Alex Balk, Smoker
Carol Diehl, Art Critic
Matthew Gallaway , Novelist
Megan Lubaszka, Architect
Angela Serratore, Historian
Tim Siedell, Ad Man
Natasha Simons, Writer
Christina Perry & Derrick Gee, Designers
Dave Wilkie, Ad Man
Reader’s of Wondrous Taste and Dubious Sexual Caution!
Christina Perry has designed another set of Mad Men posters. We are going to give away some sets (Betty, Joan, and Peggy!) for folks who bought the book (which features more of Christina’s illustrations and my words; a glorious combination!). Forward over your receipt and win a set.
If you are throwing a Mad Men viewing party for the Most Important Night of our Eyes and Soul, you should be asking yourself one question:
WHAT WOULD EMILY POST DO?*
Well, fortunately, the lovely ladies at the Emily Post institute have planned out a whole party for you. Including your manners:
First of all, a hostess must show each of her guests equal and impartial attention. Engrossed in the person she is talking to, she must be able to notice anything amiss that may occur. No matter what goes wrong she must cover it as best as she may, and at the same time cover the fact that she is covering it. To give hectic directions merely accentuates the awkwardness.
Click for more Postian insight! It’s truly lovely.
*Additional questions you can ask yourself: is there anything that could protect these characters from the throes of history? Would Ken Cosgrove make a good boyfriend? If the show depicts the chaotic transition from the Eisenhower era to the counter culture revolution of the 1960’s, what transitional moment are we in? Where is Paul Kinsey?!
Here is our Joan wallpaper!
Once again, we tried to do in this illustration what we think the book does: fill in the gaps of our beloved characters with sparkly paste of history!
*The must read gossip rag of the era: Confidential.
*Some aspirin for hangovers, heartaches, and fussy bosses.
*The cosmetic essentials.
*A copy of the Steno Pool’s favorite steamy bathtime reading: Lady Chatterly’s lover.
Created by Christina Perry and Derrick Gee for you!
Swathed around Joan’s sumptuous hips or bubbling over Betty’s delicate shoulders is a clothing style called the New Look. In 1947, Christian Dior, introduced his line of women’s clothing that revolutionized women’s clothing and fashion manufacturing.
Up until Dior’s models sauntered down the runway, the fashion world had also been suffering the deprivations of WWII. In response to women working on factory floor workforce, war rations, and the morose atmosphere that comes with something like economic devastation from warring empires, clothes coming out of Europe were plain and functional.
Dior’s 1947 line rejuvenated the fashion world with his voluptuous new collection infused femininity back into fashion with yards and yards of luxurious fabric. The line combined long billowing skirts with pleats folded , narrow waitslines, soft rounded sleeves, flowering dresses, hour glass silhouettes, and accessories such as umbrellas and gloves.
“It’s quite a revelation dear Christian,” Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar remarked at the time, “Your dresses have such a new look.”
French Couture patrons (ie, rich ladies) were in a frenzy to wrap themselves in such elegant and cutting edge designs. But Dior’s biggest clients were Americans: Hollywood stars, New York socialites and most importantly, department store buyers who purchased exclusive rights to individual designs to be reproduced by their factory houses. Even discount retailers were allowed to attend Dior’s private fashion shows if they promised to buy the rights to nine outfits.
Other clothing companies would send sketch artists to European fashion shows, copy the design, and mass produce inexpensive clothing to American population. And that’s how the steno pool got pretty.
“How about a movie? I hear The Apartment is good,” Joan baits Roger, waiting for an opportunity to describe the misfortune of Fran Kubelik, a congenial elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine who sleeps with the married men her office building. “The way those men treated that poor girl, handing her around like a tray of canapés?” Joan snaps when Roger says nothing, “She tried to commit suicide”.
This exchange comes on heels of a hotel room tryst where Roger suggests Joan get her own apartment so they could stop sneaking around.
“Don’t you like things the way they are?” Joan asks while re-adjusting her dress.
