Costume designer Janie Bryant on Ted
“I’ve had such a great time developing his costume design… My approach was, and still is, that he is the modern version of Don Draper. It’s a little bit doppelgänger but also more modern than that. Don is always rooted in being very minimal in color and mysterious and masculine. It’s always about secrecy with Don Draper. With Ted I think we really see him when he’s with Peggy and he says, “Don’t say I’m nice.” But that character really is nice. I think that he does have that working position in common with Don but it’s different in personality… Yes [Ted is very much a foil to Don], I think it’s important in terms of costume design to make him look different than Don but as important was to make him a modern version of Don. So there is more flexibility in using more color, moving forward with the times, and different silhouettes like using the turtleneck. It’s interesting too that he’s a youthful dresser and he has an older wife. And so it’s like he and Nan are switched with Don and Megan.”
