Joan Holloway and the Eternally Good Hair Day...

I never, ever dress up in costume for Halloween anymore. The last one I remember wearing was a full on Morticia get-up, when the Addams Family was first on TV in the 1960's (which was the last time I would have looked good dressed that way), and maybe I was the measles the year before or after that. I won't discuss a Virus 2009 costume. Too many people were actually sick with it, for one thing. And I haven't yet figured out what a clever H1N1 costume would have been without dressing as a pig in some way. In the medical costume genre, I thought my sister's idea of an uninsured patient was subtle and timely.

So, of all things, it was strange to find that it was Halloween 2009 that gave me a fresh start, albeit, one that began about four and a half decades ago.

I was invited to a party this year, a "costumes required" affair. I was already wearing the "ugh-not-a-costume" face when I deciphered the theme for the party on the orange and black card. A witch flying over the Manhattan skyline... New York. I took my first breath of life at Mt. Sinai Hospital on Fifth Avenue and no matter where I've been since then I have never completely expelled that initial gasp from my lungs.

Pondered and nixed was the Ricardo and Mertz quartet. Cute, but nixed when Ricky and Fred (or Mark and Bob) lost interest or couldn't decide who would be Ricky. Men are so vain. There was a moment of enthusiasm for a Big Edie and Little Edie duo, the Beales of Grey Gardens. My friend Tracey and I didn't argue about who would get which part. I was all set to pick up a housecoat and glasses while she would go as the more "glamorous" one. Who cares if you're old when you're that eccentric?

And then my husband mentioned Mad Men. That was it. I was going to be Joan. When I watch Mad Men, I want to be Joan. Joan is efficient and beautiful and never seems on the verge of any kind of breakdown. I aspire to all things Joan in real life. I didn't care about who was going to be anyone else.

1960's, Manhattan trance. It was mid-week before the party. Tracey (Betty Draper) and I ran around L.A. putting our "costumes" together. I only put the word in quotes because, apparently, I will be continuing to live my life as Joan from here on in. (Well, that, and because the words "Donna Karan" and "costume" should probably never find themselves used together.)

First, let me go back to the beginning of my transformation. I remember standing in front of the mirror in my grandmother's bathroom one morning more than forty years ago. Maybe I was nine. I don't know for certain; still a little girl who thought otherwise. I had carefully pinned up a good deal of hair into a French twist at the back and was working like a pro to complete the look for the top section of my coif. Armed with a rat-tail comb for teasing (height was everything), bobby pins and hair spray, I was a one-woman beauty parlor—client and operator.

Really, I could not have been more sensational. When my grandmother opened the bathroom door, she announced that she would not allow me to leave the apartment, "looking like that." I didn't understand. I was stunning and was hoping she would also not notice her gold flats on my feet. I didn't want to ruin my sister's and my chance of a TV dinner and creamed-corn soup that night so I caved. I undid the do and wore the flats around inside until we went out. I might have saved myself years, and I mean years, of bad hair days if only I had been able to sport that look and claim it as my own. But, who knew?

So, here it was. October 2009. Standing in front of the mirror, French twist at the back, teasing underway. I would finally wear the hair I started on forty some odd years ago. By the time I left for the party I wasn't sure I would answer to my own name anymore, except it was funny. I didn't feel like a character.

I had dolled up, dressed up, made up and thought I was going to end up as someone else. And yet, there was only a trace of her and more of me. I got a lot of compliments on the look, which is always nice. Compliments are fine. “You should do this all the time,” is what everyone said. To be sure, I have bought another tube of the red lipstick I was wearing, just in case it gets discontinued. I have an enormous supply of bobby pins. I nearly freaked out the other day when I went to fix my hair and couldn't find the rat-tail comb.

The only thing I have to remember, which is a bit of a downer, is that I am old enough to be Joan's mother. But I think that Joan is actually more mature than I have ever been. And she is way more organized. And… I love her hair.