“Are you kidding?” Roger responds. “This has been the best year of my life. Do you have any idea how unhappy I was before I met you? I was thinking about leaving my wife.”
Released in 1960, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment likely sparked similar spats between professional men and the women who loved them (no, not their wives—the other women who loved them). Jack Lemmon stars as a hapless middle-manager whose apartment is considered community property by his bosses: use the pad to conduct extra-marital liaisons. The suicide attempt to which Joan refers comes after MacLaine’s Kubelik, object of affection to Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter, is faced with the grim realization that Baxter’s Sheldrake, played by Fred MacMurray, is, despite his apparent interest in her, is cold, rational, and unlikely to leave his wife. Sound like anyone we know?
Mad Men Playlist:
Recall if you will Joan’s impromptu performance of C’est Magnifique, from the Cole Porter musical Can-Can, back in episode “My Old Kentucky Home”. Here’s her singing it for you.
Here’s Dean Martin singing it, if that’s your thing too.
It has been said before of Joan, but she does seem to have some uncanny Holly Golightly traits. Particularly, with her choice of roommates.
How could have a savyy lil sex kitten like Joan have not seen this coming?
Remember when she kissed Sal at the election party and that dumbfounded look came across her face? We get the sense that Joan’s gaydar is very keen. So how did she not notice that her roomie was a big old Lezzie? The night of the big confession, Joan smiled it off and even brought men back to their apartment!
Perhaps Joan was doing what Lightly did which was to make sure there was no missed opportunity. Joan, well intentioned but sometimes clumsily, believes that she can teach girls in her life how to get the most from men. Even if Carol chose to be a lesbian, surely, that didn’t mean that she should live in poverty as a spinster. According to Truman Capote, who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s some of the best kept women in New York were actually lesbians.
From a 1968 Playboy interview:
Playboy: Holly Golightly alludes to her onetime Lesbian roommate and obliquely expresses a sexual interest in other women. Was Holly a Lesbian?
Capote: Let’s leave Holly out of it. It’s a well-known fact that most prostitutes are Lesbians—at least 80 percent of them, in any case. And so are a great many of the models and showgirls in New York; just off the top of my head, I can think of three top professional models who are Lesbians. Of course, there’s a Lesbian component in every woman, but what intrigues me is the heterosexual male’s fascination with Lesbians. I find it extraordinary that so many men I know consider Lesbian women exciting and attractive; among their most treasured erotic dreams is the idea of going to bed with two Lesbians.
So while Joan doesn’t seem to have an enlightened view of homosexuality, she does seem to have only the best intentions for Carol. But like, Golightly, Joan, of course, abandons her roommate to find her own sort of happiness. Though, Joan’s vision of contentment more domestic than Holly’s it’s still equally as elusive.
Joan’s husband teases her about her instance on dinner party seating arrangements. He sarcastically dubs her ‘Emily Post.’
Most mid-century women would swoon from such a comment.
Post got her start teaching the moneyed classes of the 1930’s how to plan a wedding, lift a spoon, and choose a butler. During the 1940’s her books on ettiquite were supossedly the most requested book by wives of GI’s. By 1950, a survey of female reporters identified Post as the second most influential woman in America, just after Eleanor Roosevelt.
Though Joan’s hubby was being derisive, Joan’s adherence to Post’s manners (we can assume gleaning from her character) is motivated by more than stuffy traditions. In the words of the maven herself:
“Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.”
Here’s a fabulous excerpt from a 1931 edition of ‘Etiquette’.
Joan’s song C’est Magnifique is from the Cole Porter musical ‘Can-Can’. It’s the story of a sassy burlesque theater owner whose business is about to get shut down by a priggish judge who rules the high leg kick-split dance obscene.
From a review of the 2004 Revival of the ‘Can-Can’:
But the soul of the show is the cancan itself, a dance whose surging sexual energy comes to dominate everything else on stage. Watching the leggy dancers … take such open pleasure in their female capacity appears to be a treat for both sexes.
(thanks to Natasha S. for tracking down the song!)
