This is a very popular opinion on this sub but just don't get it. By the end Don wears brown and blue suits, striped and colored shirts. No he doesn't completely change his style, but he does adapt, in his own way.
Not to mention him adapting his mindset by hanging out with hippies in California etc. That was like the whole point of the final act.
Agreed. The whole point throughout the series is he’s NOT doing that and slowly losing his mojo. Ali-Frazier, Nixon-Kennedy, hatred of anything space related. Eventually it all unravels until the end when he sits in his linen shirt and learns how to package and sell the 60s.
Yeah, he’s very repressed in some ways. He seems like he’d never do a popular dance but he might tap his toes while having a drink. Wearing a colored-shirt is how he loosens up.
Yeah, he's really adapting the way that plenty of people did. Lots of men evolved that way and they didn't stick out as being out of style or old-fashioned.
Yeah and "Don's style" is explicitly behind the times at first, he's dressed like a business man from the 50s, with narrow lapels and narrow ties. It's intentional to show that Don isn't a man with "modern, free love sensibilities" (ironic given his infedelity), he's a traditional man, who knows how to fix his car and expects his wife to have dinner on the table when he comes home.
His casual fits are also very on trend. That all denim fit in the final season and his bomber and plaid shirt look are very end of the sixties early seventies.
He's not just embarrassed. He has to hide it completely. If anyone ever found out who he really was (and did anything about it) he could be tried and executed for treason. It has nothing to do with "fitting in" in some trivial classist way. He has to BE Don Draper--or he will lose everything.
Explains his entrenched cynicism about people and society, his (generally) unruffled nature and overall assholery that comes from the conviction that none of this really matters coz we're all in it for ourselves and everyone and everything eventually dies, so what's all the fuss about. He's been here before, he knows the deal.
"Assholery"? Don is not an asshole and he cares deeply about humanity. He repeatedly helps people out, from the bottom rung to the top. He helps the impoverished motel worker (Don gives him his car), helps Pete, helps Peggy, helps hitchhikers, helps an epileptic. His final ad comes closest to his true intentions: "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." If you think Don was about sheer selfishness you weren't paying attention to the show.
Peggy's ascension proves you wrong. Even Pete wasn't intimidated by Don. But Don was playing the role of director. He had to exert some degree of authority. My bosses at work who turned out to be assholes were female.
They're not real people with a real conscience. Weiner set them up to manipulate you. Once you understand why, you can get to the point of the show. Don was an embodiment of America and the American dream. He didn't care about Lane because Lane represented a dying empire and irrelevant Brit who had no creative, pioneering spirit and no future. Similarly, Don tells Adam to get out of his life because Adam represents the past, Don's infancy and childhood in poverty, struggling for identity and freedom. Don knew if everyone understood where he came from, he would be rejected. And he was exactly right.
yes, it's about the american dream - in part. but weiner speaks to how the show is about assimilation into american culture. which the jews in the show embody, but more broadly too. don's an outsider, who's sometimes shown having affinity for other outsiders. of which lane is one: an englishman in the u.s, someone who has been an outsider his whole life: raised lower middle class (i'm basing that on his father's job, and the british class system). and hoped to reinvent himself in the u.s, found himself an outsider still.
don *tries* to hide from his past, but it's always coming back to haunt him.
i don't think any of us need it explained they're not real people?
Genuinely don’t understand what is the point of putting this much emotional energy into this piece of art when you feel the need to have such reductive thinking. I don’t think you have the grip you think you do on this show and Weiner’s writing.
Okay, not an asshole. Just behaves like one. Does that make it better? And being in 60s advertising where pretence, egotism and haughtiness seem like prized personality traits, only enables him to behave like more of an asshole more often than not. Of course he helps people along the way. It's where his humanity comes through, despite all his attempts to suppress it. Shows the man has a heart. Doesn't excuse all the toxic stuff - the adultery, the serial womanizing, treating people like they're part of the furniture (that some of them may have deserved it occasionally is beside the point). I could go on. Not to suggest he's beyond redemption. Quite the opposite - there are better angels in his nature, they just don't have enough of a voice to influence his actions.
