Janie Bryant, the costume designer of “Mad Men,” was standing in a cordoned-off area in the second-floor shoe department of Nordstrom at the Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, N.J., on a recent Thursday evening, wearing a red blouse and a pencil skirt and clutching a microphone. “Hello, everybody!” she said over the general din of piped-in Ariana Grande and Cinnabon.
A crowd of mostly women clapped and “whoo-whooed” politely. “I looked her up all day — I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” said one, Stephanie Macari, a kitchen designer living in nearby West Milford (“for now”).
Ms. Bryant was at the store to promote her new line for Shoes of Prey, an Australian company that allows customers to modify pumps, sandals and oxfords to their exact specifications. “I wanted to focus on those beautiful bold colors,” she said, lowering her voice to a seductive purr. “I always feel that patent leather is like wearing lacquer on your feet.”
Arrayed behind Ms. Bryant were seven styles inspired by the era that has, for better and worse, become her calling card: the 1960s. “It’s about the stacked heel and the wedge,” she said, now channeling no-nonsense Peggy Olson in a boardroom pitch meeting. “It’s about being bold, it’s about being strong — it’s about being a total empowered woman.”
“Mad Men” has arguably made her the best known in her field since Edith Head, and as it hurtles like a delayed commuter train to its conclusion, Ms. Bryant, a brunette, blue-eyed glamour puss and 20-year veteran of show business, is reframing her ambitions: grander, gilt-edged.
“I want to be a lifestyle brand,” she declared two weeks before the Nordstrom appearance, pink-manicured fingertips firmly on the wheel of her white Mercedes as it swooshed down the U.S. 101 freeway in Los Angeles. She was driving toward the offices of Black Halo, another of the many companies with which she’s doing business. “I’m obsessed with bedding, china, silverware, entertaining, home,” she said. “Bridal, lingerie, sleepwear.”
Ms. Bryant is also “obsessed” with rhinestone buttons; perfume; the color red; and a friend’s porcelain tiles that are featured, along with the Emmy she won for HBO’s “Deadwood” (she has been nominated seven times, four for “Mad Men”), in the foyer of the house in the Los Feliz neighborhood she shares with her husband, Peter Yozell, a tour manager who has traveled with Lorde, and their standard poodles, Lucie and Prince Valiant. “For a while, I was totally obsessed with collecting muffs, fur muffs,” she said while in her room-size closet, pointing to a high cubby stuffed with them. Later, examining a printed fabric used in one of the 19 dresses and jumpsuits she’s designed for Black Halo, she said, “I’m totally obsessed with this floral.”
But Ms. Bryant was reserving special hopes for another Black Halo dress: short and pale blue, with dramatically puffed sleeves. “I wanted to do something super-editorial,” she said, using an industry term for challenging runway designs. “I want Vogue. That’s what I want.”
Anna Wintour may not yet be banging down Ms. Bryant’s door. But Elisabeth Moss in “The Heidi Chronicles” notwithstanding, no one involved with “Mad Men” has leveraged the show with quite so many brand-new projects, emphasis on “brand.” The costume designer’s curriculum vitae now includes Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, eBay, Eko furniture, Hearts on Fire jewelry, Mack Weldon (men’s underwear), Maidenform (women’s underwear), QVC and, not entirely explicably, Sony.
In what feels like a fitting postscript to Matthew Weiner’s drama, which has tended to gloss over the political with the interpersonal and material, Ms. Bryant has also designed uniforms for the staff of the Watergate Hotel, which is scheduled to reopen this summer after a reported $125 million renovation. “I’m obsessed with the bartender,” she said in her white, smoky-mirrored kitchen, showing off a sketch of a three-piece windowpane-plaid suit (“like that English guy who got run over by a lawn mower,” The Washingtonian tartly remarked of the outfit, referring to one of the more lurid plot developments on “Mad Men”).
But even when the show’s narrative has lagged, or critics have argued over the acting chops of January Jones, Ms. Bryant’s clothing choices, made with the help of Mr. Weiner and a staff of about a dozen, rarely find disfavor on social media, where they are parsed with a fervor not seen since Patricia Field’s outfits for Sarah Jessica Parker on “Sex and the City.”
“Love that Megan wore this dress again in last night’s episode,” one of Ms. Bryant’s 69,100 Twitter followers wrote of another short, pale-blue number, with a bow and pleated chiffon sleeves, in which the actress Jessica Paré welcomed Don Draper to Los Angeles in the beginning of Season 7, then recycled poignantly under a trench coat in the “New Business” episode after their split.
In a phone interview, Ms. Paré called Ms. Bryant “a dear,” said they try to have lunch every week and credited the evolution of her character, which started “with so little about her on the page,” to the costumes, from simple sheath dresses, to the glittery armor of the corporate wife, to jeans and peasant blouse, lingerie and swimsuits. “With Janie, there were certain times when I was like ‘There’s no way I’m going to pull this off,’ and she was like, ‘You’re totally wrong about that,’ ” Ms. Paré said.
Kiernan Shipka, whom Ms. Bryant guided as young Sally Draper on the show from Peter Pan-collared dresses to go-go boots, said she considers Ms. Bryant a mentor. “We text a lot,” Ms. Shipka said. “She’s a very wise person. If we’re talking styles, if we’re talking life — she’ll always have good advice.”
Indeed, Ms. Bryant is a tireless talking head, last week flying to Waco, Tex., to lecture at Baylor University. The night before her appearance in Paramus, she was the highlight of a “Mad Men Meetup” at Tumblr headquarters on 21st Street in Manhattan. She has published a book (“The Fashion File”), is developing a reality show and has given interviews to seemingly every media outlet from The Atlantic to The Zoe Report.
