Atlanta-trained designer behind ‘Mad Men’s’ classic looks
Scene-stealing costumes win plaudits from all over
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, September 19, 2008
It’s accomplishment enough that “Mad Men” — the second-year AMC drama about New York ad execs in the 1960s — made history as one of the first shows on basic cable to be nominated for a best series Emmy. It’s even better that the series earned a total of 16 nominations.
But the icing on this cake, at least for Atlanta-trained costume designer Katherine Jane Bryant, is that the scene-stealing costumes of bullet bras, curve-skimming dresses and sharply tailored suits that appear on screen each week have generated as much hullabaloo as the show itself.
Kimberly Smith/ksmith@ajc.com
Katherine Jane Bryant shows a portfolio during a recent visit to Brenau University in Gainesville.
On Sunday, “Mad Men” will compete for Emmys in categories including best actor (Jon Hamm as Don Draper) and outstanding writing (series creator Matthew Weiner). The series already gained four Emmy awards in the technical and design categories announced Sept. 13.
Costume design didn’t win, but it wasn’t a huge loss for Bryant. Only the pilot episode received a nomination, and that was before she came on board. And Bryant already has an Emmy on the shelf, earned during four years designing for HBO’s “Deadwood.”
“There’s enough to go around for everybody,” said Bryant during a pre-Emmy visit to the Atlanta area, adding that she was pleased the show had been nominated in the category.
“Mad Men” costumes may have missed the Emmy, but there has been no shortage of accolades from viewers and fans.
Top fashion designers such as Michael Kors and Peter Som, who referenced the 1960s in their fall collections, went so far as to name the series as inspiration.
This summer, to coincide with the season premiere, Bloomingdale’s launched “Mad Men” boutiques, featuring slim-cut suits, shirts and ties reminiscent of movers and shakers from the Eisenhower era. Fourteen Bloomingdale’s locations, including the Atlanta store, carried the line created by Theory.
Back at Brenau
For Bryant, a Tennessee native who graduated from Atlanta’s American College for the Applied Arts (now American InterContinental University), the attention is rewarding.
“Isn’t that great? It’s about time we fashion designers have gotten a little credit,” said Bryant, addressing a crowd at Brenau University in Gainesville.
Bryant, a 1985 graduate of the university’s all-girl prep school, Brenau Academy, was on campus for a daylong visit to meet with students and reconnect with friends and faculty. For about four hours she fielded questions at lunch, in the classroom and finally at a schoolwide chat in the auditorium.
“Do you ever see stars walk past in the neighborhood?”
“Do you ever design your own clothes?”
“How do you get inspiration?”
“What is your favorite period?”
(Answers: Yes. No. Movies, magazines, mom’s closet and more. For clothing, Baroque.)
The questions trickled in at first, then came with such rapidity that the impeccably groomed Bryant, dressed in a high-waist denim skirt, ruffled blouse and floral pumps, was begging for a lipstick break.
The pace was hectic, but so is a day on the set of “Mad Men.”
At the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency, the early 1960s are a time of martini lunches, indoor ciggie smoking, men who cheat and secretaries seeking husbands. One episode equals seven days multiplied by 16 hours, plus more than 175 costumes for which every detail must be perfect.
“Those are the things that make me a crazy person,” said Bryant. “If I see a panty line on a secretary I will drive my crew insane. I’ll say, ‘I see a panty line!’ and they will tell me, ‘Janie, she a background person.’ “
But it is the details, said Bryant, that make the show work by uniting word and image to create a memorable character.
“It’s really about the images that come into my head when I read a script as far as turning [costumes] into a three-dimensional thing,” she said.
Coloring in characters
Each character has a color palette, which Bryant said reflects the way most of us dress in real life. Dutiful housewife Betty Draper, spouse of main character Don Draper, often appears in bright colors and full-skirted dresses with pinched waists. Diligent employee and guilty Catholic Peggy Olson hides behind Peter Pan collars and pleated skirts while attempting to gain credibility as a copywriter in a male-dominated industry. Don Draper is, of course, the original dapper Dan (or Don or Dick; see the plot twists online) in dark tailored suits to match his brooding manner.
Bryant builds about 10 percent of the garments on the show and hunts down the rest from vintage stores and other sources. For all the glamour of the era, her craft isn’t all fur wraps and shift dresses. Bryant worked wonders with fat pads for the bust and bottom to conceal Peggy’s pregnancy from the audience.
“It was really stressful,” said Bryant, who recalled a tense moment seconds before Elisabeth Moss, the actress who portrays Peggy, was ordered on set with a bigger bust. “She grabbed me and was like, ‘Janie, I trust you,’ ” Bryant said.
Years ago, it was friends who trusted Bryant’s fashion instinct.
“They always wanted to see what was in my closet and I would help them decide what to wear on dates and to social events,” said Bryant.
When she decided to re-route tuition money from Georgia State University, where she dabbled in several subjects, to the American College for the Applied Arts to study fashion design, her mother, Dottie Bryant, was unfazed. “I knew she was smart, but making an A in physics is great. After that, I was like, ‘Whatever, darling.’ “
Clothing as connection
The ‘whatever’ took Bryant to Seventh Avenue, New York’s fashion artery, for a quick nine months. A few calls to friends in the movie biz eventually paved the way to Hollywood and “Deadwood.”
Period dramas became her pleasure, and when the opportunity to work with Weiner on “Mad Men” came along, Bryant jumped. The series rode under the radar its first season, as do many new shows, but two Golden Globes helped boost its profile, as did viewers’ apparent nostalgia for the era’s mood and madness.
Fans can’t go back in time, but they can still have the clothing, the one holdover from the period that is easily accessible and ripe for revival.
“American fashion has been so casual, and I think people have gotten away from caring about their appearance,” Bryant said. “The older generation really feels a nostalgia for the period. And for the younger generation, the clothes are something new.”
