The period television show, Mad Men, centered on an advertising agency in the early 1960s, has had an extraordinary influence on the antique industry, vintage fashion in particular; but, it has also rekindled an interest in early 1960s home decor. Leading the charge against publishing this story is famous furniture appraiser, Mike Aversa. He feels that it is inappropriate to present a story that is dependent on the readers getting basic cable. Although Aversa himself does get cable, he has never seen the show and feels that this show is no more relevant to the antique industry than any television show or movie. He was not the only one. Renowned author and social critic Ed Strnad agrees with Aversa’s basic premise. However, his criticism carries less weight since his Facebook profile divulges that he is a fan of the show, and he is married to a former member of the show’s production team. Apparently, basic cable doesn’t necessarily mean that you get ‘Mad Men (must be Time Warner).” Sandra Chaffin checked out the show on http://www.facebook.com/l/199d4;www.fancast.com/full_episodes and loved it. ”I wish I did have that channel (AMC),” she said. No story can appeal to everyone, but this one certainly has received favorable response from some vintage fashion professionals. ”I sell vintage clothing and let me tell you, the influence of Mad Men has been huge,” said Kristine Houston. “Not just in the sale of vintage clothing, but also the furniture, decor and overall ‘look.’ Even smoking collectibles. So yeah, I’d say it’s pertinent to many of us.” The success of the show, which has just aired its season finale, is indicative of not only an interest in the curious world of advertising, but for the 1960s, its styles, fashions, color and etiquette. ”‘Mad Men’ renews the style and behaviors of an era some of us were a part of and connects us to new generations now discovering it through the series,” said Matthew Passmore of reclaimed-past (sic), a dealer at Sherman Oaks Antique Mall. “It is nostalgic and frankly, it is what we collectors deal in.” Set in New York City, Mad Men begins in 1960 at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue. The show centers on Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the agency’s elusive creative director, and those in his life, in and out of the office. It also depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America. Mad Men has received critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won multiple awards, including nine Emmys and three Golden Globes. It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series (two years in a row). It is no surprise to find that actresses on the show are so caught up in their roles that some of them even dress the part when they are not being filmed. Christina Hendricks, who portrays the ambitious, self-possessed office manager, Joan Holloway, is a regular at the Vintage Fashion Expo. Although she embodies the role of femme fatale on the show with her bold and sassy character, she is much more demure in real life. Her womanly curves, considered sexy and normal by 1960s standards, are accentuated on the show by tight skirts and tighter sweaters. When walking around the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium she appears to have a much more slender physique. In the season two episode “Maidenform” each secretary is categorized as either a Marilyn Monroe or a Jackie Kennedy in a campaign for Playtex. When asked what kind of a woman Holloway is, she is described as “Well, Marilyn’s really a Joan, not the other way around.” San Diego dealer Richard Strell is going to bring out all of his vintage Maidenform ads in honor of the show. ”I have all of the vintage Maidenform ads. About 25 of them from the ‘I dreamt I was’ series,” he said, adding that he was going to bring them to the Del Mar Show. Joan’s pen necklace was purchased at the Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market. They wanted her to wear something secretarial, but didn’t expect it to become her trademark (http://uglybloggy.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html). ”She’s gorgeous,” said Tanya Mungia of the photograph of Holloway wearing her pen necklace. “I love her outfit.” The show’s costume designer, Janie Bryant, has an even better excuse to be immersed in the vintage fashion world. She designs and builds a lot of things from scratch for the principal cast, but for the hundreds of other regulars and extras, she does buy off the racks. She loves Palace Costume and Western Costume, both located in Los Angeles, but her favorite vintage hot spot is, Playclothes in North Hollywood. The owner of the store is Wanda Soileau, who used to be a dealer at the Cranberry House before the huge scandal erupted. While there, she is credited with producing the two greatest vintage fashion shows seen in Southern California. Soileau hosted a Mad Men Party on October 2nd, which included several dozen devotees and one cast member, Rich Sommer, a.k.a. Harry Crane. Bryant emceed an early ’60s style fashion show featuring Playclothes clothing and accessories. Each outfit was complete with coordinating hat, jewelry, gloves, shoes and handbag (http://www.mydailyfind.com/featured/mad-men-costume-designer-janie-bryant-at-playclothes-in-studio-city.html). ”Janie came and we had a fashion show. She put together the outfits ala Mad Men and talked about her process in choosing clothing for her characters,” said Soileau. “She answered questions and was available all evening for people to talk to. It