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An Oral History Of Mad Men, Part I: Zach DeLuca and Peter Zottolo
468 Plays9 months ago
We’re thrilled to finally bring you a project close to our hearts, years in the making. For the first in our three part series, we’re joined by our friends and fellow clothing nerds, Zach DeLuca and Peter Zottolo. Each has a deep history with the show and with 1960's tailored clothing. We spoke with them about their menswear origins, the broader cultural context of the late aughts, the influence of Mad Men on the fashion internet, Thom Browne, and how the ascendant trends the show brought still reverberate today.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Apocalypse Duds' and Mad Men
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to a special Apocalypse Duds feature. This has been long in the making, almost as long as the show has existed. Today, we finally begin our discussion of the 2007 show Mad Men. Like years ago, we put out an all call to our followers asking, do any of you know a lot about Mad Men and want to discuss this with us? We heard from no one.
00:00:26
Speaker
except Sakta Luca at Newton Street Vintage. Vintage was the only person to respond. An associate creative director at an advertising firm, he's passionate about vintage clothing and he's live in our studio to fill in anything that we forgot.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, we never forgot, Zach, that you're literally the only person we asked that was like, oh yeah, I would actually like to talk about that. Yeah, it's finally comes with fruition, all these. I had no idea. We didn't have no followers at the time either. Yeah, yeah. I had no idea I was the only person. I mean, we talked with our friends in the course of trying to like plan this shit out and they're down with it, but yeah, literally.
Mad Men's Influence on Vintage Fashion
00:01:09
Speaker
I mean, as Instagram stories go, you know, we don't get a ton of of reaction replies. I mean, but yeah, thank you for thank you for joining. I'm happy to talk about Mad Men.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, hell yeah, yeah. So are we, coincidentally. But yeah, to start things off, man, we'd like you to give us basically a 60 second pitch on what you love about the show and why you would consider yourself a quote unquote authority on the show. Oh, okay, yeah. I mean, it was really like, if you think all the way back when it first came out, it was one of the, you know, good
00:01:51
Speaker
long-form dramas on TV. My Affinity Ford is more nostalgic for the time in my life that it came out than the specifics of the show. Although I've been giving it a second watch relatively recently, it definitely still holds up. But yeah, I just remember being in my mid to late 20s and wearing 60s suits every day and all of a sudden the show came out.
00:02:21
Speaker
everybody looked like I looked and it was like suddenly going to be into that. And it was just one of those moments where like, I feel like when you're into vintage, it happens every so often where like sort of mainstream culture comes around and all of a sudden like random people that would never be into what you're into are suddenly like asking questions about what you're into. Right. That's, that's why, that's why I liked it. I mean, the acting was great. Jon Hamm, you know, his career got made. He was like a math teacher or something, right? Like that's a great story.
00:02:50
Speaker
Christina Hendrix, The Goat. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that's a pitch, but that's... He was a comedy... That's a connection to the world of Mad Men. Oh, yeah. That's what John... Yeah, John Ham wanted to do comedy, and then, like, Mad Men happened, and it's like, that is a funny show, but, like, he's not a funny part of the show. Well, he kind of is. He's, like, a wry, but he's not, like, aha, you know? He's not making jokes.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we were Connor and I were talking about this at one last week, like Mad Men, I feel like is in a lineage of television that like, you know, kind of I guess didn't start, obviously, but like,
00:03:31
Speaker
it took things from The Sopranos and it kind of like was one of the first cable shows of its ilk that eventually birthed like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and these other things that came after it but like you know there's there's definitely definitely something about it that was unique for the time period of the show's rump. Yeah it's like a crossover point between
00:04:00
Speaker
what was happening on HBO and mainstream cable. Right. Right. Like it wasn't the first sort of long form drama, but it was certainly the first, if not one of the first long form drama on a mainstream, you know, regular cable network. Right. Right. Yeah. It couldn't have been like whatever weirdo, uh,
00:04:22
Speaker
And what the hell was like that before before Mad Men, right? It was like, I showed Nip Tuck that I used to watch. Yeah, it was like wonderfully delightfully trashy, but very not Mad Men in its writing. Not on the same level. Yeah. Yeah, not not quite.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, we were we were definitely in the Grey's Anatomy cable sphere at this point, which like, come on, it was a lot more soapy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I guess if you would take us back to 2007 for you, as you said, an exciting, exciting time of your life.
Personal Journey into 60s Fashion
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah. So what was I doing in 2007? Let me let me go back.
00:05:02
Speaker
I was probably, from a clothing perspective, I was probably the deepest I have ever been before or since into period-specific fashion. It wasn't about integrating vintage into a modern wardrobe. It wasn't about timeless vintage. I wore 60s shit.
00:05:27
Speaker
Every day I wore emerald green, I had an emerald green, shark skin, shantles, silk, one button suit. I wore those little tab collars where you can barely see the point of the collar where it's just like clutching the tie. You know, I would, I discovered Bobby from Boston. This, if you don't know Bobby from Boston, the greatest vintage store in the history of the universe. Imaginary.
00:05:54
Speaker
I had very recently discovered Bobby's, so I would go in there and buy suits and just get the real deal 60 suits. I was like collecting suits. I wore suits every day. I was the guy who wore suits to like the backyard barbecue. I would go see like an indie band in Boston and I would like show up in a, you know, blueberry blue 1960s suit.
00:06:19
Speaker
I didn't know the specifics of like Ivy yet. Like just straight forward 1960s tailored clothing, whether that's like Frank Sinatra looking suit. I was going to say this, this sounds like, this is like half Ivy, half Rat Pack. Sorry.
00:06:43
Speaker
How did you get there? How did you arrive at the 1960s as a place of excitement? I don't know. Honestly, it's one of those weird things. I don't know. Why does something look good to you? Why do you enjoy something? Why does something look cool?
00:07:01
Speaker
I was never just a second ago, right? Like it's it was that collar. It was that like cut of suit. Yeah, but that's the what that's not the why. Like, why did I like that? I mean, I've always been into old music. So that's probably a sort of key, like cultural locus in terms of
00:07:20
Speaker
how I dress or what I like, you know, music tastes probably has a lot to do. But I was working, so I graduated college in 2006. So 2007, I was working as like an office assistant. Did my man come out in 2007? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I was working as like an office assistant at a
00:07:45
Speaker
Financial services company and I had to wear suits every day at work, but I didn't want to look like a financial services Professional so I was wearing these like in retrospect. They were like knowing what I know now about dress codes. They were like pretty Inappropriate for business suits But I was wearing them anyway because hey, I'm gonna wear a suit. I'm gonna wear this cool suit
00:08:05
Speaker
Um, so I was dressing a lot like that. Um, did they give you shit about that? No, honestly, that was my first, that was my first sort of inclination that like most people just see a suit. Yeah. They're not clued into the nuances. They see a suit and the suit has a color and that is it. Two buttons, strong shoulder, shark skin, Ivy, double breasted, all that shit. Like people that most people do not see that it's a suit. It's a blue suit. It's a gray suit. Like.
00:08:34
Speaker
I, you know, in retrospect now, it felt like I was being inappropriate, but I doubt anyone noticed. And certainly if they noticed, they never said a word to me. Nobody ever was like, you know, you're dressing a little weird for our company like that. No, it never, it never came. But anyway, I had, I had a, you know, a group of friends through work and some friends from college. And I remember like we would, we would have like bad men watch parties. Like I remember when it came out, it was so hyped.
00:09:00
Speaker
And I was hyped for it because I was obviously into all this clothing. I didn't work in advertising. I didn't even have an aspiration to work in advertising. I had nothing about advertising at the time. So it was really for me about what excited me to watch the show in the first place was the clothes. And that's sort of what got me hooked.
00:09:19
Speaker
That's, yeah, it did. I mean, you're already dressing pretty similar to like a good part of that show. Like, obviously it spans a decade. So, you know, things even, even as they progress with the show, show the change in fashion. But like, how did, how did that show start to influence the way that you dress?
00:09:41
Speaker
Um, I mean, I think it definitely like seeing the different characters and their sort of individual styles. Like, I feel like everybody would say they wanted to be a Don Draper, but I really wanted to look like Pete Campbell, for whatever reason, I liked his style a little bit more. Like, it's, it's also, you know, for us clothing nerds, like,
00:10:03
Speaker
like Pete you could you could transport Pete Campbell out of the show into tumblr 2011 and like it wouldn't look that far
Mad Men and Modern Fashion Trends
00:10:13
Speaker
off yeah totally totally yeah I didn't love I didn't love Sal style I thought the vests we can talk about the waistcoats on madmen
00:10:27
Speaker
Did really weird shit with waistcoats that doesn't make sense. Yeah, I'm aggressive sometimes. If you're going to put me on the phone with Janie, what's her face, I'd be like, what's the deal with the waistcoats? Are they not period appropriate? They're not period appropriate. They're not worn in the correct way. And they're not even particularly the right waistcoats to be worn as odd waistcoats. You can't just take any vest.
00:11:08
Speaker
Dude, yo, so I worked for the show is about the weeds. So I worked for, you know, this old school shop that started in this for a few years. Although this is not, you know, these people have never once probably watched Mad Men. But a lot of them did come, you know, there were plenty of customers from that generation that were either like young professionals or in school or whatever. These motherfuckers love a
00:11:16
Speaker
and make it into a waste coat.
00:11:37
Speaker
Badly done waistcoat and I like I don't know if that's if that you know how much that has to do with the show Particularly and like the time periods but like there's a lot of old southern white dudes that are in in like created positions that Love that shit and it always I've told Connor this before I have a hatred of that look but like yes, you know, I guess maybe I
00:12:01
Speaker
maybe because i've been around that like it doesn't seem that odd to me but like yeah uh so i don't like a shirt sleeves waistcoat you know i feel like if you're wearing it just by itself yeah it's interesting
00:12:17
Speaker
pants you know you look like a mixologist yeah I do like I do like the crazy looking waistcoat with the other tailoring though I don't do it a lot I think it's good if you're fat and your jacket can't button then it's a winner yeah I mean so Matt I know exactly what you're talking about you're talking about
00:12:39
Speaker
dark jeans with like a gray slightly tweedy glen plaid waistcoat that looks like it maybe came from a glen plaid suit but also maybe not and maybe it's got lapels and it probably has too many buttons and it buttons too high and that's worn with like a
00:12:55
Speaker
a shiny tie and like generic shirt. And that's like the dress stuff dude. There's definitely that side of it. And then like one of the dudes that I worked with literally wore either a three piece suit or a sport coat, odd waistcoat and like the biggest trousers you've ever seen in your life. Like it works for him.