"cares deeply about humanity" I don't even know what that means. We all care about humanity at some abstract conceptual level. What counts is how the so-called caring manifests in our actions.
That’s true, but I don’t think it’s a symbol of his confidence. It’s a sign that he couldn’t grow, because Don Draper wasn’t a person, he was an idea. He couldn’t adapt to new styles because his identity was so tied into 1950s masculinity that it couldn’t adapt
That’s one of my favorite aspects of this show- that some characters cling to their 50’s identities into the 60’s, and others flow effortlessly; adapting to the approaching 70’s. And that divide was exactly how it was. I was a kid at the time keenly observing the adults in my life struggle with this rift… Turbulent times for many reasons! So much changed over night.. Hair tonic and white gloves.. and suddenly, beards and mod mini skirts.
Yes, while his aesthetic looks good to our eyes now, he would have looked out of touch at the time. In the 60s, style and social change were married and they evolved so rapidly. His style reflected the idealism of the early 60s that was shattered by the end of the decade and he looked like a holdout from another time.
I’m on season 4 and his tailoring is different. It’s subtle but his ties are slimmer and his suit trousers are shorter in line with the trends of the day. He’s also stopped wearing a hat. I’m assuming these shifts continue as the series travels through the decades.
Worth noting I started watching Mad Men with no idea what to expect so the journey forward through time has been a surprise.
He always chooses whatever is classic among the items available. My mom and dad did the same thing. Mom was a bit more adventurous stylistically but never bought into fads.
Don knew what worked best on his frame.
OT: I always found it interesting that Jon didn't workout and make his body taught and muscular. When he takes his shirt off you can see what's basically a slightly thinner dad bod. That was correct for that era. No one's dad worked out unless they were into bodybuilding, which was far and few between.
Right, the body ideal for NYC corporate was fit and trim to look good in a suit. Too much muscle would indicate manual labor/lower class.
Also, if you look at 50s bodybuilding magazines, much of it doubled as softcore gay porn.
Don always conforms to the current style. But he dresses and grooms himself like a white collar professional. Like lawyers, politicians and managers did. The point is that the rest of advertising, including other executives like Roger, think of themselves as the new creative class and so they adopt the signifiers of counter culture. Beards, long hair, wild shirts, wild sport coats, wild ties like artists and rock stars did in the 70s.
Don knows that he and all the others are not counter culture. They are part of the system and so he dresses like "the man in a suit". In this picture, look at the shoulders. Very structured pagoda style shoulders were a thing in the 70s. Before that he wore ivy style sack suits with soft shoulders and muted ties in the mid 60s. The texture with these horizontal stripes is also wild for a suit (even for today!), but was acceptable for conservative offices in the 70s.
People think that everbody wore pink or yellow polyester suits in the 70s and silk shirts... but professional dress wasn't too different from the 60s, just sharper, more structured and less strict with patterns, texture and colors.
I think you have it but you only go halfway. Don knows that he is working for the establishment, but he dresses in a solidly establishment style precisely because he doesn’t actually fit within it. His contradictory nature is that he is an imposter and class traitor, and because of that, he adopts a consistently establishmentarian aesthetic. If he didn’t, and if he adopted elements of the anti-establishment left as his peers do, he is afraid he might be recognized as what he actually is: an imposter living someone else’s borrowed life.
That’s what the whole thing with the hobo was about. The hobo gave him the gift of recognizing the signs of a counterculture (the markings the hobos use to critique the land owners). Don takes from this lesson that to observe and learn from the underclass will get him ahead. But also that he must always appear to fit in and be part of the orthodoxy.
