Apologies to Matthew Weiner and his painstakingly created and protected plot points, but the most interesting part of this Sunday’s Mad Men premiere was the new collection of facial hair sprouting all over the offices of SC&P. Especially Roger Sterling’s. It was magical, and there is no end to the amount of information about it that I am willing to consume.
Thankfully, Vanity Fair spoke to the show’s makeup department head Lana Horochowski to get me… I mean us some answers.
For mustache inspiration, Horochowski pored over photos of everyone from Robert Redford to Burt Reynolds in the early 70s. Once she had decided on a style, Justin Stafford—a wig maker who has made pieces for everything from Breaking Bad to Django Unchained and X-Men: First Class—created a custom-made piece from real human hair. “Justin sort of designed it to look the best on [Slattery’s] face, to match his hair texture. That way it didn’t look like a mustache we got at the drug store and glued on him. . . . It was custom-made, measured to the actor’s face. Each hair is hand tied onto, like, a piece of really fine lace.”
FAKE. IT WAS FAKE. NOTHING YOU LOVE IS REAL.
A few other things:
- If you’re dropping a mixtape this summer, please consider “Mustache Inspiration” for the title.
- Turns out, they’ve been thinking about facial hair (A) a lot, and (B) for a while because Horochowski also reveals that there was a long-term strategy of “slowly transition[ing] certain members of the cast into trendy styles of the era.”
- Horochowski had three or four backup mustaches for Roger because “his is white, anything can get in a white mustache.”
- I NEED ONE OF THOSE FAKE MUSTACHES AND WILL PAY HANDSOMELY FOR IT.
This was a good start. Now tell me MORE.
