1960's MAD MEN Embellished Dress and Velvet Coat
Welcome to the enigma that has kept my brain spinning for over 5 years!
When I bought this set years ago the person selling it said it looked identical to a set that was worn by the character Megan Draper in the hit AMC series Mad Men. This led me on a search for the history behind this dress and years of questions!
Let's start off with the known details about this set:
Label- Adele Scott of Beverly Hills and San Diego
Era- 1960's
The first step in finding out the history of this set was to first research the label, Adele Scott. I had posted the photos of the set along with the label into a vintage seller/ history Facebook Group to see if anyone recognized the label. I had multiple people tell me this label looked "too new" and was a "modern" brand. Yes, the labels on both pieces look pristine, but the Union Label and actual materials told a different story. I knew I was going to hit a dead end there.
Over the next couple of years I kept looking into this set, but as the months went on it slowly slipped away into a project I'd have to pick up on at a later time.
Last year I decided to post in another group forum with the Vintage Fashion Guild and asked the same question with better photos and just a bit more information I was able to source. I went into the California Secretary of State's website to do a search for the articles of incorporation for this label. EUREKA!
Here are the little nuggets of information I was able to find:
Article Filed: 09/13/1956
Inactive Status: 03/15/ 1977
Agent Address: 327 Mission Valley Center San Diego, CA 92108
With this information in hand I knew this was a legit label
I had a couple of people respond to my forum post one of which is a costumer. She said that it's very typical for film and television costumers to use actual vintage pieces for their actors. Mad Men's costumer, Janie Bryant, has said that she did use actual vintage pieces for the characters and also recreated vintage looks from inspiration pieces.
Another person answered, in the forum, with segments from an article she found about the Adele Scott store itself (I couldn't find this article when searching).
The Adele Scott store was described as being an 'elaborately furnished' store with 'couturier fashions' located in the famous Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. Eventually they opened another storefront in San Diego. They provided some of the names in the article, but those names didn't yield any more results.
My next thought was to find the person I purchased this set from, but since it was years ago (pre-pandemic) I couldn't find any receipt of purchase. I know the person I bought it from lived in California at the time, but I couldn't find any correspondence. Frustrating, right?
The next course of action was to match up screen steals from the episode to see if I could compare the details of the dress onscreen to the one I have.
The first initial comparison was with the velvet opera coat. You can see in the screen grabs below that there's a metallic brocade trim along the sleeves of the coat Megan Draper is wearing. Mine does not have that trim and I couldn't find any trace needle marks of the trim ever being there.
Due to the obstruction of the chair, I couldn't quite see the actual length of the coat itself. The trim appears to be pretty firmly on the sleeves, but there's no way to tell for sure since this is the only scene where she's wearing the coat.
When I compared the dress itself to the screen grabs they appear to be almost identical (the color looks deeper in some photos due to photo quality).
There is one BIG difference if you look very closely. There are embellished areas around the dress where there's a starburst jewel with a drop down little teardrop crystal (in my dress).
In the Megan draper dress, those little teardrop crystals aren't there. That leads me to believe that this was NOT the screen used set, but the inspiration piece for the actual shooting. There are many reasons why costume designers recreate or duplicate vintage pieces for actual filming:
- - Integrity of the garment would be compromised
- - Not the size of the actor
- - Need to make camera ready changes
Janie Bryant stated in an interview that for the main characters she often designed and built costumes for them while also mixing in rentals and vintage garments. She stated that designing for the entire show would be too time consuming and also expensive. For an outfit like this, it would make sense if Bryant used the actual vintage pieces as inspiration because this outfit was going to be worn multiple times in a prominent storyline for this character. This means there could have been more leeway with designing an inspired piece without compromising the actual vintage garment.
The fact that the only difference in the dresses is the elimination of the little teardrop crystals could be for more practical reasons: the crystals catch more light (could disrupt shots) and they can make a little noise swaying around interfering with the sound quality. Those would be my guesses, but if you're a filmmaker, please comment why you think that would or wouldn't be!
Okay so if this isn't the screen used version of the garment, then why should you care?
Vintage garments don't always have to be worn to be honored and appreciated. They can and are used as inspiration for what we see in popular culture today. A set like this straddles the line of being shared with an adoring audience while also being preserved and protected for generations to come.
More updates will be added as this set is researched!
circa 1960's/ Beverly Hills, CA, United States
AP.7.13.1.AD.60