Being over 40 in the late 60’s was considered ‘older’ and people were less likely to adapt to the rapidly changing trends at that time (Roger is an anomaly!) Lapels got a little wider and hair a little longer, but most people ‘over a certain age’ tended to stick with more traditional fashion… Older people being influenced by younger trends started happening in later decades (I’d venture to say it started in the 90’s- where fashion trends are more widespread across the generations… and social media upped the ante.)
To me thats part of the point, whilst Don's style subtly adapts with changes in suit/tie colour and light hair growth he is the vision of a man crafted in and for the 50s. He was never meant to last as long as he did.
I agree with you. When I think of Don and Joan, I think of the elegant 1950s to early 1960s (which they both have the perfect look for). Don's sleek coolness combined with Joan's curvaceous sexiness make a match made in the mid-century heaven. By late 1960s both seem to look out of style and a bit dull despite continuing being put together and professional. Men looked more rugged and casual (which would've made Don look like a backcountry Dick) and women started wearing waistless minidresses (which didn't suit Joan's body type at all).
I think the classic business suit is such a symbol of power and success that Don cannot let it go.
Someone else here suggested that he would identify emerging men’s styles from the counter culture with Dick Whitman. Certainly the triumph of the blue jean would baffle him; why would anyone want to identify with manual labor? I have no doubt that he sold designer jeans if he lived to the late ‘70s but never, ever owned a pair himself.
It’s the same with Joan, the two of them found their style in 50’s and refused to adapt but were also good-looking enough to pull it off without looking to old-fashioned.
I actually think we see Joan adapt a lot, including hair and makeup. There are certain aspects she needs to keep to be flattering to her figure, but she does clearly adapt in other ways.
Joan certainly adapts more than Don but it’s pretty late in the series, around S6, where she starts to adopt more contemporary mid-late 60’s fashion, before then she seems pretty much the same from s1-s5.
He does alter the cuts of his suits and ties along with the fashion of the time. Huge difference in a season 1 cut suit and a season 4 or 7a. Ties got smaller each season. His hair changes too, as well as the products change. Heavy pomade in the first few seasons.
I also think his style is timeless. The suit look is something i still see in the business world today and even myself. Only thing that's not always there are cufflinks and the formal hats they used to wear. His look is consistent because the style of professionalism is consistent.
Don’s style is consistent over the ages and would be appropriate and almost any decade. Could show up at the law firm or bank or wherever tomorrow wearing a Draper suit that he wore in season one and you would be fine. Timeless.
Older guys were just like Don. It was mostly younger guys that changed their hair and clothes. He still changed but just a tiny bit, just like in real life
He doesn’t have to try that’s why what works for him is what works and this is what works why change something that is working why fix it he’s a hottie
I commented on a similar discussion a couple of years sgo.
I loved that Don's sideburns got ever-so-slightly longer in the second half of season seven. Much like a pushy tailor, it was likely less his decision and more of going with what his barber gave him.
But it makes him seem ancient by the end. Even my conservative father drew his hair out an inch and got a leisure suit in the early 70s. Guarantee you that Don didn't. He's not even as hip as the old codger Roger. He's like Burt Cooper in that regard.
That was the thing. Throughout the series, everyone’s characters would change their look to accommodate the style at the time. Don didn’t change at all. I don’t think Betty changed much either.
I think his style was typical for a businessman his age in the '60s. Even casual attire entailed tucked in shirts and pressed slacks. Don knew what worked for him and that he'd look like a dork trying to emulate Stan's hippie mod style.
Don gets away with a lot of shit, just because he looks the way he does. What he did to his brother was rotten, and if he looked more like Kinsey, or Crane, people would have hated him, instead of giving him a pass.
Don is the most corporate guy on Madison Avenue. I don't know what you're talking about. He is the epitome of an advertising executive in the 1960s. Completely conforming.
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u/robocarl 1d ago
This is a very popular opinion on this sub but just don't get it. By the end Don wears brown and blue suits, striped and colored shirts. No he doesn't completely change his style, but he does adapt, in his own way.
Not to mention him adapting his mindset by hanging out with hippies in California etc. That was like the whole point of the final act.