Banana Republic’s Mad Men Line: The Modern Fig Leaf

Betty Draper looked back at me in the mirror.

For about ten seconds.

And then there I stood, donned in a plum, taffeta dress with a bow in front, the skirt puffing out around me, looking rather like an upside-down tea cup.

During a brief kid-free trip to Chicago, the Banana Republic “Get Mad” ads beckoned me off the sidewalk of Michigan Avenue and into a free-for-all Sixties dress up session. The upper-end retailer just released a limited edition line of clothing inspired by the AMC hit series, Mad Men. The clothes -- elegant and beautiful -- have a more modern edge, but they still made me feel a bit like I was ten and going through my mother’s old college dresses. As I looked in the mirror, I remembered the vintage dress I wore to my book club’s recent meeting to discuss the New York Times best-selling novel The Help about the early sixties in Jackson, Mississippi. Our hostess served “bridge club” food, down to the petit-fours, on china and silver, and yes, I admit, we went dressed in period attire.

With the popularity of The Help and Mad Men, images of the glamorous early sixties are bombarding us. Why the sudden interest? The thrill of the dress-up drama has fast forwarded a few centuries. Instead of idolizing the odd Jane Austen flick, we are absorbed with a half century ago—the society that dissolved when its young people decided not to “trust anyone over thirty.”

While our corporate culture still has a dress code, strict fashion standards left the building with houndstooth coats. A house wife doesn’t wear heels or a tea dress to church, and certainly not to the grocery store. It seems our clothing sensibilities dissolved as rapidly as our social mores. 

Yet we are fascinated by these sixties stories, ones that hardly idolize the era. In fact, they focus largely focus on the decay beneath the façade. The Help, for example, revolves around the bitter racial divide in the South. Mad Men chronicles the moral decadence of the heady New York corporate culture. Both are lovely, accurate period pieces, with clothes that put us to shame.

A popular feature of the Mad Men website is its downloadable “Mad Men Yourself” option, where viewers can create their own sixties avatar and use it for their facebook profile. With Banana Republic’s new line, a “Mad Men” suit available at Brooks Brothers, and the general early sixties fashion trend, we’ve taken the leap to making those avatars a reality.

The Banana Republic store windows ask, “Are you a Don? Are you a Betty?” Don is a narcissistic philanderer, and Betty is a discontent housewife and distant mother who only engages her children when she’s yelling at them. In the last season, the couple divorced—only to find that the silver bullet of happiness is not around the corner. It is disturbing to think that emulating a couple of the most depraved characters on television is a successful marketing tool.

So what are we looking for in the façade?  Maybe we know that underneath we’re as messed up as they were. —we’re selfish, racist, and philandering.  And more than anything we want to cover that up with something more glamorous than a fig leaf.

The world beckons us to bring out the swing dresses and the fitted jackets, tie on a scarf, and shake a martini. Image sells, and if we look as good as Don Draper, we think, maybe we can convince the world that that’s who we really are.

But really, it’s just playing dress up.