Tomorrow, season three of Mad Men, the much-fêted television series about male advertising executives in the 1960s who drink, smoke and sleep around – and the women who do and don’t love them – will be launched on AMC cable television. The fashion press is salivating.

What clothes! Fabulous floral frocks; Crayola-coloured sheaths; Peter-Pan-collared blouses. What curves! (“What curves?” said Christina Hendricks, aka Joan the Marilyn Monroe body double, disingenuously to New York magazine when asked recently about the brouhaha over her figure.) What aesthetic influence!

No wonder Vanity Fair considered putting stars Jon Hamm and January Jones on the cover of its September style issue. The idea was scrapped to accommodate obituaries of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett but the alter-egos of Hamm and Jones, Don and Betty Draper, still get multiple pages, shot by Annie Leibovitz, inside.

From Michael Kors to Peter Som, designers have been exhibiting Mad Men fever for a few seasons now. Indeed, you can attribute a lot of the sexy secretary sheaths, belted suits and full skirts to the influence of the show. The Isaac Mizrahi and Dior by John Galliano dresses and Chanel coat sported by Jones in the VF shots are all autumn/winter fashion that could convincingly appear in Betty’s wardrobe. The same is true of many of the outfits worn by Carla Bruni Sarkozy, a poster girl of the trend. Just when she made a strategic decision to channel Jackie Kennedy, fashion, stimulated by TV, provided the means.

The question is (it always is, as far as I am concerned): why?

The simple answer, one of fashion’s pet pieces of self-analysis, is that most of the designers so taken with Mad Men styling are men, and male designers design with their fantasy woman (Grace Kelly doppelgänger Betty) in mind. Women, on the other hand, design for themselves. The point seems to be that for men, women’s clothes are objects in the eye of the beholder and thus fashion is the means to an end, whether a high-powered job or landing Jon Hamm. But for women, who actually wear the stuff, fashion is about freedom.

For proof of the latter, see almost anything by Chanel (indeed, see the film Coco Before Chanel, which documents Chanel’s war against the corset and fondness for her boyfriend’s pyjamas and jodhpurs). Ditto Donna Karan’s 1980s invention, the Seven Easy Pieces.

But I have a nagging suspicion that, as an explanatory response, this is too reductive to apply to the subtext-filled world of Mad Men, where the controlled clothes serve as counterpoints to the roiling chaos underneath.

After all, take the same theory and apply it to men’s wear, which has been likewise affected by the three-piece swish of the TV show, and it doesn’t hold up. If it did, then men designing for men should, like women designing for women, be focused on ease. But instead we have the influential tight-and-short silhouette of Thom Browne and the torso-reshaping jackets of Tom Ford. Not to mention the continued existence of the tie.

A men’s wear company was launched in 2007 partly to fill the gap. Initially, I admit, I was interested in Bonobos (www.bonobos.com) because of the name; a company named after a species of endangered chimpanzee that is reputed to enjoy the most promiscuous (and peaceful) community in the animal kingdom sounded likely to satisfy all the gender-related clichés. What need of any further proof of the theory of chromosome-influenced fashion than the idea of clothes that might render the wearer as irresistible as a bonobo.

Bonobos, it turned out, is more Chanel in spirit than Mad Men: it is a men’s wear line designed by men with male comfort in mind.

“We asked our friends at business school where they bought their trousers and why,” says Andy Dunn, the company’s founder. “And what we found was that if they bought them because they looked good standing up, when they sat down the trousers cut into them in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. But if they felt good sitting down for long periods of time, when you stood up, they bagged. So we decided to make trousers that would be comfortable for both.” Trousers with curved waists, contoured weaving and fabrics that refuse to sag have proved successful: they are selling lots.

All of which leads me to think that these days, as in the days of the Mad Men, the question of who wears the trousers, not to mention who makes them and why they make them, is perhaps more complicated than it seems.

Maybe season three will help uncover the answer. Or maybe I’m just looking for a justification to watch.

vanessa.friedman@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/friedman