was a lot of fun.” According to Jan Braunstein, former owner of Antique Avenue in Pomona, the set director and prop people from “Mad Men” used to shop in her store. “They bought lots of cool stuff,” she recalled. Mad Men has created such a frenzy over making vintage fashion contemporary that Bryant has some simple suggestions for pulling off the look without looking too costumey. One of the easiest ways to blend 1960s with the 2000s is by pairing a vintage ruffled or pin-tucked blouse from the period with some trendy skinny jeans or high-waisted trousers. She also feels that twinsets, pencil skirts and shirtwaist dresses can be worn today with just as much sexy pizzaz as back then. ”Women tended to wear tight pencil skirts, fitted sweaters, and sheath and pouf-style dresses,” said Passmore, the preeminent Facebook poster at Sherman Oaks Antique Mall, who has also aided with their online presence including a blog and a want list. “For the men: slim suits, slim-fitting white shirts, skinny ties with tie bars and pocket squares.” The show is clearly having an impact on modern clothing. ”Banana Republic even has a Mad Men promotion with an inspired line of clothes,” said Passmore. “I know many local dealers from all segments that are selling Mad Men style stuff to both the show and those looking to replicate the look.” According to Map Man Joel Easton, Brooks Brothers is offering a Mad Men-inspired trim-cut suit for $1,000. Women want to look like the women on Mad Men and men want to be with them and none are more beautiful than Don Draper’s disheartened wife, Betty. In an interview, Bryant admitted that Betty Draper’s style is influenced by a combination of her own southern belle grandmother (who was also a clothing designer and seamstress) and Grace Kelly. Don Draper’s wife certainly possesses the Princess’ icicle charm. Betty’s life would seemingly be the envy of most women, or would it be straight out of a nightmare? She has a beautifully-appointed home with three perfect children and domestic help. She has an infinite wardrobe, glittering gems galore, and she serves as the perfect trophy wife; she is on her husband’s arm at every important social event. However, she is never happy on the show. Perhaps it is her husband’s obvious womanizing that leads her to announce her intentions to divorce him on the season finale. She is in the early stages of having an affair with an older, less attractive, yet more honorable man. Despite his cheating ways, female viewers cannot get enough of the mysterious main man, Don Draper, even though his wife has clearly had enough. His past is shadowy, a
clear turn on for women who like mysterious men; his real name is Richard Whitman, but he assumed the real Don Draper’s identity during his stint in the Korean War. Along with being an enigma, Don has dashing good looks. Dressed to perfection without a single hair out of place, he looks as if he just lept off the front cover of a 1963 Esquire magazine. He is a cad and his amoral lifestyle forced his wife into demanding a divorce in the season finale. Vintage fashion aside, the show is more than just a runway. It is a reflection of our times as much as it is the 1960s. Sterling Cooper, who throughout its existence has dealt primarily with print media, is struggling to make a major transition into the electronic world. For years, they created campaigns for the major magazines of the time: Time, Life, Look, and Saturday Evening Post. Now, they must come to grips with the newest technology
Category Archives: Television
emmy awards indicate popularity of period show
Mad Men, the period show about the advertising industry won an emmy for best television drama for the second year running at the award ceremony held in Los Angeles last month.The success of the show, now in its third season, is indicative of not only an interest in the curious world of advertising, but for the 1960s, its styles, fashions, color and etiquette. The show also won an emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. This year’s writing win was for the episode “Meditations in an Emergency.” Set in New York City, Mad Men begins in 1960 at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue. The show centers on Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the agency’s creative director, and those in his life, in and out of the office. It also depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America. Mad Men has received critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won multiple awards, including nine Emmys and three Golden Globes. It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. Some of the show’s actresses and actors not only dress the part on the show, they also dress the part in real life. Christina Hendricks, who portrays the ambitious, self-possessed office manager, Joan Holloway, is a regular at the Vintage Fashion Expo. Although she embodies the role of femme fatale on the show with her bold and sassy character, she is much more demure in real life. Her womanly curves, considered sexy and normal by 1960s standards, are accentuated on the show by tight skirts and tighter sweaters. When walking around the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium she appears to have a much more slender physique. In the season two episode “Maidenform” each secretary is categorized as either a Marilyn Monroe or a Jackie Kennedy in a campaign for Playtex. When asked what kind of a woman Holloway is, she is described as “Well, Marilyn’s really a Joan, not the other way around.”
