100 Most Influential People in Fashion

Fashion Influential #52: Janie Bryant

Costume Designer Katherine Jane Bryant attends the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Costume Design and Supervision Peer Group who honored the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards Nominees for Outstanding Costumes at the FIDM Museum's "The Art Of Outstanding Television Costume Design" exhibiton on July 26, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)more pics » JANIE BRYANT Designed for:
The television shows Big Apple, Deadwood, and Mad Men.
Fans:
Michael Kors, Miucci Prada
Fan of:
Norma Shearer, Valentino
Beginnings.
Janie Bryant (born Katherine Jane Bryant) studied drawing and painting at Georgia State University, but she soon moved on to pursue fashion design at the American College of the Applied Arts. She moved to Paris and then to New York, where she learned the craft from designer John Scher. After meeting a costume designer at a party, Bryant found her calling and began to work on movies and commercials in Manhattan.

Career Highs.
Bryant caught her big break when she started designing for the David Milch television series Big Apple, and then his HBO series Deadwood a couple of years later. She won an Emmy Award for her work on Deadwood, and now she designs for the acclaimed AMC series Mad Men.

[I dig fashion because] it's a way in which each one of us can express ourselves. Fashion is outrageous, creative, beautiful, opulent, minimal, whimsical, understated. Fashion is always evolving. It's everything.
- Janie Bryant

January Jones and Elisabeth Moss in a scene from Mad Men.
Career Lows.
Did anyone see Big Apple? Bryant may have done a fantastic job, but it takes a well-received show for people to start noticing wardrobes.

Legacy.
Mad Men-inspired collections are popping up all over runways in 2008. Michael Kors has said that he designed with the series in mind, and Prada's 2008 resort line had remnants of the show's style as well. Even Vera Wang's Spring 2006 line was influenced by Deadwood. Bryant is playing a huge role in bringing vintage (and vintage-inspired) pieces to contemporary clothing, and I'm not just talking about thrift stores. The main event of her choices is always shape and, of course, character.

A model on the Fall 2008 Michael Kors runway.

Get the Look.
Dress up! Bryant has said, "I change my outfit several times throughout the day. I’ll have on big baubles that are chartreuse. I’ll put on a big brooch. I change it up throughout the day. People say I’m the most dressed-up person on set." Pick pieces from different time periods, and experiment with "characters" of your own. Always look a little bit fancier than you need to. - Olivia