00:13:13
Speaker
But like he literally wore this every single day that I worked for this company. And I'm just like, first of all, how? You've got, you know, 200 of these motherfuckers because you don't, you know, you don't repeat things often. But like, yeah, there's just I don't know. Maybe that's maybe that's part of the lasting impact of the show is that like a lot of idiots just don this trying to look like, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:41
Speaker
the waistcoat is the residue of Mad Men. He didn't wear ridiculous vests. His style was always like, again, it wasn't perfect. It was a little bit like Preppy and Ivy was the rich East Coast sort of mainline Philadelphia dude or Connecticut dude or wherever he was from.
00:14:08
Speaker
He had that, he wore stripey ties, that kind of thing. And then I also love...
00:14:14
Speaker
I think the best clothing on the show for men is probably Roger Sterling. Oh, absolutely. He was the most classic. He wore double-breasted suits even, you know, into the sixties because he was supposedly older. So he was a little, his sensibilities were a little bit out of touch maybe, but like I thought his suits fit in great. I thought they were like, I feel like maybe what got me more into Ivy specifically was like digging a little bit into what Roger suits were about.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he might be, I don't think he's my favorite dressed character, but for the character on the show, I think that his wardrobe across the entire series is probably the best.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree. I even liked it later in the series, after his post-acid
Character Style Analysis in Mad Men
00:15:00
Speaker
trip. Oh, yeah. He's wearing a double-breasted blazer, but he's got a silk handkerchief tied around his neck, and he's looking all playboy. He looks like he could have stepped out of fucking Pitsy last summer. Well, he just is like, when they talk about rich people and they talk about the condition of their skin, it's golden.
00:15:23
Speaker
uh that's what he has going on he's like bronze from like skiing all the time he just is magnetic john slattery is like great yeah i this could be a thing that has come up in an interview with him but like i a lot of he wore a lot of his clothes so well that like i personally can't tell it's a wardrobe half the time which is nuts for like a tv show or production like
00:15:49
Speaker
you know, put that against like fucking Daniel Craig and a lot of the James Bond shit. Like, he just, he has. What's interesting about that too is I remember reading and seeing like, eventually at some point, and I don't know if it's because they ran out of wardrobe or if it's because they wanted the characters to look a little bit more stylish in a contemporary sense, but they were like Brooks Brothers was making custom clothing for
00:16:17
Speaker
Jon Hamm and Jon Slattery for their characters. So sometimes the suits they were wearing were vintage. And other times the suits they were wearing were Brooks Brothers suits that were made that time to look a little bit vintage. And honestly, I thought the Brooks Brothers ones look really cool. You could tell they were slightly different. Like the fabrics were a little more modern. You know, they did like the edge stitching on the lapel to make it look like a Brooks Brothers-y type thing.
00:16:46
Speaker
I remember loving those. I remember when this is maybe jumping ahead. I remember when Brooks Brothers black fleece came out. Not to get into like the whole Tom Brown Nexus because I feel like that's very much a part of like the Mad Men moment. Oh, yeah, that's common black fleece came out. It was basically like it was what john slatter was wearing when he was wearing those Brooks Brothers.
00:17:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, all of that was made by Southwick, which, you know, has been making books for this clothing since the dawn of fucking times. RIP, sadly. But, you know, like, they, I remember looking at, you know, their, their setup and their samples at like an MR show.
00:17:30
Speaker
in 2011 or 2012, I don't remember, and literally they had a model, I think it was the Cambridge, that wasn't black fleece, but it looked like every fucking jacket on Mad Men at the time. I remember that exact model. It was like the final incarnation of like
00:17:52
Speaker
that era of tailored clothing for men. Yeah, yeah, it was a three roll to two button cuff hooks center fence, undarted, but also like high and tight like it was. Yeah, yeah. I remember trying on like a 42 long in one of those just to get I don't wear a long just to get like a normal jacket. Yeah, yeah. That was that was back
00:18:18
Speaker
But let's back up because I feel like we're going to get to that whole thing. We definitely are.
00:18:26
Speaker
So I guess, you know, kind of to piggyback on the last little discussion, you know, being into that clothing at the time, and the show coming out, and like you said, everybody was kind of like, you know, wearing, wearing similar shit, like, how broad of a scale did you see that that kind of immediate effect?
00:18:49
Speaker
Uh, I mean, so the other thing that, that was like really interesting at this time was I was really actually doing Newton street vintage as like a thing. Whereas now it's just sort of my Instagram name, but I was selling on Etsy under that name and I was selling at like local vintage markets under that name. Um, and I noticed like an increased interest and demand in men's tailored clothing from that era, like pretty quickly.
00:19:18
Speaker
Okay. Um, at first it was as often happens as like happened with that ridiculous Baz Luhrmann like Gatsby movie. Um, it was, it was for like costume needs. Like people were coming to vintage because there was this trend, you know, whether it's a Gatsby party or a Mad Men party, that's what they were coming to me for. So it wasn't like an earnest like, I want to start wearing 60 suits because 60 suits are cool. It was like, I need a suit to wear to this party.
00:19:48
Speaker
And that's kind of how it started, but that was sort of the immediate uptick in because Mad Men parties were a trend. And I loved having Mad Men parties. It was like, everyone was dressed like me. If you didn't have a suit, I could go get you one from my closet. So like everybody would get dressed. I would just like style people and take pictures. We pretend to smoke cigarettes or actually smoke cigarettes. Nobody's driving? Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
I discovered Lucky Strikes around this time, of course, and like didn't realize what an unfiltered cigarette was. Oh, yeah. But yeah, so that was that was sort of the immediate thing. And then there was sort of like it coincided and I feel like it was a direct sort of effect of the show. So if you think about like where runway fashion 2006 2007, right? This is like
00:20:43
Speaker
the height of like the Hetty Slimani skinny suit, like suits are going down the runway, suits are part of like fashion, but they still haven't become sort of mainstream. And I feel like the sort of the two people that helped make the suit like mainstream cool, well, the two things, one being Tom Brown and the other being Mad Men. And I feel like the combination of those two things and the fact that Tom Brown's cultural sort of references are
00:21:13
Speaker
the Mad Men era, especially when he first came out. Obviously he's doing a lot more artistic stuff now, but when he first came out, he did the rows of men in gray suits getting up from their desks.
00:21:23
Speaker
right? And everything was this like corporate automaton fashion. Like that was very much that felt very mad men in a way. So I feel like those to those two things like increase the the interest among regular guys into tailored clothing. And then you know, a lot of times like 60 suits were just a shortcut to the Tom Brown look, you get a skinny lapel, charcoal gray,
00:21:52
Speaker
60 suit, you chop the pants short, you got yourself kind of a Tom Brown. Right. So that means that was a thing. You could basically walk into any thrift store and buy a pair of gunboats shoes. Yeah. And this was like the early beginnings of like hashtag menswear. Right. This is like
00:22:10
Speaker
ACL was starting to be a big deal that kind of stuff Yeah, this was a really like style forum started in 06 or a 7 I think right or maybe maybe even earlier So like this was the beginning of that too. Yeah, totally I hadn't discovered style form at that point But I did be maybe not right when and then came out but a year or so later certainly in the 2008 2009 like I was I
00:22:34
Speaker
on the trad forums. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's when I got into like forum culture and stuff too. Oh, there's another thing that reminds me like my love, love, love, love.
00:22:55
Speaker
a line that came out right around that time called Band of Outsiders. Do you guys remember Band of Outsiders? I love that shit. It's kind of trite now, but in 2008 it was so cool. It was like this weird intersection of indie rock culture and
00:23:18
Speaker
LA and preppy clothing. So they were like button down shirts and stripey ties and skinny suits. Um, not quite Tom Brown, but very similar. I remembered I would just go into Barney's on my lunch break and just like gaze and just like aspire to own Vandonauts. I've never owned a piece of the clothing. I'm sure, um, I'm sure it wouldn't fit me. But like, I would, I would, that was like, and I feel like that was part of that sort of era too.
00:23:47
Speaker
Um, sort of the band of outsiders look and just like, I guess in the, in the like context of this conversation, band of outsiders, I feel like is, is like part, uh, heavy slumane and part top Brown, like it follows right in the middle. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Yeah. And there was always something like not necessarily in the clothes themselves, although it's true. Like there was a very like mid-century modern sort of
00:24:16
Speaker
sensibility to the way the clothes were filed, the settings that they were photographed in, especially when Band of Outsiders first came out, it was decidedly retro, right? So like, all this is kind of happening at the same time. And like, I wasn't
00:24:32
Speaker
Like, this is how you sort of train your eye. You just sort of pick what you like from different places and see how they connect and see what relates to what. But like, I understood visually that these things were related without necessarily fully grasping. Like for a lot of people, Mad Men probably also, if not single-handedly, like led to the mid-century modern craze.
00:24:56
Speaker
in terms of furnishings, in terms of, like,
Indie Music and 60s Fashion Influence
00:25:00
Speaker
decor, in terms of how, you know, the clock you had on your desk and everything else, like, there was this nuts and bolts that happened around that time, too, right? People were buying pens. You could... I forgot about Band of Outsiders, but you're talking about the forums, reminding me that, like, my handle on one of the forums was Band of Outsiders. Like, I love...
00:25:24
Speaker
Um, probably more so than Tom Brown, if being honest, like, I love, I love Tom Brown with you. I remember it was cool. They had a cool like web presence too. And they were doing the Polaroid thing and like, yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
And not many brands are really engaging in that way. Like there was this kind of small time where people of our age, I guess, were like influencing things. Right. I keep making analogies, but like Band of Outsiders also kind of was the quote unquote dressed up like American Arrow vibe because you had people that were into that. Yeah. High pop.
00:26:09
Speaker
Oh, sorry. Can you hear the button? No, yeah, you're all good. We are. Well, we are a half animal friendly show. I am an animal. I'm not unfriendly. I'm not unfriendly. Here's what I'm saying. It's fine. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But like, you know, you mentioned a couple of times like the indie rock vibe at that point too.
