Makeup department head Debbie Zoller explains how she recreated the period beauty makeup of 1959 to 1962 for the hit AMC series Mad Men, look by look.
Spanning the years 1959 to 1962, the new hit American Movie Classics show Mad Men, having just wrapped its second season, features a host of period beauty makeups, all courtesy of makeup department head Debbie Zoller, a veteran of 21 years of makeup artistry.
So how does one approach making her show’s stars look endemic to the offices of a Madison Avenue ad agency? “I researched my fingers off,” answers Zoller. After combing through a host of period magazines for various beauty looks – Life, vintage Look magazines, and Women’s Home Journal among them – Zoller determined that depending on the age of the actor, his or her character’s appearance can be influenced by looks prior to and up until 1959 for the show’s first season.
For creating the makeups of Mad Men’s leading women, Zoller broke her chores down into blondes, brunettes, and redheads. “I design all of the makeups, and the different people who work with me and I apply them,” she describes. “I designed January Jones’ character Betty after Grace Kelly because she is such a classic beauty. There is a beautiful Grace Kelly book, and I showed it to executive producer Matt Weiner, and he said that was exactly what we were looking for.”
Zoller paid no less attention to the other actresses’ integral looks. “With Joan, played by Christina Hendricks, she is like the bombshell head of the secretaries in the office,” she says. “I designed her after a very popular redhead model from the 1960 model – Suzi Parker. Peggy, who is played by Elisabeth Moss, was based on her reality as a naïve 19-year-old girl coming into a man’s world. “She looks very natural, focusing on her skin,” Zoller stated. “I used Kate Sommerville products which brings a blush to the skin. She doesn’t look like she’s wearing a lot of makeup.”
In addition to her three main actresses all having perfectly-shaped nails and high-arching eyebrows, Zoller noted that their overall look is very matte as it was in the late 1950s to early 1960s. “There was not a lot of shine to them – especially the lipsticks,” she said.
In addition to the women, Zoller focuses due attention on her leading men. “They all have to be really clean shaven, but are not allowed to look like they have makeup on,” she noted. “I used the entire line of the Art of Shaving. We used the Laura Mercier oil-free tinted moisturizer. It doesn’t’ look like makeup, but their skin looks flawless.”
Of her 16-hour days on Mad Men, Zoller noted that it takes between 90 and 150 minutes to get everyone ready who works in the morning including makeup and hair and undergarments. “The men will get a haircut first, and the ladies get set in the hot rollers to set their hair. Then they come to us in the rollers for makeup. If they have to put nail polish on, we do it so that it dries before wardrobe. They guys come in, do their shaving, sit down and get makeup on.”
With Mad Men as the current Emmy winner for Outstanding Drama Series, we can surely look forward to a third season. Anticipating future shows, Zoller noted the tight-knit family feeling surrounding the show. “In this business, you strive for it, but it’s very few and far between that it actually happens. The actors respect me and I respect them, so they allow me to design whatever I want to do. Because of the trust between us, they have never really questioned my judgment.”
Since the mid-1980s,
Scott Essman has been writing and producing projects about motion picture craftsmanship. He has published over 350 articles as a freelancer and has produced over twenty publicity projects for Universal Studios Home Entertainment where he made video documentaries and wrote publicity materials. He published his first book, “Freelance Writing for Hollywood,” for Michael Wiese in 2000, and has a book about Tim Burton due in 2009.
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