Philcos back in vogue
Gary Massaro offered a 1948 Philco, the first television equipped to receive UHF stations, at the Long Beach Antique Market.Vintage television sets, like Massaro’s $600 Philco, were on broadcasting dead row after belief that that they would no longer work thanks to the digital transition. However, dealers now have a 90-day reprieve and are digging out their classic sets in hopes the shoppers will stray from their big screens and hook these vintage boob tubes up to converter boxes. The switch from analog to digital was set to take place in February, but when the new administration took over, the most significant thing they did was delay the digital television transition until June 12th. The coupon program to subsidize digital converter boxes is also extended under the legislation, allowing consumers with expired coupons to apply for new ones. Since the coupon program ran out of money, hundreds of thousands of consumers have been waiting for a coupon. If any television should be able to make the leap in technology it should be the Philco, which was on the cutting edge of technology even back then. UHF stands for Ultra High Frequency electromagnetic waves, which was used by channels above 13, while the main channels were transmitted in VHF (Very High Frequency) waves. UHF was the beginning of alternative television, which later led to cable and satellite. On December 29, 1949, KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut became the first UHF station to operate on a regular daily schedule. The first commercially licensed television station on the air was KPTV/Channel 27 on Portland, Oregon, on September 18, 1952. Another one of the early UHF stations still in existence today is KCET, which offered groundbreaking educational programming. KCET signed on September 28, 1964 as the second local educational station in existence, but the first successful one. KTHE, operated by the University of Southern California, had previously broadcast on channel 28, beginning on November 29th, 1953. It went dark after nine months. Still in existence more than 40 years later, KCET is one of four PBS member stations serving Southern California. The studio is located at 4401 West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson, one of the highest points in Los Angeles County.Although still boasting educational programming, KCET serves up mostly concerts and meaningless blather from financial advisor Suze Orman, self help guru Dr. Wayne Dyer, and the appraisers on the Antiques Roadshow. Some of their programs have won acclaim, including the Carl Sagan series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” in 1978-79. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, KCET produced a six-part miniseries in conjunction with the BBC called “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State.”
Acting like a hooker
Despite rave reviews for her performance as the older Coco Chanel in the Lifetime movie, Shirley Maclaine did not impress Jennifer Blake. ”I didn’t like her in the part and I love Shirley Maclaine,” said Blake, adding that she thought she was tacky. “She played it like an old hooker. Coming from an old hooker, I know.”
