The common understanding of how it worked, the legend (if you will), is that men wore hats until John F. Kennedy appeared for his inauguration nude-headed, and, overnight, the hat business was over.
(We at the Basket have been bracing ourselves to say goodbye to the behatted Don Draper for Season Two. )
CBS Sunday morning did a feature on hats this morning. Just now. They claim that it wasn’t quite like that. Turns out young men were leaving their hats at home more and more commonly. Kennedy just brought it to the public’s attentions.
Which suggests, again, that Don is a little old-fashioned. I mean, he may not be categorized with the ‘young men’, but he’s younger than Kennedy. And though there is a lot of hat-wearing among the young men of Sterling Coo, Pete Campbell is frequently seen hats off.
June 15, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Don is definitely kind of conventional. His drink of choice is an old man’s drink–rye (an Old Fashioned!). Wasn’t that big in the 30s and 40s? It’s probably what Archie drank, and what he’d been drinking the day he got kicked in the head by a horse. I’m not an authority on this by any means, but judging from the pop culture of the period, people seemed to be going a little more exotic with their cocktails in 1960. Rum and vodka seemed to be the trendy drinks back then, with gin and Scotch serving as the familiar stand-bys. I realize this has nothing to do with hats, but it does speak to how traditional Don is in many ways.
June 15, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Okay look at this whole cool thing about the Old Fashioned. And Don drinks rye. Old Fashioned’s can be made with rye.
June 15, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Reading the history Roberta dug up, it sure doesn’t look like Archie’s drink. I think it’s urbane and sophisticated; an anti-Archie drink, from Archie’s era.
June 16, 2008 at 1:15 am
Well, from today’s vantage point it is urbane and sophisticated because it’s retro-cool. Just like everything else Mad Men-related.
But back then? I’m not so sure. Even the author of that article acknowledged that “the Old Fashioned is often seen as just one of those old slop drinks.”
Like I said, I’m not an expert on the subject, but if you watch old movies from the 30s and 40s, rye was the drunk’s whiskey of choice, and Old Fashioneds, their preferred cocktail. The sophisticates all drank gin, martininis, scotch, that sort of thing. But the serious drinkers? They always knew where they could find a pint of rye when they needed it.
June 16, 2008 at 7:50 am
seriously – rye is grandaddy’s drink. the one in the back of the cabinet with an inch of dust.
don’s a dinosaur, even by early 60’s standards. watch him fall. not for a while, mind you. but he most certainly will.
great post topic, cuz it falls right in there with the “consequences” motif of the series. hats, rye, clinging to old ways are all old-fashioned symbols that someone is behind the times but doesn’t know it. i think one of the major undercurrents of the show is that we’re watching the last days of the empire.
June 16, 2008 at 8:16 am
Old Fashioneds not only can be made with rye but should be made with rye. And rye is actually a very smooth and nice sipping whiskey. Nowhere near as harsh as bourbon or other whiskeys. An affordable rye is Old Overholt that you can usually get for around $13. It makes a nice highball especially if you can get your hands on Blenheim’s spicy ginger ale.
If you’re in Chicago and go to the Green Mill and order rye the bartenders know that you’re actually not just a poseur.
My perspective on rye from movies from the 30’s and 40’s is that whiskey was a man’s drink. As Jimmy Stewart says in Philadelphia Story, “whiskey is a slap on the back.” While champagne for him leads to trouble.
As for Don Draper, I’m not sure that he’s exactly old fashioned but rather than he wants a certain lifestyle and respectability a certain cover and that’s mired in old fashioned ideas. In order to continue to be the chameleon that he is, he’s going to have to let go of some of that.
June 16, 2008 at 8:23 am
I think that’s it exactly.
June 16, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I have a neat little item on the subject of hats that I’ll email you ladies. I got it from the NYT archives. I was doing some research for the first two weeks of 1961 and came across it purely by chance. I don’t know. It may interest you.
Of course, growing up in Venezuela, my grandpa wore a fedora when he went out as a matter of course. He wasn’t 100% formal but then again, Latin America is a teensy little bit more formal than the US in matters of style, that’s for sure. So anyhow, incoming.
June 20, 2008 at 7:07 am
[...] posted about the hat-wearing habits of men in 1960, and of Don. Which spurred an interesting discussion about Don’s drink of choice and his arguably [...]