The Essentials With Christina Hendricks: Edinburgh Escapes, Rose Face Mist and Dressing the Part
From her Emmy-nominated turn as Joan Holloway in the 1960s-set Mad Men to her current role as socialite Patricia St. George in the Gilded Age period drama The Buccaneers, Christina Hendricks has found some of her most memorable onscreen characters in period dramas—dressed in the historical garments to match. But her love for vintage clothing goes back to her childhood in Twin Falls, Idaho, and has remained a favorite pastime wherever her work takes her. It was this lifelong appreciation, paired with Hendricks’ detailed approach to fashion and her penchant for theme-inspired dressing, that made her the perfect collaborator for the vintage-style brand, Joanie.
“The company reached out to me with this really beautiful, well-researched sort of deck of my own style and how they thought that we could work together,” Hendricks tells Observer of her first introduction to the U.K.-based brand. “I became really intrigued when I realized they were going to let me design and they weren’t just going to slap my name on something.” After conducting her own research into Joanie’s manufacturing practices (the company is B Corp-certified) and customer reactions, Hendricks was all in. She worked with Joanie founder, Lucy Gledhill, for nearly two years to perfect her 12-dress collection.
“We were really specific about our patterns, and we were going to different artists with inspiration images that I had found that were vintage fabrics and old pieces of clothing I had collected through the years,” Hendricks shares. “I’m sort of a weirdo, and I keep a back stock of things that maybe don’t fit anymore or that I’ve always wanted to recreate.”
Among the pieces that inspired the collection was a dress from Hendricks’ elementary school days, which she reimagined as a breezy yellow wrap dress. “I had this dress in fifth grade that was very Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby to me, and so we wanted that sort of fluttery top that reminded me of that.” Floral print also features heavily throughout the collection, inspired by Hendricks’ passion for interiors. (She currently documents her renovations for her and husband, George Bianchini’s, home in Upstate New York on Instagram.) “I’m obsessed with wallpaper, and the pink Wallflower dress has this sort of growing vine that reminded me of de Gournay hand-painted Chinoiserie wallpaper—I can’t afford to have that wallpaper, so I put it on a dress.”
Rather than referencing any of the characters she has portrayed on-screen, the actress wanted the line of size-inclusive dresses to represent her own take on fashion, which often involves creating a character. “Maybe it’s the actor in me, but I’ve always loved that fashion lets you create a character in a way; who do you want to be today? What part of yourself do you want to present to the public tonight?” Hendricks explains. “If you’re going to a beautiful, historic bar, you might dress in something that you would feel like you were a part of the scene,” she says. “Or, some people really want to stand out and be the opposite in that space, and I think that’s an interesting choice, too.”
With the collection now available to ship worldwide, Christina Hendricks shared her current essentials with Observer—from the piece she’s wearing on repeat from her collection to the Edinburgh hotel and restaurants that became fast favorites while filming The Buccaneers in Scotland.
