“I dressed for you!” cries Elisabeth Moss, stroking her pale pink cardigan. “This is Sonia Rykiel, and these” ♏— she points to her shirt and pants — “are Rag and Bone.” She glances down at her🎃 feet and shrugs. “Uggs!”
Talk about a f♍ashion chameleon. As Peggy Olson, sole female ad writer in the buttoned-up world of “Mad Men,” Moss manages to carry off pencil skirts and bullet bras with moxie and warmth. In the 2013 miniseries “Top of the Lake,” her tense, overworked detective lived in hoodies.
But then we’d catch Moss strolling the red carpet — her blue-eyed, pale good looks set off by Balen⭕ciaga, Alexander McQueen and Chloé, often with some serious décolletage.
So it’s surprising to meet her at Bar Centrale, her streaky blond hair pulled up into a tipsy bun, where she describes what she’s been living in for the last several weeks for Broadway’s 💞Opening March 19, Wendy Wasserstein’s 1988 play concerns a woman coming to terms with love, her career and the limitations of both. Along the way, Moss’ Heidi, an art professor, ages 20 years — from the late ’60s on — and dresses accordingly, from skirts to pantsuits.
Rehearsals are a different story.
“I usually wear sweatpants or jeans with holes in them,” the 32-year-old says over a glass of dry rosé. “Ask anyone! They could probably pick out my jeans in a l🥃♏ineup!”
It’s true, confirms J𒅌ason Biggs, the “Orange Is the New Black” star who plays Heidi’s prickly love interest. But no matter what she wears, he adds, “Lizzie is as real as it gets . . . It’s not her and the rest of us. It’s all of us.”
That all-for-one mindset served her well on “Mad Men,” the mo🅰nster hit that’s won Moss and her co-star🌸s awards for best ensemble. But it’s Peggy who’s emerged as the show’s conscience, the one we root for, first as a beleaguered (but ambitious) secretary and lately as someone going toe-to-toe with her mentor.
The show’s se🔜venth — and final — season begins April 5. Mওoss is coming to terms with moving on.
“It is what it is,” she shrugs. “Part of me definitely thinks it’sꩵ time . . . I think ♔it’s great the way it ends.”
Spoilers, please! Will Dꦆon Draper, the show’s dashing but dysfunctional Don Juan, enact the credits sequence and swan dive out his office window?
“Can’t tell ya!” Mo𒉰ss giggles. “Luckily, I don’t remember. There’ve been four movies since then and now ‘Heidi.’ ”
She does recall the “big fancy wrap party” nine months ago at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel, where several of the “Mad Men” cast and crew ended up in the pool. And while she hop🌼es never to see a girdle again, let alone wear one, she says she’ll definitely miss “my boys” — Jon Hamm and John Slattery.
Part of the show’s magic, she says, is that not even the cast knew w🍰hat was coming next, keeping the actors’ reactions fresh. Which is why only Moss, the writers and the costume department knew about Peggy’s Season 1 pregnancy. As they swaddled Moss in five stages of padding, her co-stars initially didn’t know what to make of it. Slattery — whom she calls as quick-witted as Roger Sterling, the silver fox he plays — gave♛ her a look she interpreted as, “Hmm, someone’s been hitting craft service a little too much!” Finally, she set him straight.
In person, she’s slender, her face radiant. Is it true,ꦆ aಞs was reported online somewhere, that Moss is . . . a vegan?
“God no!” she c🧜ries. “I couldn’t live without cheese!” She says her beauty secrets can be acquired over the counter. To prove it, she rummages through a big black bag and whips out a jar of Koh Gen Do.
“On ‘Mad Men’ we used their foundation, and n🐬ow I won’t use anything else,” she says. “I literally buy this stuff with my hard-earned money! I’m a total beauty junkie. Cleansers, moisturizers . . . when you’re in your early 30s, there are like 9 million things you’re supposed to put on your skin.”
All told, she’d much rather discuss moisturizers than men, especially ex-“Saturday Night Live” funnyman Fred Armisen, whom she married and divorced ༒within a year. The relationship, abrupt as it was, only added to Moss’ mystique.
“The greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person,” she told Page Six Magazine three years✱ ago. These days, she’s more circumspect, having mas𒐪tered the art of saying little, but saying it so charmingly, it’s hard to fault her.
When asked if she and Armisen have spoke♚n since, she smiles poli꧟tely.
“I think I’ve had my time talking about it, and I think it’s time for us all to move on,” she says. “I’m definitely a little older and a little wiser, and you do learn from your mistakes and gr𓆏ow up a little. I’m a hopeless romantic and alw🅰ays will be. But at the same time, I’m a little bit of a wiser romantic!”
For now, she shares her🥃 Upper West Side digs with and , the kittens who co-starred in 2014’s “Listen Up Philip” with her, and who — thanks to that film — now have their own IMDB page.
She herself keeps a low social media profile. She doesn’t tweet 🍬or Facebook — the accounts credited to her are the work of her fans — and maintains a private Instagram account under a fake name. Nor is she self-promoting in other ways, preferring that her work speak for itself — and it has, eloq🌃uently. So natural does she seem in every role she plays, it’s hard to believe that she nearly became a dancer instead, leaving her native California for New York at age 12 to study ballet. By 15, she told her mom that she’d rather act. She’d been doing that, too, since her appearance — at age 6 — in the miniseries “Lucky Chances.”
“I was꧑ Sandra Bullock’s daughter before she was Sandra Bull🦋ock!” Moss cries. Indeed, Moss has many mothers — the biological, blues-harmonica-playing one who lives a block away from her; Stockard Channing, her mom on “The West Wing”; and “House of Cards” star Robin Wright (2003’s “Virgin”).
“I ran into Robin [at the] Golden Globe💎s,” says Moss, who won hers for “Top of the Lake,” ✱shot in New Zealand. (Her Kiwi accent, a native tells me, was impeccable.)
“There are so many gre📖at female actors I want to work with,” she sighs. “Julianne Moore, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep . . . Maggie Smith! Seriously, I would kill to see Maggie Smith live!”
No doubt, many feel the same about Moss.
Fashion editor: Serena French, Stylist: Anahita Moussavian, Hair: Tommy Buckett for Garnier Fructis at the Magnet Agency, Makeup: Daniel Martin at The Wall Group for Dior Beauty
Photo shoot by Richard Phibbs
Fashion credits for first double photo: (Left) Dress, $460 at ; Earrings, $750 at (Right) Nellie Partow goᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚwn, $1,590 at Saks Fifth Avenue, 611 Fifth Ave.; Pumps, $950 at Oscar de la Renta, 772 Madison Ave.; Earrings, $3,300 at H.Stern, 645 Fifth Ave.; Rings, $5,247-$5,847, both at Le Vian, 877-253-8426
Fashion credits for second double photo: (Left) Dress, $4,450 at Lanvin, 815 Madison Ave.; Stuart Weitzman sandals, $389 at ; Earrings, $750ജ at ; Rings, $1,045-$1,850, both at (Right) Top, $950 at ; Rings, $1,780-$2,740, both at
Fashion credits for third double photo: (Left) Top, $655, and skirt, $335, both at LIESANGBONG, 30 Gansevoort St.; Earrings, $3,300 at H.Stern, 645 Fifth Ave. Ring, $1,850 at ; Pumps, $950 at Oscar de la Renta, 772 Madison Ave. (Right) Oscar de la Renta gꦺown, $6,290 at Saks Fifth Avenue; Earrings, $180 at Fragments, 110 Greene St.; 14k yellow gold and diamond ring, $2,740 at ; Pumps, $950 at Oscar de la Renta, 772 Madison Ave.