Designing Don Draper’s Midcentury Apartment

Architizer News

Designing Don Draper’s Midcentury Apartment

April 6, 2012

The LA Times takes a tour through Don Draper’s new apartment today, talking to set designer Claudette Didul about the process of collecting the furniture and accessories for Don’s Season 5 apartment.

The bright, poppy interiors speak to Don’s new marriage to a much younger woman. It’s got all of the touchstones of a late Sixties interior: a sunken living room, shag carpets, “pass-through” windows in the kitchen, and a brown fridge, which Didul saw in an vintage magazine from the era.

Didul collected many of the pieces from antique markets and eBay, while others were built especially for the show. To a younger generation of viewers, who have only been witness to this kind of design 50 years after it was current, the apartment will seem shockingly new and bright. The bright cobalt and coral kitchen set reeks of optimism. The hanging arabesque pendant lamp seems less culturally suspect than sweetly oblivious. Seeing sparklingly-new versions of these Midcentury classics evoke feelings comparable to seeing color photographs of an era we previously knew only in black and white.

The full story and images are here.