AMC’s Mad Men is all about image. Don Draper, played by a rakish Jon Hamm, is an advertising executive whose specialty is convincing the rest of the world to buy whatever he is selling—even the identity he’s taken pains to craft, leaving out less desirable details of his past. Form follows function: the show’s creators have been heaped with praise, and more than a few awards, for the pitch-perfect slice of the 1960s they create and serve up to fans each week.
The clothes, in particular, have caught the imagination of audiences and attention of the fashion world—designer Michael Kors has cited it as an inspiration and retailers Bloomingdales and Banana Republic have done massive tie-ins with the television show.
Like Draper, Tiffany White’s job is to craft an image, but she is drawing from her past instead of fudging it. She combs costume houses on the show’s behalf, an exercise not all that different from what she was doing as a senior at Aptos High, when she wore a 1950’s swing coat rented from Closet Capers on Soquel Avenue to prom. Only now she gets paid for it.
White dresses Mad Men’s background characters, the women who float around around the outskirts of the frame answering phones at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, sitting at tables in restaurants or passing the main characters on the street—the subtle notes that imbue the show with the distinct flavor audiences have come to know and love.
White started in the industry as a shopper for Disneyland’s Parade and Light show. Impressed with Janie Bryant’s work on HBO’s Deadwood (for which Bryant snagged an Emmy award) White began pursuing the woman who would go on to become Mad Men’s designer before the show even existed.
“I got her contact information and just emailed her and was fairly persistent—without being stalkerish or weird—but, you know, every few months I would check in and we had a couple really nice conversations, and when Mad Men came up she called me.” White says. White worked as a production assistant in the costume department for the show’s first season, and later became background costumer for seasons two through four.
Character Study
What’s an average day on the set of Mad Men like? Well, White says, there isn’t one. “Some days I’m pulling, some days I’m shopping, some days I’m on set.”
“Pulling” is a term used to describe selecting items from costume houses that could potentially be used for the show. White explains. “There are these big, huge, gigantic warehouses of costume rentals that tend, for the most part, to have period or specialty clothes,” she says. She’ll rifle through their stock in semi-methodical fashion. “If I need a 1940s nurse, then I’m going to be very specific, but if I have a cocktail scene in the 1970s, then I’ll just pull anything that I like, or that I think is going to be good, or that will read well on television.”
It’s the perfect job for the UCSC grad, who was active in theater and studied psychology, because she gets to create whole characters from clothes. “Say we’ll have 25 women in a restaurant on Mad Men. I try to make it look real by making those women into characters,” White says. “I try to think, ‘Who is this woman? Is she married? Is she rich? Is she poor? Is she out on a date?’ Whatever it is, I try to think of what her lifestyle would be based on whoever walks into my fitting room.”
It doesn’t always work out perfectly. “You look at their body, go ‘Oh, they would look amazing in this dress,’ but then you put the dress on them and they are so overwhelmed by it, there is no way they could carry it off.” The right outfit will be a match on multiple levels, White says. “I try to base it on how those people are, how they really would function in those clothes. So if I put this dress on this girl I want her to bring that dress to life—for her.”
As White describes it, costuming is a kind of chemistry. “You have an appreciation for everything. If I’m pulling cocktail, I love ’60s lame. Even though it’s disgusting and awful and I would never wear it in my personal life, for the show it’s amazing because that’s what people wore—or mohair, or that sort of stuff.” When it’s done right, the mix of person and piece and place and time can create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
That is certainly true in the case of Mad Men, which has become a cultural phenomenon. From Michael Kors and Prada to Thom Browne and Peter Som, its influence is felt on runways so regularly that a term, “the Mad Men effect,” has been coined to discuss its prevalence. White is flattered. “I think it’s really a compliment to the costume department and certainly a compliment to the designer, Janie, who is a very, very talented lady,” she says. Bryant unveiled her own clothing line inspired by the show, called MOD, Feb. 26 on QVC.
What may be more fun for White than seeing designers do her job is seeing fans of the show do it themselves. “I’ve been to a couple Mad Men cocktail parties. I go and I’m like, ‘Oh, that is so not the ’60s, but OK, good for you, you really tried!’ That’s really fun—to see people get excited about period clothes.”