Herein, a recap, to use the Internet term “Mad Men” helped popularize:
Ms. Bryant was born Katherine Jane Bryant in Cleveland, Tenn., sometime earlier than Google suggests, though she refused to say how much. “My mother’s friend once said to me: ‘A woman who will tell you her age will tell you anything,’ ” she said, Southern-belle style. She was the second child of four and a scion, or perhaps one should say a skein, of Bryant Yarns, her maternal grandfather’s business that was eventually entered into by her late father, Paul Edwin Bryant II, who would bring his brood back “the latest and the greatest” hosiery from business trips. “I mean, we were so obsessed with lace tights, and cable-knit tights and knee socks,” said Ms. Bryant, whose line of leg wear, Janie Bryant Leg Couture, hit a snag when the company distributing it, Doris Inc., was taken over by a Canadian T-shirt manufacturer.
Her mother, Dorothea Chesnutt Bryant, a retired real estate agent, was an avid collector of Oriental rugs and furniture. “My obsession as a little girl was to draw Chinese ladies — I was obsessed with being Chinese,” Janie said. “I told my mom, ‘I want to get the eye operation.’ I’m sure she thought I was a total nut bag of a child.”
The family was “chaotic,” she said. Her parents divorced when she was 13, and though they encouraged her to major in business, she transferred secretly from Georgia State University to the American College for the Applied Arts in Atlanta. After graduating from there in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in fashion design, she moved to Paris. “I’ve always been obsessed with anything French,” Ms. Bryant said, but she struggled with learning the language, instead spending wistful afternoons sitting in the Place des Vosges, reading W. Somerset Maugham and Tennessee Williams.
Kiernan Shipka, whom Ms. Bryant guided as young Sally Draper on the show from Peter Pan-collared dresses to go-go boots, said she considers Ms. Bryant a mentor. “We text a lot,” Ms. Shipka said. “She’s a very wise person. If we’re talking styles, if we’re talking life — she’ll always have good advice.”
Indeed, Ms. Bryant is a tireless talking head, last week flying to Waco, Tex., to lecture at Baylor University. The night before her appearance in Paramus, she was the highlight of a “Mad Men Meetup” at Tumblr headquarters on 21st Street in Manhattan. She has published a book (“The Fashion File”), is developing a reality show and has given interviews to seemingly every media outlet from The Atlantic to The Zoe Report.
Herein, a recap, to use the Internet term “Mad Men” helped popularize:
Ms. Bryant was born Katherine Jane Bryant in Cleveland, Tenn., sometime earlier than Google suggests, though she refused to say how much. “My mother’s friend once said to me: ‘A woman who will tell you her age will tell you anything,’ ” she said, Southern-belle style. She was the second child of four and a scion, or perhaps one should say a skein, of Bryant Yarns, her maternal grandfather’s business that was eventually entered into by her late father, Paul Edwin Bryant II, who would bring his brood back “the latest and the greatest” hosiery from business trips. “I mean, we were so obsessed with lace tights, and cable-knit tights and knee socks,” said Ms. Bryant, whose line of leg wear, Janie Bryant Leg Couture, hit a snag when the company distributing it, Doris Inc., was taken over by a Canadian T-shirt manufacturer.
Her mother, Dorothea Chesnutt Bryant, a retired real estate agent, was an avid collector of Oriental rugs and furniture. “My obsession as a little girl was to draw Chinese ladies — I was obsessed with being Chinese,” Janie said. “I told my mom, ‘I want to get the eye operation.’ I’m sure she thought I was a total nut bag of a child.”
The family was “chaotic,” she said. Her parents divorced when she was 13, and though they encouraged her to major in business, she transferred secretly from Georgia State University to the American College for the Applied Arts in Atlanta. After graduating from there in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in fashion design, she moved to Paris. “I’ve always been obsessed with anything French,” Ms. Bryant said, but she struggled with learning the language, instead spending wistful afternoons sitting in the Place des Vosges, reading W. Somerset Maugham and Tennessee Williams.
She fled to New York City, where she lived in a studio apartment with a hometown friend who worked in public relations, and interviewed with Pamela Dennis, Badgley Mischka and Todd Oldham before getting a job with a designer named John Scher. “The rolling racks, the fabric stores,” she said sentimentally. “The men with the wolf calls from the back of their trucks.”
But when she met a costume designer, Alexandra Welker, at a party, her eyes lit up with stars. “When I was growing up, my mother was always into old movies, and from the time I was a very little girl, she was taking us to the revival theater in Chattanooga, the Tivoli,” Ms. Bryant said.
After gigs on Noah Baumbach’s “Mr. Jealousy” and “The Big Kahuna” with Kevin Spacey, she went west, finding success less in movies than in that suddenly hot-again medium, television. There was a previous husband, whom she met at a Saab dealership. “When we got divorced, I realized I was more of a Mercedes type,” Ms. Bryant said in her throaty purr.
Her hit parade on “Mad Men” afforded her an opportunity to reinvent herself, like so many of its characters, as “Janie” (as recently as 2009 she was credited as Katherine Jane) and also to enjoy sybaritic pleasures like disco dancing at the Giorgio’s party at the Standard hotel in Hollywood, or hanging out at the Playboy mansion, to which she donated her koi fish after they grew too big for her backyard pond.
But Ms. Bryant complained that she keeps getting approached for midcentury-modern-themed work. “I’m waiting for a different period,” she said. “French Baroque, Romantic.”
That’s if she continues with costume design at all. For it is not Ms. Head she idolizes, but Oscar de la Renta, who besides designing ready-to-wear (which got a shout-out in Season 7) licensed bedding, dishes, eyewear and luggage.
“Can I bust out of being known for vintage?” Ms. Bryant wondered, driving fast in her automobile. “People ask me about ‘Mad Men’ — people want to see me do what I’m known for. But I get tired of things really quickly.”