The Mad Men Fashion File - You Don't Own Me
Let's start with the obvious: This episode is called "The Other Woman," and it sets up Peggy and Joan as polar opposites. Each woman is the other's inverse, an alternate-universe evil twin that only Ken Cosgrove's science fiction stories could imagine. This has always been true: Joan is more knowing, more assured of her feminine power, and more comfortable wielding authority. Her costumes reflect this, and costume designer Janie Bryant has famously said that Joan doesn't care what's trendy; she knows what looks good on her and sticks with it. In this episode, Joan wears a stream of curve-hugging dresses in rich, deep colors that prove it. She only breaks the rule once in this episode, when she wears an ink black cocktail dress to her carnal transaction. You might have noticed Joan topped that dress with a black fur. It's the same one Roger Sterling gleefully gave her when they first began their affair, and seeing Joan wear the fur in this situation brings us full-circle in a bitter cycle that went from sex to mutual admiration to unrequited love to Roger's betrayal during Pete's pimp-like partner vote... and now back to sex. (We can also mark it as another example of the "Venus in Fur" archetype that's been established this season. Joan follows both Jane and Beth Dawes as women having sex for complicated, conflicted, and ultimately unfulfilling reasons -- and becoming more powerful and ultimately more dangerous to men because of it.)
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