00:26:31
Speaker
Which like all like all of this somehow ties together in my brain, you know, like the people that were shopping at American Apparel Yeah, we can cut that yeah, we'll figure that yeah
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah. So like, you know, a couple of times already, you've, you've mentioned like going to indie shows and stuff, wearing a suit, but like the indie sleaze shit that was going on at that, at that time period, to me, like there's a, there's a connection between like, you know, they would buy American Apparel to like wear out to the bar, but they're like, Oh fuck, I gotta go see, you know, I gotta go to a wedding this weekend. Oh, band of outsiders. I'm going to ban of outsiders suit and shirt. Yeah, totally. That's yeah. And the other thing, speaking of indie sleaze, and I think
00:27:27
Speaker
probably someone who got me into suits before I was sort of into 60 suits specifically, Albert Hammond Jr. Yeah. It's hard for the strokes. In college, the strokes were the coolest band. I love the strokes. I saw them live back when they were touring on, I think their second album, you know, and in New York, it was probably Passé to like them at that point, but in Boston. And Albert Hammond Jr., you know, he was doing the
00:27:56
Speaker
old suits with a t-shirt and his suits were always a little shrunken and his pants were always a little short. He'd wear them with sneakers. And I feel like I started wearing suits like that.
00:28:08
Speaker
It just is a straight ripoff of Albert Hammond. I should probably mention at this time, I also had a very similar hairstyle to Albert Hammond Jr. I wasn't bald, I had a gigantic afro. Just like full curly. So I was rocking that with my Albert Hammond year suits. I would go to a thrift store, just like a literal thrift store, and I had no understanding of the finer points of the suit.
00:28:33
Speaker
I just knew a suit was a suit and I knew if it fit me or it didn't. And if it didn't, if it was a little small, that was good. And I would just get those for eight bucks or whatever at the time and just wear them over t-shirts. And that was probably what led me into suits in general. And then from there, wearing them a little bit more like
00:28:57
Speaker
earnestly or with a little bit more like intention, a little bit more understanding led me to like 60 suits specifically. And what made this suit different from that suit? And like, what made a 60 suit different from a 70 suit, right? And like, how could you spot the differences and styles? And then from there, like, well, what makes this suit an Ivy suit versus this suit, a continental suit, which is what
00:29:23
Speaker
the term for the more European stuff would have been at the time. Those kind of distinctions all came through research and that kind of deeper dive. But in terms of waking up in the morning and being like, hey, it might be cool to go to the show wearing a suit. It was like 100%. Albert Hammond Jr., Jack White, those kind of
00:29:47
Speaker
celebrities or whatever at the time. Yeah. The, the like indie sleaze post, uh, hives wannabe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This has nothing to do with Madman, but I'm listening to the newest hives record the other day. It's pretty fucking good. Even 20 years old. So got to, got to get those. I keep seeing that guy on like Instagram. He keeps popping up in my stories. Like that's funny.
00:30:15
Speaker
They still look the same. The record has the right amount of cheese that I'm pretty into. This is not a euphemism, everyone. This is not a euphemism. Matt means cheesy. Yeah. The right amount of cheesiness. Yeah, I can get down with it. I'm sure they also got a lot of people into suits back in 2001.
00:30:42
Speaker
I remember their white suits. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the white suits. Not everyone can pull that off. I can feel like the bigger point of this is like before Mad Men came along, this suit was already starting to find its way into like popular culture and street fashion and that kind of stuff. Mad Men was just like a trampoline effect for the... An accelerant. It didn't spark. It wasn't the spark. It was the gasoline. Absolutely.
00:31:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Which, you know, is kind of the whole point of this little feature that we're doing. So, you know, just figuring out how it affected all of us nerds. Which, yes. So, Zach, we talked about how Pete and Roger are probably the two best dressed characters. Do you have a favorite overall character?
00:31:36
Speaker
Not talking about clothes or style, just talking about person. Yeah. Peggy. Hands down, Peggy. Okay. All right. Peggy Ellison. Yeah. Yeah. No contest. I mean, I was- Who's the show's true main character, right? Totally. Totally. Yeah. I mean, Elizabeth Moss did such a great job with that role. The character was so well-written, afflicted. Her character arc was so interesting.
00:32:02
Speaker
you rooted for her at the same time she did despicable things. Like it was just this like, just the absolute prototype for a great, a great character. Yeah. Yeah. They were all pretty deep. Every single fucking character on that show for the most part, she did like terrible things, which I kind of think is, is a big part of the show. Just like, oh, these people are awful human beings. We're going to show you how their lives all interconnect.
00:32:28
Speaker
well yeah i mean not exactly it's like everyone does awful shit that just depends on your perspective yeah i guess you're right i don't think that's a particularly like uh whatever yeah it's not particularly effective but
00:32:45
Speaker
right right so yeah who's your guys favorite character um i i gotta say sal for me like i i don't know why i just find his character so fucking intriguing and hilarious in like uh like i i don't know i guess maybe because um he's you know he's got that like or i guess supposed to have that new york mentality where he's like very quick-witted and just like
00:33:09
Speaker
He's from Baltimore. Yeah, he is from Baltimore. So Southern Bias Association. But he just has that type of humor that I really like in his character, where it's like a lot of times it's backhanded shit. And I'm just like, oh, yeah. He's wry. I mean, he's really wick and dry-witted, like just a well-written character.
00:33:36
Speaker
Very well. We before we decided to do this independently, like I always liked it. I thought it's a great like, I thought it's a great story, you know, and one that was not extremely popular at the time, like the idea of like, sexuality being in the closet, all of that stuff was not really explored in mainstream television. So
00:34:04
Speaker
it was kind of compelling. And the waistcoats, I mean, I think he's, I think he's like, I think his outfits are fucking great. From a style standpoint, Sal is definitely way more on the Connor spectrum than the Matt Smith spectrum. Yeah, dude, he just is out there doing weird stuff. Yeah. Which I would also look like an asshole if I tried to wear some of the shit that Connor does and looks very good. Props to the Sal's and the Connor's.
00:34:35
Speaker
And they're out there, but there are not a lot of us. Yeah, there's some, there's some. So, also, since you, you know, said you were dealing vintage clothing at the time, which I think, I don't know if you and I have ever talked about this, but I'm pretty sure that I used to follow your Etsy like back in the day. Oh, no way. Yeah. And like, I do, I think I've been following you on Instagram since like, long before you and I actually talked about it, like,
00:35:04
Speaker
But I'm, like, Newton Street Vintage, I'm almost positive that, like, you were one of my favorite Etsy sellers in, like, 2010 to 2012, somewhere in there, at some point. Yeah, that was a wild time to be on Etsy. Yeah, it really... Oh, dude, it was... It was like where there was stuff that was actually good on the site. And where Etsy's search engine worked. God, this is a whole... Yeah. This is an entire episode conversation. Right. Yeah, yeah. Not going down that tangent. Sorry, y'all.
00:35:33
Speaker
So as someone that like is pretty immersed in the clothing that this show is portraying, what did not cut the mustard for you? Oh yeah, that's a great question. A few things. So I think like, I think a lot of times costume designers, I think the show got a lot of credit, some of it undue for like, what was perceived as meticulously recreating the
00:36:02
Speaker
And I think that's to a large extent true, but there were some things that just weren't quite sort of right. A big one for me, the shirt, the shirts, it was abundantly clear with the exception of a few instances, everyone was wearing just a modern white dress shirt. For whatever reason, semi-spread collar, really high collar, pretty stiff collar. And shirts back then, even, and I'm not just talking about
00:36:32
Speaker
rolling Ivy button downs like even just like a basic white men's dress shirt from like 1959 61 whatever would have a pretty soft relatively short collar because ties were and so that so there was
00:36:49
Speaker
It wasn't just the period inappropriateness of the collar itself. It was also these guys wearing these two inch wide ties with these collars that were meant for three and a half inch wide ties. It looked really incongruous. If you know about ties and shirts, it's not a difficult thing to spot on the show at all. That's not to say that sometimes characters weren't dressed in
00:37:13
Speaker
period appropriate shirts. Like there were a lot of those tab collars that I was talking about in the beginning, which is just a really weird shirt style in general, but especially the incarnation, the tab collar from like this period where, do you guys know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. It's got a little, um, like a, it's a button down. It's like a super short point collar, right? But it's got the tab,
Critique of Mad Men's Wardrobe Authenticity
00:37:37
Speaker
right? So it's just like a tab collar, but the collar points are so short and the tab is so tight.
00:37:42
Speaker
that like everything just looks like almost like a clerical collar. Like everything's just pulled across your neck. And it like clutches the tie. It's like tie bondage. It's just like clutching the tie in this. It's really like, yeah.
00:37:59
Speaker
Um, it's a very strange shirt collar, but it's also extremely of the, of that period. And I used to love the, I used to wear those for that reason. Yeah. Yeah. And you really have to have like a two inch tie to wear those because you can't single fit if you don't. Yeah. Yeah. You need a tiny, a really skinny tie with a tiny knot. Otherwise you actually can't snap the tab. Right. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck doing a double forward hand in that. Right. Right.
00:38:25
Speaker
So I think the waistcoats was a big one. I think my issue wasn't that people were in waistcoats or that I don't like jaunty waistcoats. I think there are a few things that came into play. A three-piece suit is one thing, right? There were very few instances of men in the 1950s wearing
00:38:53
Speaker
waistcoats with suits that didn't match the suits. And if they did, or if there was, and I found like ads, you know, ads from the period or like, you know, magazine articles that referenced this, there were like sort of specific waistcoats that you would wear that way. And they were worn really with like specific suits. So if you were wearing like a country tweed suit, you might wear a tattersaw
00:39:19
Speaker
vest, or you might wear like a mustardy sort of paisley vest, but it was a very like good country sort of like, yeah, it's very, it's very like hand in the pocket of the jacket. Well, yeah. And like, we're like, go ahead. Like, I know there are different, you know, there are different rules for business dress between, say the UK and the US always have been like,
00:39:49
Speaker
It's kind of a no brown in town situation, I think. Because yeah, like, these guys might have worn that when they went to ride horses, you know, on Montauk or wherever the fuck their country home was. Which isn't that like racist euphemism to
00:40:05
Speaker
What? No, no, no, no brown shoes in town. You wear black shoes. No shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there are things that are double meanings and I... I mean, I am referring to the shoe thing. No, no, shit. I know what I'm saying. But, you know, like you were kind of saying, Zach, I think, or alluding to, like you wouldn't wear this type, like a Tattersall vest in a business setting at the time.
00:40:30
Speaker
I mean, I wasn't alive then, but that's from what I've gathered from what I've read. Like, that wouldn't be...
