Latest news with #MadMen
Vogue
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
David Koma Resort 2026 Collection
David Koma had just returned from Stromboli, where he'd been on set shooting a Blumarine lookbook, when it was time to present his own resort collection in London. Lace, pearls, and sugar-rush pastels—signatures more closely linked to Blumarine than to the graphic, femme-fatale-coded vision of his namesake womenswear—cooed from the rails of his Shoreditch studio. The influence was fun to speculate on, but Koma was sure to dismiss any direct comparisons between his respective brands. 'I always swing between extremes,' he explained. 'Last season was tough, whereas this time, I wanted to see how soft I could take it while still making the clothes feel strong and empowering to women. I wanted to use femininity as a sort of weapon.' Koma set forth on his mission with a rewatch of the hit series Mad Men—the 1960s remain his favorite decade in fashion—and found inspiration in its glamorous female leads, who, beneath their sweet floral-print dresses, were often more hardcore, and hardened, than their male counterparts. He sought to channel that tension into clothes where flowers became a kind of battledress: chrome stems clutching bikini bottoms and tracing babydoll dress cutouts; three-dimensional silk roses puncturing nude-illusion inserts on draped and deconstructed satin gowns. Elsewhere, circles of studded denim and bonded lace were hand-appliquéd across bralettes, pant sets, and boudoir-ish minidresses to form barbed clusters. The designer's notes might well have read: 'You can look, but you can't touch.' It would, of course, be a struggle to imagine Betty Draper and her peers in looks as revealing as these, but fashion is in a different place now. For example: Koma transformed the notion of tweed two-pieces into sequin-scattered cocktail dresses, and twinsets and pearls into pearl-encrusted hotpants in buttercup yellows and powdery lilacs. This lighter-than-usual palette was informed by the American pop artist Mel Ramos, whose 2014 lithograph Maidenform Molly—in which a striped figure is depicted with an absent square at her bust—influenced this season's hazard-tape leather skirts and T-shirt dresses with stark holes in the torso that, in Koma's words, 'mimicked a television.' The designer has spent a lot of time replaying the past, but his next task will be to consider his own: he's spent 15 years in the business, and should celebrate the milestone away from a screen—that includes a viewfinder in Stromboli.
Economist
2 days ago
- Business
- Economist
Will AI eat the advertising industry?
Mark Zuckerberg recently shook the advertising world with Meta's plans to allow brands to use AI to generate targeted advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. Importantly, no ad agency would be involved in the process. So is the writing on the wall for the traditional advertising industry? Will the next viral video campaign or earworm jingle be the brainchild of a computer, rather than the fabled advertising creatives celebrated in the TV show Mad Men? And if so, what lessons are there for other creative industries? Hosts: Ethan Wu and Mike Bird. Guests: Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP and S4Capital; Brian Wieser, CEO of Madison and Wall; and The Economist's media editor Tom Wainwright.
