Photo: Stylelist

Marketing genius. American classic-style clothing stores – J. Crew, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor and the like – up until now have given the consumer clothes to be the best “you” you can be. But, Banana now seems to be asking, why be you when you could be someone else?

Enter Mad Men, to offer archetypal and glamorous characters from 1960s Madison Avenue where secrets and scandals abound. Read more about the collaboration between BR and Mad Men here at Stylelist.

So, who do you want to be of the female leads?

Betty Draper is a Grace Kelly lookalike and a model-turned-homemaker. Her outwardly perfect life married to Sterling Cooper’s golden boy belies the pain of her daily prison – a tragically loveless marriage and the relinquishing of professional identity. Perhaps you’d like to be her?

Joan Holloway is the cartoonishly voluptuous office manager whose confident femininity gives her power over the executives who want to sleep with her and the secretaries who want to be her. But this powerhouse is powerless over the brute force of a fiancé who marks his territory by raping her in Don Draper’s office one evening after smelling her affair with Roger Sterling. Maybe you’d like to be her?

Peggy Olson’s talent for copywriting and delicate maneuvering through office politics has allowed her to become “one of the guys” and a valued contributor to successful ad campaigns. But despite her precarious success in this man’s world, she is still very much a girl and a very naïve one at that; she mistook labor pains for a stomach ache after 9 months of (unknowingly) being pregnant with the child of married junior ad exec and extraordinary jerk Pete Campbell. Is she your style icon?

Of course BR is not interested in selling the sad conclusion that life is complicated and imperfect, and the truth that being an adult means giving up some dreams. No, BR is smartly cashing in on the seductive style of the show itself and the fact that ‘60s sheath dresses are timeless, practical, and elegant.

I will probably pick up a piece or two from this collection but when I wear them I will not be channeling Betty, Joan, or Peggy. The female characters I prefer are the independent and headstrong women who are Don Draper’s lovers - supporting characters who have come and gone with the whims of his libido. There is Rachel Menken, the Jewish department store head who takes no crap from the execs and Don during work or play. Midge Daniels lives in a self-created Beat/hippy fantasy world because she doesn't dig the modern world around. But my favorite is Bobbie Barrett, for the advice she gives to Peggy in episode 5 of season 2 “The New Girl”:

"You're never gonna get that corner office until you start treating Don as an equal. And no one will tell you this, but you can't be a man. Don't even try. Be a woman. It's powerful business, when done correctly."

Yes, Bobbie is who I’ll have in mind when wearing my ironic Mad Men BR work styles, because the glass ceiling still exists and the only way to transcend it as a woman is to be a woman, fabulously fashionable of course.