A feminist fantasy of abuse
Mad Men, an AMC original series, has received positive critical response since its premiere at 10 p.m. on July 19, 2007. A New York Times reviewer called the series groundbreaking for “luxuriating in the not-so-distant past.” The hallmark of the series is sexism. The ad creepy execs treat women exactly as envisioned by Betty Friedan’s feminist manifest, The Feminine Mystique. Among people who worked in advertising during the 1960s, opinions differ as to the show’s realism. Jerry Della Femina, who worked as a young copywriter in that era and later founded his own agency, said, “Picture a bunch of drunks talking to each other through a cloud of smoke
Philco Predicta
Screaming space-age influence, a 1958 Philco Predicta television blasted off for $500 in the space of Kim Rogers at the Special 5th Sunday Long Beach Show in June. ”These can go for up to $3,000,” said Rogers. The set is particularly important because it might be one of the most recognizable 1950s streamlined/space-age televisions of the time. The stylish Predicta came out just one year after the Russian’s launched Sputnik, which was no coincidence. Philco was formed in 1892 as the Helios Electric Co. It mostly manufactured batteries and power supplies, becoming the Philadelphia Battery Storage Co. in 1906. It successfully branched out into radio manufacturing in 1927, quickly becoming one of the “big three” radio manufacturers along with The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in New Jersey, and Zenith Corporation, which was based in Chicago. Philco’s popular Baby Grand line of radios were among the ornate “cathedral” or “bee-hive” wooden radios that the reader may have admired in old or nostalgic movies. Despite the depression that followed the twenties, radio sales actually improved as people sought an escape from their surroundings. Philco began researching electronic television along with RCA in the early thirties. For a few years they financed the experiments of Philo T. Farnsworth, the first person to develop a working electronic television apparatus (back in 1927). By 1937, Philco was demonstrating an experimental 441-line television system which utilized a 12″ mirror-in-lid television receiver. This ornate but bulky receiver was designed to rival RCA’s best effort, the 12″ RR-359B. Philco became a popular television manufacturer during the post-War television boom, which lasted from about 1948 to 1955. Beginning with attractive televisions like the 48-1000 designed by Emil Harman, Philco marketed a wide selection of sizes and shapes of televisions. These sets incorporated many technical advances in picture tubes, transistors, set portability, and cabinet design. The Philco company began suffering from the declining market for TVs by the late 1950′s. Something very innovative was needed to renew the demand for Philco televisions. With Russia’s Sputnik, the first satellite launched in 1957, the space age dawned. This had a futuristic influence on the design of everything from cars to vacuum cleaners. Philco’s design department, already widely known for its innovative radio and phonograph designs, decided to try and stimulate its TV sales by revolutionizing the styling of the Philco televisions away from the traditional square or rectangular shapes that had become the norm by the mid-fifties. The engineering department contributed by making the wide-deflection picture tubes and printed circuits that helped to turn the designers’ dreams into reality, by making it feasible to separate the viewing screen from the bulky receiver chassis. The space-age theme was promoted in ads promising “TV today from the world of tomorrow”.
New show for Hoarders
New York, NY, August 11, 2009 – A&E delves into the world of extreme hoarding, a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to collect things, even if the items are worthless, hazardous or unsanitary in the new original nonfiction series “Hoarders.” The seven episode one-hour series premieres Monday, August 17 at 10:00PM ET/PT.
Hoarders find it impossible to throw things away, even when the items threaten to impair their daily life. Each episode of “Hoarders” takes a fascinating look at the lives of two different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis. Whether they’re facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, they are all desperately in need of help. The series captures the drama as experts work to put each hoarder on the road to recovery. But cleaning is just the first step, and healing is not guaranteed. For some, throwing away even the tiniest thing – a sponge, a button, an empty box - is so overwhelming that they will not be able to allow the cleaning to be completed… no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer’s guidance give them the strength to recover. America’s most trusted Professional Organizer (Dr. Phil, Today Show, PBS, QVC, Wall Street Journal) and founder of the Delphi Center for Organization, Dorothy Breininger is one of A&E’s Hoarding Experts. Dorothy will be featured on August 24, August 31, and September 21, 2009. At the end of each episode we’ll find out who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay. And who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.