00:40:38
Speaker
I'm sure someone did, like I'm sure in the history of the waistcoat, but like it wasn't supposed to be worn that way. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And they birthed an entire generation of Brooklyn bartender that never paid. Right. But my issue with the waistcoats was almost separate from that, which is that the waistcoat that they were wearing, they were wearing them with the sort of suits that you wouldn't wear an odd waistcoat with. And then the odd waistcoats themselves were not the patterns and fabrics that you would
00:41:07
Speaker
ever want in an odd way. It looked like they had taken vests from other three pea suits and just sort of slapped them on characters. No, I mean, that's like, like, especially guys that were dressing. So if you go back and look at like articles and menswear magazines from this era, like, and you can find some cool illustrations and photos and stuff like there was this sort of
00:41:30
Speaker
interesting play between what was then called natural shoulder tailoring or Ivy League tailoring, which was kind of like, if we're gonna assign it to a character on Mad Men, probably mostly like Roger Sterling and sometimes Pete. And then there was like this sort of continental style, which was
00:41:51
Speaker
You know, a little bit more like how Don Draper dressed, a little bit more like two button shark skin, really narrow side vents. And the distinctions between these honestly weren't that big compared to like the wild distinctions between suits nowadays where you've got like the structured shoulder and all this other, like it was all very like similar in silhouette. It was all pretty trim. It was all pretty natural, but there were these like subtle differences.
00:42:19
Speaker
And then the big difference too was like colors, like continental suits, you get like the blueberry blues and the copper sort of shark skin and the root beer browns and everything was a little bit sheenier. And then like, obviously the Ivy League tailoring was very flannel, all of the classic pinstripes, that kind of, you know, glen clouds, all the stuff that we still like and wear. And I felt like the mix of, from what I understand, or at least have read, like those were sort of two separate
00:42:47
Speaker
shops. Like you wouldn't just go to one store and get both of those types of tailoring. You would go to like a store that specializes in more like Italian continental stuff. And you'd go to like a classic Ivy League shop, which would have been, you know, obviously Jay Press or Brooks Brothers, but also like Paul Stewart in the 1960s was one of those types of shops. Or your regional, you know, clothing or whatever. But like,
00:43:11
Speaker
I don't know how rigid in historical reality those two camps would have been. Honestly, guys probably bought both of them, just like they do now. Yeah, certainly. Especially if you're working in midtown Manhattan, all of this is immediately surrounding you. It seemed like a character like Pete, especially, would understand the distinction between those things. And I felt like that wasn't really authentically represented in his character.
00:43:41
Speaker
Like someone like Don might not, right? Don's a social climber. He doesn't have that like pedigree. Right. Right. Someone like Roger certainly would, even if he decided to like kick it to the curb after trying drugs or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that, that, that sort of distinction was, and I didn't realize that time, right? When I was into it, it was all looked great because I hadn't, I hadn't weeded, weeded through all those different, you know,
00:44:10
Speaker
details and distinctions yet. So like it all just looked amazing when I first saw it, right? And then I got a little deeper into it, did a bunch of digging. I should probably mention like, at this time, I was so into clothing that this was just like a natural hobby that was happening. It wasn't like I was like, I must research Mad Men post haste, like it was just like happening in the background while the show was on. You know, so that was kind of like,
00:44:36
Speaker
That was kind of, and that's probably, that's probably my two things. The waistcoats, like some of the suits were a little, little not right for the characters. And the shirts were probably the biggest one. The shirts were bad. Yeah, I can agree with that one. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's also like, to me, knowing Brooks Brothers, it's really hard to think that like, you couldn't get it closer to correct, because they literally haven't changed all that much at all.
00:45:05
Speaker
So I think it was just they didn't know or didn't care. They were just like, we men wore white shirts, get a bunch of white. Right. Right. Like, like, yeah, like that, that level. Yeah. They didn't have a. It just seems like such a, it seems like such a glaring like point of importance, you know? Wasn't there an episode though, like thinking now about it, like,
00:45:27
Speaker
wasn't a big deal. Like there was an episode with Don Draper in Jeans. That happened in one of the latest seasons where like he goes to California and he's like in a white t-shirt in jeans, like working on cars. I was just thinking this as we were talking earlier, like I don't think that Don's casual looks get enough credit because there's some of my favorite about the entire fucking show.
00:45:54
Speaker
And like, my casual, you know, sometimes it's a pair of flannel trousers, a pair of boots and like a sweater, like when he's, you know, mowing the grass or something. But like, yeah, there's some really fucking good like casual vibe, you know, very sixties looks that he pulls off. Yeah, I thought that he wore polos in a really nice way. There were those great episodes where you had to go into the office on the weekend. Yeah.
00:46:17
Speaker
He'd always show up in a sport coat with a polo underneath and really cool. I remember Pete showing up in a Madras jacket, which felt right. Yeah, I feel like when they expanded to California, there were some really solid West Coast looks, but it was West Coast done by East Coast people, which I really appreciated.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, I'm trying to drop a photo, but it's not dropping. I found a great pic of, for those listening, I found a great pic of Don Draper in a double denim Levi's jacket and jeans. But then I zoomed in and I realized the jacket is like
00:46:57
Speaker
period incorrect by about 30 years. Oh, is it a type four or whatever the fuck a structure? We found another wardrobe issue for me to, for me to. The 80s version with the lower, lower two pockets on the type three. It is a 80s version with lower two pockets.
00:47:16
Speaker
The buffalo flag. You guys are like brother from another mother. It's literally 30 years, 30 years too late to be worn by Dondre. Oh my God. Yo, we gotta, okay, we're going to share that when this comes out and I have to figure out what episode it is. And I can't overstate this enough. I can't overstate this enough because this is what it means to be a clothing nerd.
00:47:42
Speaker
Jon Hamm looks fucking great in this wardrobe. It's just not right if you know what you're looking at. If you know, you motherfucking know. He looks cool as hell. It fits him great. It's a great looking thing, but it's just not the thing that historically. This is why someone needs to hire me for all other period correct menswear shit. And I will not make this.
00:48:11
Speaker
Well, that's what I was talking about. I follow him on Instagram, and he's super into the 60s too. Christopher Pizarro, do you guys follow him? I do not. Shout out, Chris. We've DM'd. We never met in person. But he has great authentic 60s style. And I think he works in costuming now for shows. I think he worked on Maisel. Oh, that's awesome.
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe things will improve. My friend Sam, who had on the show, Sam Rockwell also is like, I think I said it on that episode, but like the most knowledgeable person about vintage that I know. And yeah, she's done some like, like some very period, correct shit. And I'm like, yeah, cool.
00:48:59
Speaker
There are people that are actually like giving a fuck about the stuff not just yeah And that actually reminds me we're talking about my Etsy. We're talking about You know, what kind of set clothes were selling what was happening? The only time I've ever like and tangentially connected to like any kind of costume Production was after Mad Men got popular. I'm not sure if I think it was still on the air and
00:49:23
Speaker
I think it was like one of the really mainstream movies here. Tried to put out a show that was just called Vegas. And it was like the Vegas strip. I think they had to get bombed after a season, but they bought like a massive box on Etsy for the show. They didn't like horse hockey with me. There was no like, they just add to cart purchase. I shipped it, but I knew it was for them because it had their like studio number and it said like attention Vegas wardrobe department on that dress.
00:49:52
Speaker
It was probably the biggest order I'd ever gotten. They cleaned me out. I never bothered to watch the show to see if anything got used on screen. It was probably just for extras to get on. And that was pretty cool. Yeah, I definitely felt like a big shot for about five minutes. Dude, yeah. It's always nice.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, this is a fun trip down memory. Yeah, dude. Band of Outsiders. I haven't thought about Band of Outsiders in like years. Hey, wait. Years. We want to put brain worms into your head that now you're going to think about shit that you haven't thought about. I've never thought about Band of Outsiders ads. I used to, I used to like, this is before, I don't even know if I had a smartphone or shit was like, but I used to like doom scroll on my computer, just the Band of Outsiders, like website, because it was all just like,
00:50:38
Speaker
Polaroids of people in this building. Wasn't the photographer who did that campaign? You got me. It's not Terry Richardson, but I feel like it's someone in that realm. Yeah, it was that kind of a vibe. It was very LA. I can't remember who the photographer was.
00:50:57
Speaker
Uh, yo, you mentioned earlier that like, you know, when the show came out, you weren't even, you know, thinking about going into advertising, but did this somehow play a role in you like going in that direction? Just out of curiosity. Not even a little bit. Not even, not even, too fucking perfect. Yeah. No, I took just unrelated.
00:51:20
Speaker
ideas, unrelated, unrelated things. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, you you're a very, you have an eye for detail and things which, you know, lend itself well to, I'm sure what you've been things like that. It was just, it would have been too. Yeah, I should, I should give it a rewatch because some of the storylines might resonate even more now. I mean, obviously, the deep personal stuff and the interpersonal storylines are
00:51:47
Speaker
what they are, but a lot of the client drama and the deadline drama, that might be a little more close to home now than it was back then. But yeah, that's an interesting thought. But no, it didn't have any real... I think part of the reason my favorite character in retrospect is Peggy. I suppose my career trajectory was very Peggy-esque.
00:52:09
Speaker
Um, but I don't think the show itself was like, Hey, as you go figure this stuff out, you should go get into the ad world or become a copywriter. It wasn't that, it wasn't that linear. They were, they were very disconnected in time and space and thought. Right. Right.
00:52:27
Speaker
So then, do you think there's, I mean, we're 10 years basically from the premiere to end? Not from the end of that. That's like a milestone. That's like an anniversary. Yeah.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, do you, how do you think of it 10 years on? Is this too broad? It's quite Don Draper. To paraphrase Don Draper, I don't think about it at all. No, I mean, I do, but I do, but I don't. I mean, I didn't have any real linking. It was on Netflix. I think I watched a bit of it. I don't think we definitely gave it a full rewatch not too, too long ago. My wife and I, um,
00:53:09
Speaker
But I haven't thought about it in a while. So when you guys popped up with that story about like anyone have thoughts about Mad Men not really like brought it back, but I hadn't, I wasn't like, I wouldn't even, if I'm being honest, I wouldn't even say it's one of my favorite shows. It's definitely like a nostalgic time and place for me. So it takes me back in that sense, but like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't consider it like a favorite TV show, even though I religiously watched every episode and like went over to people's houses to have parties about it.