Business Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
Where office lingo came from and why we use them
[SINGAPORE] I've never been one to use much office lingo. Maybe it's the journalism training. Back in school, my professor made us read On Writing Well, in which author William Zinsser rants about jargon before writing: 'Good usage, to me, consists of using good words if they already exist – as they almost always do – to express myself clearly and simply to someone else. You might say it's how I verbalise the interpersonal.' Or as Kevin Malone from The Office put it a little more bluntly: I've never actually watched The Office, but I feel like I've watched the entire series just from YouTube clips. Recently, a colleague who joined us from an ad agency has been catching me off guard with her fluent corporate lingo, which she uses so unironically. This week alone, I learnt: 'sense check' and 'touchpoints'. And just a few days ago, I came across a press release about the National Healthcare Group renaming itself to NHG Health. (Do yourself a favour and skim it if you get the chance – it's a jargon gold mine.) These episodes led me down a rabbit hole: Where did all such corporate lingo come from? A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 3 pm Thrive Money, career and life hacks to help young adults stay ahead of the curve. Sign Up Sign Up 🎖️ Military origins A lot of the jargon we toss around today traces back to the end of World War II. As factories swapped tanks for cars and soldiers returned to the workforce, military lingo followed. Words like 'strategy', 'tactics' and 'logistics' came straight from battlefields into boardrooms. The competitive nature of business made it a natural fit for other sports terms, too. 🧑💼 Borrowed prestige Linguists have observed that we often adopt language from whatever industry is the most glamorous at the time. These words become fashionable and influence mainstream business language. 1960s: The Mad Men era The golden age of advertising brought us phrases like 'hard sell'. Advertising gurus later came up with more: 1980s: Wall Street's heyday Bankers and stockbrokers were seen as high-status figures and became symbols of wealth and power in Western pop culture (e.g. the film Wall Street). 2000s onwards – The tech boom: Tech and IT slowly shed their nerdy image, and everyone wanted to be a start-up founder. 🤷 Why do we use jargon anyway? Jargon acts as a linguistic shortcut, allowing people in the same field to communicate quickly without spelling everything out. It also signals belonging. Knowing when to drop a 'sense check' and 'circle back' can be a sign that you're part of the in-group, and that you know how things work around here – or, crucially, pretend that you know. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can get problematic when jargon is used to exclude people who aren't familiar with the lingo. Or, worse, when it's used to mask uncomfortable truths. Take this inexhaustive list of euphemisms the consulting industry came up with to describe firing people: Cut some capacity, restructure, streamline operations, create operational efficiencies, redundancies, reducing capacity, managed attrition, optimising headcount, rightsizing and resource action. 🤬 Should we use jargon? Proponents of office lingo may argue that using it helps you seem more professional and less crude or direct. While I disagree, I believe there's a difference between being clear and being brash. For example: Instead of 'Let's take this offline' , saying 'Can we deal with this later?' might sound too abrupt. Try 'Let's discuss this after the meeting.' Or say a colleague pitched an idea and you want to ask: 'What's the value-add?' Asking 'What's the point of this?' can seem dismissive of the idea, instead of a more neutral phrase like 'How does this benefit the project?' Jargon isn't evil. Sometimes it really is the quickest way to get a point across. The problem comes when it becomes a shield: to sound clever, avoid hard conversations or to make yourself feel like you belong. The best communicators aren't the ones who memorise the most buzzwords, but the ones who can explain things so clearly that even the most clueless nepo hire can understand. So yes, it's good to learn what 'circle back' or 'low-hanging fruit' means so you don't get left behind in meetings. But you don't have to pepper your emails with them to sound smart. TL;DR
Elle
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
The 'Dept. Q' Interiors Are More Significant Than You Might Think
