The crinkly brown paper of sewing patterns. Frilly Easter dresses with white stockings to match. Hot summer nights on the porch listening to the rhythm of chirping cicadas.
For Emmy award winning costume designer and Cleveland, Tennessee-native Janie Bryant, these rich memories of her childhood in the South are as strong as the family ties that still bind her to her hometown-a place full of reminiscences that she often looks to for inspiration for the iconic 60s-inspired looks of Mad Men’s star-studded cast, as well as her own personal style.
“I remember most going to the Cleveland Country Club on Sundays. We would see all of our friends there, and every Easter, they would have the chicks and the bunnies for all of the parents to be taunted by all the kids wanting to have a baby chick or a bunny rabbit,” Janie says, laughing. “Easter was a big time for us. My mother would always dress my elder sister and I in the same exact outfit. We would always have the fanciest dresses on including little white lace gloves with little white lace tights and big, big, big ribbons in our hair. That was the best.”
Janie’s love of fashion and design found roots as a child when she and her mother or babysitter would sew together, a skill she learned early on at the age of eight. “Karen McKinley, now Karen Smith, was my childhood babysitter forever, and she loved to sew, too. We would go the pattern store-I think it was called Chandler’s-and get our McCall’s and Vogue patterns. Vogue was my favorite, of course,” she says. “I always loved that first opening of the package and pulling out the brown paper.”
Dorthia Chestnut Bryant, Janie’s mother, took great care in handcrafting her daughters’ clothing, a tradition handed down from her own mother.