00:53:38
Speaker
meticulously followed the releases of the Mad Men Banana Republic collection and the Mad Men Brooks Brothers collection. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We did not even get into the weeds with the Banana Republic and how God awful. It was so interesting though, because it was like, in some ways, like guys going and seeing that stuff, like a certain percentage of those guys will like get, get sort of, you know, driven in the right direction or like, they'll, they'll find the way they'll find the way to like,
00:54:08
Speaker
the real shit. But yeah, I agree that the banana puppet thing. I feel like a lot of the sort of retrospect of like, like the Mad Men parties and like the like the didn't they do like a Times Square thing where everyone was like smoking and cigarette from cigarette fake cigarettes from cigarette holders and have like the doors on and shit. Sounds correct. They definitely does like a thing in Times Square that was like a watch party for one of the I think it must have been because it was it was a huge phenomenon at that point. So it couldn't have been season one.
00:54:38
Speaker
Um, but I think it was the second season they did like a crazy thing in Times Square. Um, you know, I feel like that, um, a funny little, if I had to, like, if I had to boil down all of this stuff, all these impressions, all of this, like.
00:54:54
Speaker
you know, all these sort of style moves, I'll be like, it would all get boiled. If I had to pick like one or two words, it would be tie bar. The resurgence, the absurd and and like, you could have foreseen if I had if I if I can have a time machine, I would go back in time and like start a time bar brand in 2018.
00:55:17
Speaker
Well, you would be amongst. I would be the tie bar, like. Well, I was going to say you would be amongst a lot of other motherfuckers that have that same idea, although a year or two later, because. Yes. Yeah. Like I feel like for whatever reason, it led to this obsession with men's accessories. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:45
Speaker
these things somehow came to be like the Don Draper thing, right? Like, I don't know what it was about the tie bar. Maybe it was just like the absurdity of it or like everyone kind of knew what a tie ball tie was. But here's this weird thing you use to clip your tie to your shirt. Right, right. I remember going to vintage stores and looking for those and they would have they were they were selling out. Yep. Like they could not keep them in stock.
00:56:10
Speaker
like, you know, most vintage stores, even the bad ones will have like a section of just like really cheap men's cufflinks and tie accessories that never get sold. That's for just collecting dust in some, some display case. This, this won every three years. Yeah. And those cases were like getting mobbed and they were getting cleaned up. Everybody wanted every cufflink, every tie bar, every little, which I still like.
00:56:39
Speaker
Um, like it was this insane gold rush for like bad, what was it called? What's that company? Like swank. Was it? There was a company called that made like just cheap run of the mill men's cufflinks and tie bars and stuff back in the day. And like that stuff was just flying out of course, just absolutely. I remember every store that I would go to, they were like, we don't have any type of 11th person this afternoon.
00:57:10
Speaker
You know the vintage store having no interest in vintage clothing, but they'd be like, oh my God, tie bars. And they'd buy a tie bar. Right. Right. Insane. Yeah. I mean, when I started at Epaulette, like my first Christmas there, the Christmas season of 2011, every fucking like partner of some boring ass dude in Carroll Garden bought a fucking tie bar for their stocking or whatever. And this was 2011.
00:57:39
Speaker
this was four or you know three seasons into the show. Yeah it's it was like I feel like the tie bar craze is like the the microcosm of the cultural impact of Mad Men. Totally for sure and before we started doing or working on this I hadn't thought about a tie bar and god knows how long. Right exactly man thinking about tie bars thinking about banded outsiders.
00:58:04
Speaker
Well, Zach, thank you for letting us take a walk down memory lane with this and everyone else. Stay tuned for more in our Mad Men feature. Yeah, thanks. This was fun, guys. Yeah, thanks for the time. I appreciate it.
00:58:36
Speaker
Good evening and welcome to part two of part one of our Special Apocalypse Duds Mad Men series. Along in the making, this was Matt's idea, we've been working on it for about a year. This episode will serve as part two of the first episode of the series. We hope you enjoy.
00:58:55
Speaker
Our next guest came highly recommended by the sage of menswear himself, Derek Guy. Today, we welcome the elegant electrician, the sniper of style forum, the best dressed member of the IBEW, Peter Zatolo. Welcome and thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Wow, such kind words. I don't know how well I can live up to that, but I will try.
00:59:16
Speaker
You do. People have seen the fucking outfits. You do. Right. And no offense to anyone. I have lots of union friends, but most union people that I can think of don't really, you know, don't really command the attention with their clothes. It's all camera trickery and fucking mirrors. Well, so that's even more impressive, right? Because you do do the photography. I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. So it's even more fucking. So like.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah, good on you. Anyone that's been around the forum and the hashtag menswear world of the past number of years has certainly seen people. We haven't officially had you on the show, but could you give us a little background about yourself and tell us why you have insight into Mad Men?
Thrift Store Fashion and Early Influences
01:00:09
Speaker
I'm honored to be on the show. Thank you. Thank you for asking me to put in my two cents. It's really going to be two cents, maybe a cent and a half.
01:00:19
Speaker
I'll do the best I can. Mad Men, I remember when that came out. That was in the mid-2000s. It was so well done. Probably the first good thing that EMC did really was this before Breaking Bad. I want to say it was before Breaking Bad.
01:00:41
Speaker
I think it started before. Yeah, I think so as well. It was one of the first AMC kind of legacy televisions that they ended up making. The first in a lineage. Breaking Bad was the next year. It was the next year, okay. 2007, Breaking Bad 2008. Wow, okay. Man, it's so crazy to go back in the Wayback Machine and look at how much
01:01:07
Speaker
It did influence me, so I'm scrolling through my Tumblr if you want. I don't recommend it, but it does give you a little bit of insight. So okay, I'm going 12 years ago. I keep scrolling. I do keep scrolling. So to go back even earlier to the 90s, I was in high school and most high school kids like myself could not really afford
01:01:36
Speaker
but I grew up wearing suiting in a religious household. And so my parents couldn't really afford to close three boys in suits. So they said, well, if you want to find something in a thrift store, go for it. So I would go into thrift stores and find really cool plaids, really cool Brooks Brothers suits. And I was just looking at a picture of myself from 1994, which is the year that I graduated high school.
01:02:04
Speaker
And there's a picture of me in a plaid, really chunky plaid. I'll send it to you. It's actually a really good picture of me. Most of the pictures when I was a kid, I'm like, I'd rather just relegate that to my memory and not share that with anyone else.
01:02:24
Speaker
But this one is a good one because the jacket is just so good. So the biggest thing that was around in that time was J. Crew. In fact, side point, if you want some really inspiring 90s pictures, there's an Instagram called Lost J. Crew, which is amazing. Oh!
01:02:42
Speaker
Check that Instagram out. It is just gorgeousness and a trip down memory lane. But I was really into that because for me as a Southern California boy, that was so very foreign. The Northeast was something completely different, a world apart. But I liked it because it
01:02:58
Speaker
Kind of referenced those classic ivy styles which were all but forgotten in southern california you would see them in some corners but not very often and so this picture is of me in a j crew tie and a j crew chambray shirt.
01:03:16
Speaker
And it's a plaid, tweed, 60s, sack cut, sport coat, three button, narrow lapels with swelled seams, patch, flapped pockets, two buttons on the sleeves. Of course, the best. It was just a great jacket and I wish I still had it. Do you remember what maker it was?
01:03:41
Speaker
I don't. That's a really good question. I wish I did know. But, side point, if you do want someone who is extremely knowledgeable about Ivy Style and Mad Men in particular, reach out to a guy named Christopher Pizarro. He is from the Bay Area, but he has been living in New York for the past few years. And he used to work in a vintage store on The Hate, and I would see him there from time to time. Then he moved to New York, and now he works
01:04:09
Speaker
In the industry, one of his projects was helping to outfit the fabulous Mrs. Meisel. Oh, shit, that's awesome. Yeah, so he is extremely knowledgeable. And he, I think he said, I posted that picture of me when I was graduating high school. And he says, I think I had the same jacket. So maybe he knows the maker of that jacket.
01:04:32
Speaker
But anyway, I was really into that at that time. And then when I moved to New York in 95, from 97, again, I would find these used 60s suits. I have a few pictures of me in those. They were entirely too big, of course. And so I tailored them. So you have these oversized shoulders and nipped waist and pants where you take in the waist so much that the pockets meet in the back.
01:05:01
Speaker
The alterations lady is just rolling her eyes when you ask her to do it, but she says, yeah, sure, whatever, kid. You're right. And then I came home.
01:05:11
Speaker
back to California but moved up to the north part of California in the Bay Area and was still kind of into that. But by the time the early 2000s and the mid 2000s happened, I was just getting into style form and I was just learning about more classic men's tailoring before the 60s.
01:05:33
Speaker
Italian and British tailoring that would reference the classic 30s, classic 40s. So I started to swing that way a little bit. And then Mad Men came out and that rekindled my love for the 60s tailoring. So I got really into that. By that time I had not the best job in the world, but I had one that gave me a little bit more spending money.
01:05:55
Speaker
And so I would go into vintage stores or just scour thrift stores for very particular suits that would mimic the style of Mad Men. And I have these suits that I look at them now and I look at me in them and I'm like, man, I miss that suit. I really, really, really dug that suit. And I've gotten bigger since then. And this is not to say that the style doesn't look good on bigger guys. It's just totally, totally.
01:06:24
Speaker
I kind of thought, well, I should get something a little more in line with.
01:06:28
Speaker
Um, my changing taste. So I did eventually grow out of that. But man, during that time I had some killer suits. That was just such a great time. Yeah. Especially at that time period too. And I kind of still think this way, like 60 stuff. Um, most, you know, early stuff is, is a little bit more classic, a little bit wider lapel. The kind of mid sixties was very much like, you know, the, the more narrow stuff. And in the late sixties, you started getting into almost the seventies size lapels.
01:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's you know, there's three distinct differences in in that decade alone. But I think that like a lot of them, you know, especially because they're soft shouldered, not quite unstructured, like Italian stuff. But like, you know, if you're a certain person, and you're into that, like, you can kind of work that into just a normal wardrobe, and it doesn't look off. You know, Brooks Brothers has hasn't really changed since the dawn of time. So, you know, their classic
01:07:27
Speaker
sack cuts can still look really good. Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, around the same time, Tom Brown was working with Brooks Brothers for, was it Black Fleece? Black Fleece. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. I can't remember when that collab started, but I want to say it was like, like pre-Mad Men, like 06-ish. Man, let me just do a quick search, Tom. Yeah, fact check maybe. Brooks, Tom, I'm curious. Cause if we talked, if this came up with Zach, like it was all,
01:07:57
Speaker
at the same time, basically the same time anyway. Yeah. Oh, well, I'd have to do a little bit more research than I'm willing to do right now. But yeah, it was around that time. And I remember distinctly going into a Blackfleece store. So there was a Blackfleece store in San Francisco off Fillmore and going in there and thinking, man, this is so great. But even then I thought, man, boy, these jackets are short. Right, right.
