In Diane von Furstenberg's spring fashion campaign video, Karlie Kloss wears a wrap dress in a clashing combination of miniature pink and green blossoms as she poses against an equally pattern-mad backdrop of hearts and flowers and cheetah spots.
Wasn't mad at the backdrop".
It is therefore no surprise that when, in 2009, Dali's Act I backdrop for "Mad Tristan" was found in a box at the Metropolitan Opera and offered on loan to Daniele Finzi Pasca, the director of a Swiss physical-theatre troupe, the deal was accepted.
The result is an old-fashioned adventure story that zips along at a brisk pace, the "Mad Max" landscape creating the backdrop for a succession of violent confrontations in which the stakes are satisfyingly high.
The designer, Wolfgang Joop, was inspired by Portuguese gardens and created an abstract version of a collapsing greenhouse as a backdrop to his mad mix of vivid prints and candy cane stripes.
And yet, the 1960s backdrop also gave Mad Men its power, because we watch the myths of Don Draper and the myths of American unravel in tandem.
A spectacular computer-generated dust storm in the new Mad Max movie provides a novel backdrop for a car chase.
But even though my story and that Emmy-winning TV series (Go John Hamm!) both have the advertising world as their backdrop, my real inspiration wasn't Mad Men but rather Ad Women.
Whether it is proto new-wave drama Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock or Mad Max: the bush and outback provided a stunning backdrop for human drama to play out against.
Orlando's mad scene is a powerful piece of theatre, set to a backdrop of the blitz and Zoroastro's arrogant faith in his psychiatric methods.
For all the shadowy after-hours nightclubs and tight sheath dresses, the show's backdrop isn't as shiny as the Manhattan of "Mad Men," set less than a decade later.
