes sense – they would look too out of place at the stuffy Francis residence.)
The boots don’t quite coordinate with Sally’s brown, flower print dress, but the unexpected pairing is what makes it stylish.
She wore tons of plaid as a teenager
Sally brings her best boarding school chic when she enrolls at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut. Her style becomes a fusion of her mother’s preppy aesthetic and stepmother’s groovy sensibility. The result? The many plaid dresses in her school wardrobe.
The plaid gives off a similar vibe to Peggy’s business suits, which are like a grown-up edition of the schoolgirl outfit for the rising Sterling Cooper copywriter. The main difference, of course, is that Sally is still in school (though we don’t doubt that she’ll be ready for the boardroom soon).
… And peacoats
In winter, teenaged Sally keeps warm in a brightly colored peacoat. The coats looked like a more autonomous version of the clothes she wore as a miniature Betty when she was younger, once again fusing influences from different sides of her life.
Sally was wearing a red plaid peacoat when her father brought her to the house where he grew up at the end of Season 6. She also wore a vibrant blue peacoat on a pivotal car ride home from Miss Porters, where she smoked with Betty for the first time and confided that Don had never given her anything.
… And Peter Pan collars
Yet another Sally Draper trademark is the Peter Pan collar. By the late 1960s, Peter Pan collars were ubiquitous in Mad Men, a must-have for the young and fashionable. They are a detail strongly associated with childhood, though they continue to pop up perennially as a trend for all ages. For Sally’s boarding school interview dress, the collar was part and parcel with the other prominent feature in her wardrobe: plaid. Her Peter Pan collar was dressed up with a necktie to soften the look and make her appear even more youthful for her unsupervised overnight visit.
The brown flower print dress Sally wore to the Museum of Natural History also featured a Peter Pan collar, this time with pointed instead of rounded lapels.
She had many signature accessories
Other elements of Sally’s style include headbands, berets, and barrettes that coordinated with her colorful outfits. Similar to the Peter Pan collars, these are all details strongly associated with childhood that remind the audience that even with her snarky retorts and talent for deception, she is still very young, albeit wise for her years.
Many of these accessories appear on other Mad Men characters, but they feel more natural and less of a fashion statement on Sally. There is one piece that is unique to her, however: the Tiffany necklace with her initials, “SBD” – Sally Beth Draper – engraved.
There were times she mirrored both her parents
Sally had a heart to heart with Don one Valentine’s Day, when both father and daughter had something to hide: Sally, for sneaking away from a funeral to go shopping, and Don, for not telling his family about losing his job. For dinner with Don, Sally wore a charcoal jumper that mirrored her father’s classic grey suit.
It was a similar moment to Sally’s car ride with Betty when her blue peacoat coordinated with the cool tones in Betty’s light green outfit. Another nod to Betty is in Sally’s hair; by the time of the moon landing, she had mastered the bouffant and could now dress her hair up like her mother. As it turns out, the apple never falls far from the tree.