01:08:27
Speaker
But i think the resurgence of that style made everyone forget that they're actually. Well fitting suits they were not overly slim they were not overly short yeah but when the style came back again as people are prone to do they went to extremes.
01:08:44
Speaker
and they had very cropped pants and cropped jackets and things that were a little too short. In fact, I remember my wife, she's actually behind me right now and she can confirm this. There was one suit that I got and she's like, no, too tight. They didn't wear it like that. That's one of her favorite time periods for women's clothes as well.
01:09:14
Speaker
Oh, both of us would have fun. Oh, check out this cool suit. I'll check out this cool dress. And this one brown shark skin suit. She's like, little too short, little too tight. And I'm like, you're right. So I gave that away. It's all relative, I guess, like, you sort of go, you sort of go toward the edges as you become more comfortable with stuff.
01:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, you can play around with that until you finally settle on what for you is the right amount of room, the right amount of length. For sure, for sure. I mean, that's a whole lifetime, basically. You try things out and you're like, actually, this is not quite me. It's a little too big or it's a little too roomy or it's a little too tight. Right, yeah. That's part of the fun, right? You try it on and you give it a couple months and you're like, eh.
01:10:06
Speaker
Actually, no, I personally had a couple of blacklies that I had thrifted. Oh, nice. In like 2011 2012 and I'm not a tall person. And so the length for me was was basically fine because I'm like a 37 short jacket anyway.
01:10:24
Speaker
Nice. Just like a 38 regular in Blackwaist was just fine with me. Lucky guy. It's one of those funny things that like you said, some of this stuff does depend on height, etc. But when you find that kind of thing that works within the realm of the style, it's so nice.
01:10:48
Speaker
Yeah. It was a good time to be short. Yeah. Basically, it was a good time to be short. It was like finally they had figured out how to make short people look good. Right. Yeah. If I put on a 60s regular length jacket, it's usually like 30 inches or so from the bottom of the collar, which doesn't seem too long, but my proportions just don't work with it as much as I've tried it. Yeah. I'm 5'8", 5'9". Okay.
01:11:17
Speaker
the back length from the collar, it should be about 29, 30 inches at the most. Yeah, depending on the cut of the suit, that sometimes works for me, sometimes doesn't. Totally, totally. But yeah, I remember when Mad Men came out and that was a big influence on me and getting into that style. And then going to the forums and
01:11:36
Speaker
There was a couple other guys on the forums at the time. This is the early 2010s, maybe 2008 I started posting. There were some other guys that were really into that. Then there was these other guys that were into this crazy Italian bespoke clothing or Savile Rose suiting and that was so foreign to me. I'm like, you mean you actually have new clothes?
01:12:01
Speaker
made specifically for you, you don't go thrifting. Right, right. And that was at a time when you could actually walk into a thrift store fairly regularly and come out with something rad. Man, there is this one time, okay, my wife and I complain about this all the time. So when I was growing up in Southern California, there were dollar thrift stores. I don't even think those exist anymore. Yeah, I've got a couple of thrift stores. What's the dollar? Nothing. Oh, nice. Yeah, I will not divulge where they are, but
01:12:31
Speaker
Oh, good. Yeah, keep that to yourself. You have to go to some god-forsaken place like in Alabama. Basically. Oh, man. So there is this dollar thrift store in Escondido, which is just north of San Francisco. And I would go in there every day after school. And this is when the latter part of my high school, I moved up to North County. And so these were all new thrift stores to me.
01:12:53
Speaker
So, I would go into this dollar thrift store every day after school and they had, at that time, I was actually into 40s clothing. So, in my early teens, I was really into 40s and 30s clothing and there was this thrift store, no, excuse me, vintage, proper vintage clothing store in San Diego called Wear It Again Sam that I have
01:13:18
Speaker
Do I even have any photographic evidence of those suits? I may. Were you taking these pictures? No, not at that time. No, that's the thing. That's why there's not a lot of photographic evidence. I wasn't as vain as I became. Well, it's like you can't take a fit pic, right? It's like the fit pic is kind of a disposable occasion.
01:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even think I had a cell phone at that time. If the cell phones, I don't think they had cameras back then, at least not easily. Right, right. Yeah, you were wasting your fit pic on film that cost money to buy and develop. Yeah. And so that was in the early part of my teens. And then in the later part of my teens, I got more into 60s clothing. But anyway, this one thrift store.
01:14:09
Speaker
I got two suits. One was a pristine flannel, light blue flannel, very spaced out chalk stripe, but a faint chalk stripe. So not like an in your face kind of bugs you my own chalk stripe. Very subtle. And that was a dollar. And then I got a 60s suit also for a dollar. And I still I do have photographic evidences of
01:14:55
Speaker
Yeah, they're printed out. I've got pictures. I was just looking at some of these pictures of me when I was living in, I have a photo album that I made when I was in New York of me like the year before. So, 93, 94. And then the year I moved to New York, which was 95. And I have pictures of me during that time. And I was such a starry eyed lad at that time.
01:15:01
Speaker
of both of those suits.
01:15:21
Speaker
And, um, but yeah, all of that is, I'll send you pictures that, in fact, the one thing that remains throughout all of those pictures is that J. Crew tie, which is sadly. Oh man. Wait, can you, can you describe the J. Crew tie? Cause honestly, they made some great neckwear in the like eighties and nineties.
01:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was a, a rep tie. So it was a red and yellow. And if I'm not mistaken, very, very muted, dark green, J. Crew striped tie. And it was just the right amount of color. It was very, not relatively thin. It was about, you know, classic three inches. Okay. Yeah. Suck. It wasn't too thin, wasn't too fat. It tied really well.
01:16:09
Speaker
At that time, if you recall in the 90s, ties were horrid. Oh, gosh. Yeah, yeah. In a good way. So there is like a very 90s aesthetic that those kinds of ties look good with. So there was what was really popular at that time was
01:16:24
Speaker
Two things, very small knots were really big. So in the 90s, especially if you look at old Armani ads, the tie knot is super small and then it balloons out and creates this fantastic dimple. And Armani ties in particular were really about crepiness, so crepey silk or very textury silk. Ties in general during that time were geometric, woven, not a lot of prints.
01:16:53
Speaker
or the prints were wild. You had like Jerry Garcia ties. I see those somewhat regularly. I've never seen one that was worth wearing. No, yeah, me neither.
01:17:08
Speaker
those kinds of wild, it got kind of 50s-esque, so you didn't have a little bit of throwback to the 50s during that time. Almost like an atomic influence from that time period. Yeah, yeah. I do still have some vintage 50s ties that I still have, but never wear.
01:17:27
Speaker
But then what was also really popular was, and I've never seen it since, it hasn't come back. I don't know if it ever will, but it was a kind of weave. So they would print on silk, but the silk would have a damask on it. So if you looked at it in a certain light,
01:17:48
Speaker
it would have another pattern on top of the pattern. Very hard to explain, but if you wore ties in the 90s, you most certainly had, at least one of them was like that. If you have ever been a tie buyer in the industry, you know that these things still exist because companies, for whatever the fuck reason, keep trying to make this happen still. It's like, guys, this is 2015. This looks like 1995. No, please no.
01:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, men's style usually moves at a pretty glacial pace. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So when you, you know, when you were getting into style form and things, it seems like that's, that's happening at the same time, that, you know, Mad Men had
01:18:34
Speaker
sent a siren call to you. So were you, you know, kind of before you started and found the forums, like were you still wearing 60 stuff or were you in, you know, kind of another mode at that point?
01:18:49
Speaker
No, I was very much into 60s stuff. In fact, one of the reasons why I ended up on style forum was I was looking for a place to buy 60s suits right now, because at the time, I think
01:19:06
Speaker
all of the lapels were still around three and a half, four inches. And so it was very difficult to find one that was made, but oh boy, I wonder if I remember the name of this maker. So there was a guy in Southern California, and I met him in Alhambra,
01:19:24
Speaker
And I remember distinctly going down to Southern California and telling my wife, we have to stop in Alhambra so I can meet this guy. I think there's still a thread on style forum. Is this the like skinhead dude? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh fuck. I can't remember his brand either. Yeah. Very much that like, you know, traditional skin vibe, which was great. Yep.
01:19:48
Speaker
Yep. So he was, yeah. So he was, um, a really cool dude that was living in LA. And if I go on south forum and if I think he's like one of the main contributors to the suede head into skin thread, uh, super knowledgeable guy, but yeah, his stuff definitely skews more mod suede head than Ivy. But, um, he was the only one in California that I knew that could make that kind of a suit.
01:20:16
Speaker
So I went down there and I had a suit made from them and it ended up sucking royally. Oh, yeah. I mean, that happens. It was my that was my very first custom suit. So and I'm glad I had a.
01:20:30
Speaker
horrible experience because it only got better from there. But I did have some, and I have had since then some unfortunate bespoke experiences. But that was my first attempt to try and recreate something like that. That was new because I think the only thing, as you mentioned before, that was available at that time was Black Fleece, which was astronomically out of my budget.
01:20:56
Speaker
Anyway, I'll stop trying to think of it, but at that time, yeah, I was, yeah.
Character Themes in Mad Men
01:21:02
Speaker
At the time, I think my favorite character of that show, my wife's favorite character of the show is Pete. Okay, that's an interesting- Isn't that what Zach said too? Yeah, yeah, he did. Pete is one of those people that just ground on my nerves a good portion of the show. Yeah, I- I think he has a redemption arm, but he's kind of a snively asshole.
01:21:26
Speaker
He is, yeah, he is such a tool. Man, I hated him.
01:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, he's like not likable and he's not supposed to be likable. Right. Yeah, exactly. Vincent Karthiser played that role very well, I will say. Yeah, he did. I mean, he's like, he's like, no, has no possessions type guy, like live in the woods type character. So he does an amazing job being right. Right. But at the same time, okay, it's been a while since I've seen Mad Men and I wouldn't mind watching the series again. I haven't seen it since it came out.
01:22:00
Speaker
But similar to the main character, he came from kind of a nobody background. Right. Yeah. And so he tries to make something of himself. He marries into a good family. Right. And he still has these self doubts. Whereas John Ham's character, he is very successful at it.
