All the credit for this goes to user eheaney over on Reddit, but it blew my mindhole open for a few seconds, so I had to share. While going through some old clothing, eheaney found an old blazer. The blazer itself was not all that interesting, except for the label. Take a look.
As you can see, the label is “Stirling Cooper.” OK, well that’s interesting. The original name of the advertising firm in Mad Men was Sterling Cooper, what a funny coincidence, right? Maybe. Except that Stirling Cooper does predate Matthew Weiner’s series. It was a London clothing shop back in the 1960s — which is when Mad Men was set — and it was known for clothing design which drew on sexual fetishism (certainly not a foreign concept on the AMC drama). OK, well that’s also interesting, but still probably a coincidence, right?
Well, actually, the designer in “Stirling Cooper” was a man named Anthony Price. Could it be a coincidence that he shares a similar last name with Lane Pryce in Mad Men, who was also British? Possibly. Anthony Price is actually pretty famous in the design world. Price was considered a frontrunner to replace Gianni Versace, after Versace died in 1998. Matthew Weiner, meanwhile, wrote the Mad Men pilot in 1999. Price also designed clothes for the likes Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Lou Reed. In other words, Anthony Price was a “draper” — the British term for a dealer in cloth — for Stirling Cooper.
And what did Mad Men‘s firm evolve into after Sterling Cooper? Well, Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce, of course.
Still think it’s a coincidence? Maybe. But if it is a coincidence, it’s a pretty damn remarkable one.
Source: Reddit