If you're watching Dept. Q, the latest police drama on Netflix, then you're probably trying to figure out solicitor Merritt Lingard's fate or wondering what season 2 will entail. Or, like us, you could be so fixated on the interiors that you're too distracted to concentrate on the crimes in question. At first glance the interiors are dark, cold and gritty—like the basement urinals where Detective Carl Morck (played by Matthew Goode) and his micro-team have to set up office. But look closer, and the interiors are stylized, atmospheric, and likely to inspire your home decor. Plus, they have their own main character energy and play a big part in creating the edginess of the drama. While the Netflix show is based on a series of crime books by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen set in Copenhagen, Dept. Q has moved its setting to the Scottish city Edinburgh, with the show's creator Scott Frank describing it as 'the perfect combination between the modern and the medieval.' These are our top interiors moments in Dept. Q and why they matter. In the opening episode of the series, we go into Carl's boss, Moira Jacobson's office at the Edinburgh Police HQ. While the force might be in need of some cash, we couldn't stop staring at the carpet! With a fitting tartan nod, the green-and-red square pattern has a '70s-style template that complements the vertical wood paneling and mid-century furniture. And we haven't even gotten to the bare concrete pillars and floor-to-ceiling Crittall windows. While you know the carpet gives off stale 'grandparent house' cigarette smoke, it's also giving us good Mad Men vibes. It doesn't look like much when Carl is shown down to his new office quarters for Dept. Q–it is, after all, the police HQ's old toilet/shower/changing room/gym. But it's the basement space, named 'Q,' that gives the department, and the show, its name. 'Where's this office?' asks Carl. 'Q?' he replies as Jacobson hands him the labeled keys. 'Where's that?' he asks. 'Downstairs,' she replies. 'But the offices are numbered downstairs, Moira,' retorts Carl. 'I meant downstairs downstairs,' she replies. It's amazing what some lighting can do to the space, which starts off piled full of discarded chairs and old case note boxes. Especially for the Claridge's green and bottle brown rectangular wall tiles which perfectly offset the geometric floor and ceiling pendant lights. In a later episode, when DC Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne) joins the department, it gets positively atmospheric and you could easily forget about the urinals and the discarded gym weights, that Carl can't lift, around the corner. We're particularly into Merritt's house by the sea, although if we were receiving mysterious death threats, we really wouldn't want to be living in a building with so much glass. Filmed in Dirleton in East Lothian, the actual house was an old World War II radar station which had been renovated and then sold. Dept.Q's supervising location manager Hugh Gourlay has said, 'We ended up painting it to give it a more austere flavor. It has that feeling of Merritt's coldness.' There's also a coolness to the interiors with the stainless steel kitchen, the bare concrete floors, and white-washed walls. Again, the lighting, in the form of up-lit wall fittings and large arc floor lamps, creates the eerie atmosphere that gives that bad-person-lurking-outside feel, as does the open plan design. Draw the curtains Merritt! The care home where Merritt's brother William ends up—which Carl and his anorak-wearing, far more charismatic sidekick Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov) visit in episode 2—is set outside of Edinburgh in Midlothian. It was shot at Vogrie House, Pathhead, an old mansion that was made to 'look like a clinic, institutional but richer than it is,' according to location manager Gourlay. Indeed it looks more like an ambassador's residence than a care home with mahogany furnishings, plush velvet armchairs and a sweeping grand staircase. The luxe mansion feel begs the question: What part does the suspiciously glamorous Dr. Fiona Wallace (Michelle Duncan), who is now in charge of William's care, have in all of this? And also, who is paying for him to be there?
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jon Hamm Prefers to Play the Bad Guy: ‘Superman Can Be Kind of Boring'
Jon Hamm does not have as much fun playing the good guy. In an interview with W, the 'Mad Men' alum explained that even though he has the look of a Clark Kent/Superman type he does not feel as compelled by boy scout or the hero. He prefers more of the 'sinner' role. 'I think people can relate to characters making bad decisions, because we've all made them,' Hamm said. 'My history of characters isn't exactly the saints; it's more on the sinner side of the equation. But Superman can be kind of boring. No offense to the new Superman [David Corenswet], who I hope is a delightful person.' Hamm has kept to his word when it comes to playing characters with a darker side. He has been a recurring villain in Apple TV+'s 'The Morning Show' where he plays tech billionaire Paul Marks. The most recent season ended with the exposure of his illegal business practices being threatened by Jennifer Aniston's character Alex. The actor double-dipped at Apple TV+ and starred in 2025's 'Your Friends and Neighbors' – which he also serves as executive producer on. TheWrap reviewer Diedre Johnson called the show 'delightfully watchable.' 'Although good in most of his roles, if there's one type Hamm has nailed, it's the uber successful businessman,' Johnson wrote. She added: ''Your Friends & Neighbors' is not only a dark comedy but also a cynical look at wealthy and aspiring one-percenters at mid-life. A strong cast of talented actors bring magic into the dynamic nine-episode drama.' The post Jon Hamm Prefers to Play the Bad Guy: 'Superman Can Be Kind of Boring' appeared first on TheWrap.