01:22:25
Speaker
And so he had doesn't really have the self dot they come up every now and then but not really he squashes them down he continues with his pursuit of what he thinks is right. Isn't the point that he struggles with it like isn't the point that he's like.
01:22:41
Speaker
doing all the flandering, doing all the drinking. I think to Peter's point, he like daughters on that line. Most of the time, you know, he doesn't think about it at all. And then like, when it starts haunting him, it really is like,
01:23:00
Speaker
you know, kind of the secondary plot of every episode that happens. So, you know, yeah, he's really good at projecting his image. And like, I think, you know, maybe, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I feel like one of the points of the show is him believing the projection three quarters of the time and a quarter of that time, like not being able to handle
01:23:24
Speaker
That's a great way to put it. I'd have to agree with you there. That's better said than what I was attempting to say. I just came up with that shit off the top of my head, so I don't know. That's how they pay you the big bucks.
01:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, whereas Pete's way of dealing with his position and his aspirations is conniving and sniveling and pouting. Right. Which is not very- Any worse. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, my wife's favorite character, male character was Pete. I think everyone, including my wife's favorite female character was, what's her name? The secretary.
01:24:04
Speaker
Oh, uh, Peggy. Peggy? Oh, uh, Joan, Christina Hendrix's character. Joan. Yes, Joan. Yes, Christina Hendrix. Because she would just wear amazing colors and amazing dresses that just, you know, perfectly fit every curve of her body. Whereas Betty, or sorry, not Betty. Um, or is it Betty? Yeah, his wife? Yes. Um, Betty was kind of boring.
01:24:25
Speaker
Right. Right. Very, very housewife. And like, like, I don't know, it just the character itself was was to me, like, very much like a Stepford Wives type vibe. Yeah. Like she was supposed to be or maybe even she sought that out. I don't know. Yeah. She did. She totally did. Right. Yeah. Yeah. She was looking for comfort in that. And then when she had such a philandering husband, everything just kind of came crashing down. Right. Right.
01:24:55
Speaker
Or not that when she accepted it, she knew about it for a long time. For sure. But then but my personal favorite character is Oh, what's his name? I'm really sorry. I did not do my research. So you'll have to forgive. Oh, it's okay. But the guy with white hair.
01:25:15
Speaker
Oh, Roger. Roger Sterling. Roger, yes, Roger Sterling. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I liked him because everything was just so, it was a little more, it had a little more pizzazz than Jon Hamm's character.
01:25:29
Speaker
Right. Because John Ham's character was extremely boring. Everything he did was to blend in, whereas Roger's character had a little more style. He obviously came from a place that he knew his place in society. Right. He had grown up in this whole thing too, which I feel like the way that he dressed was
01:25:55
Speaker
was act because he was one of the heads of this agency and have like, you know, been there basically his whole life. Yes. Well, he was an officer too, right? Yeah, he was in the army. Yeah, with him as well. But like that is not as a like grunt and then like fake NCO. He was like a real blue blood officer. Yeah.
01:26:18
Speaker
And then there's a couple of the characters that I really liked. Ken Cosgrove, I kind of like this guy. Oh yeah, yeah. Ken is a nice guy. Yeah, yeah, for sure. He wore IV so well. He did, yeah. I think out of all of the guys, he was the one, and you'll have to excuse me for saying this, but he was the one that was the most California.
01:26:40
Speaker
Oh, for sure. For sure. He was like the more laid back guy. He was the likable guy. Not that everyone from California is likable, far from it. But he wore a lot of sport coats, which is definitely more California. He was the more like casual khakis or slacks and sport coat kind of a guy. Also, there was another guy that was like he seemed like he was the Greenwich Village guy. He wore funky stuff.
01:27:09
Speaker
Oh, uh, what is his? Rizzo. Rizzo is, that's not who you're, who I think he is. Stan, Stan, yes. Yeah, Stan, Stan. I thought that's the character. Wait, I was thinking, fuck. Now, now I'm bliking, but, uh. Just use the guy walking around Greg's village all the time, like, uh.
01:27:29
Speaker
Karawak and yeah, but then you also you also had the character that like went on to be like a Buddhist for like yeah What the fuck was his name Harvey or something? This is gonna drive me crazy, but like I he
01:27:47
Speaker
his personal star, you know, character style, when it started being like later into the 60s. And he was like, yeah, in the beatnik vibe. Yeah, he was all in. Yeah, it slayed so hard. Yeah, he wore the
01:28:04
Speaker
I remember this one episode where if I'm not mistaken, again, it's been a long time since I've seen the show, but he wore a jacket. So hear me out. It was like a sweater jacket. It was a knit jacket. Oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. It had like leather patch pockets near the hips.
01:28:23
Speaker
leather on the collar, it had a zipper with a circular pull. Like all of that was stuff that I'm like, I totally had that. And I would see those in all these thrift stores. And to this day, my wife, whenever she sees something like that, she's like, why don't you get something like that?
01:28:42
Speaker
Which is true. They are just really cool. They're just amazing jackets, but yeah Stan Rizzo was once it got into the third and fourth season in the middle of the 60s and he started to let his beard grow and he started to get up, you know, chunky eyeglasses and Yeah, I'm like, oh this guy's cool. I like yeah. Yeah, Paul Kinsey is who I was Yeah, like he was a pipe smoker there was a smoker
01:29:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And that is a mark of distinction. I've got to say. Yes, not everyone can pull out a pipe least of all me. So yeah, I remember seeing him with that pipe. Yeah, he was he was great. I do like how later in the season. I want to say maybe because how many seasons did it last like eight seasons? Oh, yeah.
01:29:30
Speaker
Yeah. 12. Wow. Okay. 10 or 12, I can't remember, but it's coming up on the 10th anniversary of the last season. Oh, wow. Okay. That's part of it. Oh, sorry. Seven seasons. Okay. Okay. So seven seasons total. Right. Okay. So later in the seasons, I want to say season five when the other company came in as a part of the administration.
01:29:58
Speaker
and Harry Hamlin's character came in. And I'm like, yeah, that guy, I remember him from
01:30:03
Speaker
Oh, what was the big 70s movie? Logan's run. Ah, yes. Yes. I'm like, I haven't seen that guy since Logan's run. And of course, he's just impossibly handsome. And he comes in with these big chunky glasses and a turtleneck, which was one of my favorite looks of the 60s is a nice suit and a turtleneck and big chunky glasses.
01:30:29
Speaker
I think, well, those kinds of things will never go out of style and still influence me to this day. Same, same. I am a chunky classes. My frames that I have right now are like 60s ones that I had made into glasses. Oh, nice. That's just my, yeah, that whole thing. Like if it looks like Buddy Holly or somebody would have worn it, like that's my shit.
01:30:51
Speaker
Let me see, what was my favorite episode? Probably the most memorable episode is the last
Memorable Episodes and Cultural Impact
01:31:01
Speaker
one. And I hate to say that because that's- It's fantastic. Yeah. There is a podcast that I think it's on the ringer that advertises on a couple that I've listened to and they, it's a podcast that they talk about like what actually happened and part of it is like,
01:31:21
Speaker
Did Don Draper really buy the world a coat? And every time I hear that, it just started advertising the last month was in serendipitous, but it just makes me laugh. Yeah, the last episode's fantastic. Yeah, that was, and actually the whole last season because you got to see Don Draper dress more casually. Right, yeah. And you thought, okay, well maybe he's returning to his former self or you can see a little bit of his former personality start to come through. And then at the end you're like,
01:31:51
Speaker
He's still the same guy that he always has been. But that's probably one of my favorite episodes. And the times when he is dressing more casually, it's a nice insight. Because you watch the show because you like, oh, amazing costumes and suiting in the office. Why don't men dress like that anymore? But even in casual times when he's washing the car or when he's in his garage, you're like, man, that guy just can't lose. Even in a t-shirt and jeans, he's just
01:32:20
Speaker
Washing the card. Right, yeah. Still looks awesome. I like that episode where Don just stays in California and finds the hot rod dudes.
01:32:30
Speaker
And, uh, it's after he and Betty split, um, I don't remember exactly what episode it is, but you know, his, his like friend that was married to the actual Don Draper, you know, when he stays with her and he's just wearing some like selvage, you know, selvage jeans. I think he had engineer boots and a white t-shirt on like coming back from the store and like come across these days. Like he def whoever, uh,
01:32:59
Speaker
I don't know if Jon Hamm or Jamie Bryant came up with that, but whoever did killed that fucking look for the time. That was such a great run. I remember all of those seasons were just so good and everyone's awkward. It was varied and you didn't know where it was going to go.
01:33:18
Speaker
Right, yeah. I'm not a huge television person, but Mad Men at the time really struck a chord with me and it was the show that I made sure I could watch.
Mad Men's Influence Compared to Other Shows
01:33:29
Speaker
What did you watch before and after? The reason why I asked that is because before Mad Men came out, my wife and I were really into Lost.
01:33:38
Speaker
Okay, never got into that. Okay, well, I don't recommend it because it's an incredible letdown. Yeah, it was it was a good idea. Right. It's a good idea. And there are parts of that show that shine and that really made the early 2000. However,
01:33:57
Speaker
There is so much of that show that were just misses and they kind of lost themselves. And in total, it is not worth the time to invest.
01:34:12
Speaker
I will say, and this will tell you everything you need to know, I admittedly have shit taste in movies and television. Well, not in Mad Men, apparently. Not in Mad Men. Mad Men is one of the shining beacons of my taste, but I love the Transformers Michael Bay movies, so... Mad Men is admittedly... ...fucking Michael Bay Transformers movies in everything we do.
01:34:36
Speaker
So here we are. But I don't really have an answer. I don't know what I watched before or after really. I don't think I've been into it. Matt won't even watch The Sopranos. I want to watch The Sopranos. It's an undertaking.
01:34:56
Speaker
I don't know, I will get to it. Those watching Transformers. I will get to it eventually. I just started, well you and I are in the same boat because Sopranos was one of those that I think came out around the same time. Boardwalk Empire would be it. I haven't seen Empire, no. Yeah, me either. There's a bunch of shows that are on my to watch list. Yeah, I was thinking Boardwalk Empire has like some
01:35:22
Speaker
significant similarities to Mad Men. For sure. For sure. I don't think if Mad Men hadn't been done, Boardwalk Empire may not have been done either. Oh, wow. Huh? Like, you know, it feels like it's in that same legacy. Like the Sopranos, too. It's like a very thoughtful, like a very thoughtfully done period of drama. Right, right. While I don't think what I know and what I've seen of the Sopranos is like the same subject matter or style influence or whatever of Mad Men, but
01:35:50
Speaker
Like there, there probably wouldn't be the, uh, Mad Men without Sopranos. No. And it's my, I mean, it's Michael Wiener did the Sopranos. Oh, gosh, I got it. Or sorry, Matthew. Matthew. Yeah. Did the Supreme was like, was, I think, a producer on the Sopranos. Right. Oh, wow. So they're like, there you go.
