The Roy family, in case you missed four seasons of one of the best dramas ever made, are a dynasty of billionaires who spend most of their time destroying each other over a media empire they probably do not deserve.
What they wear while doing it is quiet but extraordinary. You’re hard pressed to find any logos, just pure Loro Piana cashmere, bespoke tailoring, Patek Philippe watches and shoes that cost more than a car, worn by people who would never once mention any of it.
Costume designer Michelle Matland and her team built each character’s wardrobe the way the genuinely wealthy actually dress. Their one rule, don’t follow fashion, follow the person. The result was an ensemble of what up-to-date trendsetters are coining ‘quiet luxury’.
Logan Roy. Bespoke tailoring by Leonard Logsdail, cashmere by Loro Piana
Logan Roy and the Art of Dressing Like You Own the Building
Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, is the patriarch and the template. His suits are bespoke, made by Leonard Logsdail, the New York tailor who also built Leonardo DiCaprio’s wardrobe for The Wolf of Wall Street. His glasses are Persol. His casual wear runs to shawl-collar cardigans, knotted cashmere scarves and, most famously, a plain black baseball cap by Loro Piana that retails for around $490.
That cap became the single most discussed item of clothing in the show’s run after a TikTok video pointed out what it actually was. The response from viewers was split between people who found it ridiculous and people who immediately understood it. A nearly five hundred dollar baseball cap with no branding, no logo, no indication of what it is unless you already know. It was a very deliberate statement about who Logan Roy is and who he is not dressing for.
He is not dressing for anyone. That is the entire wardrobe philosophy of the Roy family, and it filters down through every character in a slightly different way.
Kendall Roy. Loro Piana overcoat.
Kendall Roy and the $13,000 Overcoat
Kendall is the character whose wardrobe changed the most over four seasons, which is not a coincidence. Jeremy Strong, who plays him, is reportedly extremely knowledgeable about luxury fashion and brought that to the role with real conviction. Loro Piana sent him a custom jacket for season four. Richard Mille sent a watch. The costume department essentially had one of their actors doing research alongside them.
In the earlier seasons Kendall is in corporate suits, buttoned up, trying to look like the heir apparent. As the show progresses and the character unravels, the wardrobe loosens and begins to incorporate Tom Ford hoodies and Loro Piana shearling jackets. A full-length Loro Piana overcoat that a fashion publication confirmed costs around $13,000. The clothes get quieter as he gets more certain of himself, which is exactly how it works in real life. The loudest dressers in any room are rarely the most powerful.
Brunello Cucinelli, another brand that barely advertises and charges extraordinary prices for knitwear that looks, to the untrained eye, like a very nice sweater, features constantly across the show. It is the real-world brand of people like Mark Zuckerberg, who spends his days in Brunello Cucinelli grey t-shirts worth several hundred dollars each.
Tom Wambsgans. Zegna, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Moncler.
Tom Wambsgans and the Patek Philippe Problem
Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen, is a striving midwesterner who married into the Roy family and spent four seasons desperately trying to belong to a world that treats him as furniture. He wears Ralph Lauren Purple Label and Zegna suits which are conservatively cut, expensive, and somehow still slightly too eager.
The most perfect detail in the entire show’s wardrobe is Tom’s Patek Philippe watch. In season two, Logan gives Tom a Patek as a gift, and Tom, overwhelmed and grateful, immediately gives it away as a bribe to keep a junior employee quiet over a cruise ship scandal. The watch moves through the show as a symbol of exactly what Tom is, someone with access to extraordinary things who does not quite know what to do with them.
Patek Philippe, for those unfamiliar, is the watch. Not a watch, the watch. Founded in Geneva in 1839, it is independent, family-owned, and produces roughly 62,000 pieces a year, a number the company has deliberately refused to increase despite demand that would comfortably absorb ten times that. The Calatrava, the Nautilus, the Aquanaut. These are watches people wait years for, and the secondary market frequently doubles or triples the retail price.
The brand’s line, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation,” is one of the most effective pieces of marketing copy ever written, and it also happens to be largely true. A Patek gifted and then handed away as a bribe captures Tom’s entire character in a single scene. The costume department knew exactly what they were doing.
Roman Roy and What Happens When You Stop Trying Entirely
Roman, the youngest son, is almost always in a button-down shirt and trousers with no tie. Kendall dresses like someone reconciling their identity, Roman dresses like someone who made peace with theirs a long time ago, even if that person is deeply unserious about almost everything.
In his more formal moments, he goes to a sharp Tom Ford suit with a pocket square, which the show reserves for the scenes where Roman is actually trying to be taken seriously. The pocket square becomes a tell here. The rest of the time he looks like a man who could afford to wear anything and chose the most low-effort interpretation of it. Which is, again, exactly how money actually dresses.
What Succession Actually Got Right
The show’s costume team researched real billionaires. Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, Jeff Bezos. The intention was not to copy what they wear but understand who their characters would be if they existed in that world.
The effect on the real luxury market was measurable. Loro Piana’s $490 baseball cap sold out after the TikTok went viral. Their $2,000 Open Walk moccasins, a flat slip-on that looks like something you might find at a country house, saw a surge in demand. Brunello Cucinelli reported strong growth in the years Succession was airing. The ironic thing though is that none of these brands ran a single piece of promotion tied to the show, because they did not need to.
That is the final lesson Succession has for anyone paying attention to fashion, the brands that do not need you are always the ones worth knowing.