01:36:11
Speaker
Yeah, he probably- So they are spiritually connected. For sure, for sure. So Peter, since you were into the time period of tailoring that Mad Men mostly had throughout the run, was there anything that you picked up on that just wasn't right?
01:36:34
Speaker
Well, I didn't live through that period. From your, you know, from your aficionado phase, like, was there something you saw or things that you saw that you're just like, that doesn't seem correct.
01:36:45
Speaker
Well, so I asked a bunch of people that did live through that era, what they thought about Mad Men. And there's this at the time, my wife and I were living in Berkeley. And there was an older couple that had lived through that time period. And they're like, yeah, that's mostly correct. However, obviously, because it is on TV, everything is very perfect. Plus, keep in mind, I'm asking people who are living in Berkeley, so these are
01:37:15
Speaker
Things are a little sloppier and maybe they just thought getting that dressed up was
01:37:22
Speaker
a little out of control. But they did say that pretty much everything was as it is. White shirts, people kept white shirts everywhere. I will go so far as to say even in some circles, even into the 90s, if you were not wearing a white shirt, it was considered, who is this guy? Who is this scofflaw? Who is this ditto talking to me?
01:37:49
Speaker
anything other than a white or blue Oxford shirt. So that was kind of true and in fact, that kind of got me back into white shirts because at the time on Style Forum and even to this day,
01:38:05
Speaker
There are many people that say white shirts are too stark. They're too plain. They are much too formal. And in some ways, yes, they are. However, that's just classic Ivy. Yeah, that is the white Oxford cloth button down is you can't go wrong with that. And especially if it's rumpily. So there are ways to make it less formal, which I think Ivy did very well.
01:38:30
Speaker
For sure. You didn't see too much of that in Mad Men because everything was very starched. But actually, now that you think about it, one of the characters that we were talking about in Mad Men, hang on, let me see who this is again, because he kind of did that really, really well, Ken Cosgrove. Right, yeah. Yeah. So Ken Cosgrove and of course, Stan Rizzo, those are the more
01:38:54
Speaker
casual guys. They did that casual look very well. They were not overly starched. They rarely wore suits.
California Style in the Mad Men Era
01:39:02
Speaker
In the 60s, especially in California, that look was much more popular and much more common. People still iron their shirts, sure, but they would wear them casually a little more often. And white shirts was pretty much all that you had. Maybe blue, maybe pink, but California didn't do pink too much. They did blue.
01:39:24
Speaker
I was more of an Ivy style. I was talking to the guys in Buck Mason that did a whole thing on California Ivy. So there is this guy. Oh, I can't think of his name. He is also on StyleForum, a wonderful dude. He lives in LA and let me see if I can find him real quick.
01:39:54
Speaker
It'll come to me. I'll send you a link of who this guy is. He's probably in his 60s, maybe 70s. And every time he posts something, it's wonderful because it is directly from that era. He does more classic Ivy, so he doesn't do so much California Ivy, but he does like yellow Brooks Brothers shirts, pink Brooks Brothers shirts, madras, lots of loafers, lots of chunky shoes.
01:40:20
Speaker
Um, he's man, it's really great. If you give me a second, you can like press pause, but give me a second. I'll see if I can find this guy and you'll, and you'll be like, Oh, that guy, of course I know that guy. Right. Right. Yeah. So you can go right at.
01:40:39
Speaker
All right, so there's this guy in LA, Roy R. Platt, whose Instagram handle is Roy Crew. He dresses more in the classic Ivy style, so not necessarily California Ivy, but I believe he is a
01:40:57
Speaker
national treasure. I believe he is awesome. He dresses in pink shirts and madras and yellow sweater vests and saddle shoes and the guy is just amazing.
01:41:12
Speaker
However, California Ivy is much more simple. It's much more pared down. Not a whole lot of color, which is not to say they weren't colorful. They would save their craziness for things like plaids and batik. California was really into that. Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
01:41:31
Speaker
So there's this one episode in Mad Men, I forget exactly which one it is, but they all go to Palm Springs. That is very California Ivy. Everything about that episode, and whenever they do go to California, and specifically Palm Springs, it is a very California.
01:41:48
Speaker
Ivy look right still pretty plain but none of the pinks none of the yellows none of Those pastels that are commonly associated with Ivy. It's still a lot of white shirts It's a lot of or blue Oxford shirts, but obviously none of the sweater vests. Yeah, but they do go a little crazy with the Boutique and with the palm trees and the atomic look and all of that. Yeah. Yeah those boutique like
01:42:18
Speaker
period sport coats are so fucking cool. And you just barely- They're super hard to find. Yeah. I found in the past seven or so years, I think I've found, and one of them, a good friend, it fit him perfectly. It was a 38 long and he loves that stuff. Oh, nice. And every time he wears it, I'm like, dude, you look so fine.
01:42:40
Speaker
every now and then beams plus from Japan, right make a boutique jacket. And it's awesome, but they don't make too many of them. Yeah. And of course, you always have to import from Japan. So you never really know what you're gonna get. But they do make them they do pop up from time to time. I wish something somebody would do something like that. But yeah, they're when I worked in in tailored, you know, tailored menswear, like Southwick, almost like well, Southwick
01:43:07
Speaker
for a number of those years had a couple of those, and they just kept repeating them because they never sold it well, because of course not. But I always wanted to make myself one of those jackets, and I was like, would I ever actually? Sadly, I appreciate it on somebody else, not myself.
01:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, there was this weird during that time of the 50s and 60s, the Ivy period in California, you still had a lot of Hollywood influence. So all of the Westerns that were made in the 50s and 60s, all of those sets were just out east. So a lot of those people that would go to the east like Palm Springs, Riverside, they would
01:43:50
Speaker
incorporate some of their Western wear into the style of the time, which was Ivy, that sack cut, that Brooks Brothers cut. So you had, because of Hollywood and because of everything that was being filmed in the LA area during that time, you had a lot of mixture of Western shirts, chambray shirts that were being worn with Ivy style suits. So it is a really interesting time in California because of Hollywood
01:44:19
Speaker
And California just casualizes everything as much as they possibly can anyway. So they would wear suits with, it was very common to wear suits with sneakers worn with a bandana, worn with, it was very, very common to have that.
01:44:34
Speaker
during that time. And if you look at old photos of in Palm Springs during that time, you'll see a lot of that. Bob Hope was a big fan. And there's a new book on, not to change the subject too much, but there's a new book on Western wear that posits that a lot of what we think about Western wear or what we associate with Western wear comes from Hollywood for better or worse. Oh, absolutely. It absolutely.
01:45:03
Speaker
So because of that, it's, you know, when we think of Hollywood style, we think of, or excuse me, when we think of Western style suiting, we think of the kind of suiting that Dwight Yoakum would wear, or even before then, you know, Hank Williams would wear. Yeah.
01:45:23
Speaker
And even before that, any other Western musician, because all of that was associated with how Hollywood would interpret the Western style and make them a suit accordingly. Right. Cowboys didn't. Well, I mean, you know, like Graham Parsons, Dwight Ilkham. Yeah. You know, those guys, a lot of them did did wear nudie. And, you know,
01:45:46
Speaker
Nudie was basically like taking the Hollywood lens and or taking like tailored clothing through a Hollywood lens.
01:45:55
Speaker
And it's so interesting to like, you know, think about because even going back to like Hank Williams in the 20s and 30s, like he was, you know, that style was a sentence.
Mad Men's Lasting Impact on Slim-Fit Suits
01:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of sad to now 10 years after the, did you say it was 10 years after the last episode of Man. That time was so different from now because at that time it totally dictated a clothing movement
01:46:24
Speaker
Right. That lasted for a good long time. Now granted, it came at the same time that slimmer fitting suits were starting to come in to vote. And it capitalized on that by basing its time period on the inspiration for that style. So everyone enjoyed it because it was wonderful to see the influence fleshed out in front of us.
01:46:52
Speaker
a whole universe with characters and you could see these characters wearing them normally so it wasn't staged even though it was. It was as if we were looking into life as it once was, casual, in the office, dressing up to go out to dinner, sitting by the pool. It was everything and it was across America, right? It was from New York all the way to California and everywhere in between.
01:47:20
Speaker
So I do miss that. I think it was a very influential show on so many levels. Going over this now makes me want to go through the whole series again because it was a great run.
01:47:35
Speaker
It's convenient because they just started streaming it on Amazon. It's not sponsoring this program. It was an extremely influential show. Thanks for giving us your time to talk about this.
01:47:54
Speaker
We hope that it was informative for all those who are listening because I have learned some things. I think Obama mentioned Mad Men in the State of the Union in 2014. So it's been around. It's been influential on many levels.
01:48:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to give it another look and I'll go through my photo albums and I'll take pictures of those pictures. I'm so excited to see them. I'll send them to you. Yeah, some of them are pretty interesting. Hell yeah. Yeah, we will use them if you're cool with that on... Yeah, certainly. It's stories and things. But yeah, Peter, I also want to say thank you.
Closing Remarks and Social Media Plugs
01:48:38
Speaker
What is your handles for people to find you?
01:48:43
Speaker
If you want, you can look for me on Instagram. It's under my OG forum name, Urban Composition. And I do a podcast as well with Derek Guy. We talk about everything under the sun.
01:48:57
Speaker
Hell yes. And in fact, I'll be seeing him tomorrow. Oh, nice. Tell him we said hello. I definitely will. I definitely will. Yeah, we hit him up initially to do this and he recommended you. So yeah, this has been great. Thank you so much for your
01:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, of course. It was great talking to you guys. Yeah. Everyone, thank you for listening. Come back next week for part two of our Mad Men special series, The Oral History of Mad Men, as we see it. I am Matt Smith at Rebels Rogues.
01:49:31
Speaker
and I'm kind of a genius, that real kind of a genius. We are at apocalypse studs on Instagram, apocalypse studs at gmail.com. If you would like to send us whatever the hell you want to send, but yeah, thanks for listening and stay tuned for more Mad Men content.