Succession Season 4 Episode 2's Best Fashion Moments
Succession Season 4 Episode 2's Best Fashion Moments
If Santa Claus was a hit man, he'd wear pinstripes and a moderately festive tie.
Read Back Row’s season four premiere fashion recap here.
With Logan’s birthday party behind them, everyone returned to their fighting clothes in the second episode of Succession’s fourth season. Corporate fighting clothes, that is, so don’t get too excited, even though they all ended up at a karaoke bar. There’s not been a speck of cleavage or heavage (come on, Connor) yet this season, even on Kerry, despite flitting about in a blouse with what some might call a ludicrously capacious cut-out.
The business formal and business casual holdout, of course, continues to be Kendall, America’s ultimate poster child for stealth wealth. He spent the season premiere in a $6,490 suede jacket by Tom Ford and the second episode in a $1,390 hoodie from — that’s right — Tom Ford. If you’re still wondering what “late stage capitalism” looks like, it’s a 55 percent polyester designer hoodie labeled “hand wash.”
Here are the best fashion moments from the second episode.
Logan’s “If Santa Claus Was a Hit Man” Suit
There was something refreshing about seeing Logan in a dark office suit, no? Like when the flowers bloom in New York on a 70-degree day after a long winter. During season three, he traveled a lot and wore a lot of short sleeves, light suiting, and open collars. We’ve gotten so used to seeing him in sweater vests and around-the-house slob cardigans (his version of slob) that the spiffy pinstripe suit and moderately festive tie felt like a real glow-up. Like he was heading to a Men’s Vogue (RIP) cover shoot instead of the newsroom.
Cousin Greg’s writers really outdo themselves when Tom orders him to “explain exactly what [Logan]’s doing with his body and his face” on the newsroom floor. Greg says, “I don’t know, he’s just moseying — terrifyingly moseying. He’s wearing sunglasses inside. He looks like as if Santa Claus was a hit man… It’s like Jaws, if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.”
On the floor, Logan has nothing to offer but the screen-shaming of an employee he sees send a single email and some notes on chyrons and fonts. Is this a media industry thing, where executives swoop into newsrooms randomly and have nothing to offer but small notes on type and graphics? And they think they’re so brilliant, when the reality is that they earn way too much money and thus wear clothes that are expensive enough to taste-shame everyone around them into thinking these executives are right about aesthetics, when in fact, they are so far removed from content production they couldn’t tell a podcast from a cassette tape?
This costume team is brilliant!
The Juxtaposition of Logan’s Pinstripes with Tom’s
Logan’s visit to the newsroom floor culminates in him standing on boxes and yelling at his staff. He asks Tom to tee him up, so we get the juxtaposition of Tom’s fear with Logan’s fearlessness, but also Tom’s suiting with Logan’s. Succession costume designer Michelle Matland told Town & Country in 2019, “People like Tom equate fashion with finance, and those two things have nothing in common. It's also something as subtle as the width of a pinstripe on a suit. Tom's is a little bit more pronounced whereas you would never see that on Kendall. If you saw a pinstripe it would be micro — on Tom, it's just a stage too intense. It's his version of Masters of the Universe, but from yesterday. He doesn't know the difference.” In this scene, his tie and pinstripes are slightly yet noticeably bolder, the perfect illustration of him being, as Shiv says, Logan’s “little bitch boy.” Logan doesn’t need a bold pinstripe. He’s so naturally grisly he’s basically corporate media’s cocaine bear.
Kerry. Absolutely Everything About Kerry.
This episode, it’s abundantly clear why Kerry was so ready to cut the throat of last episode’s Burberry bag girl with the lapel of her ice blue Sergio Hudson suit. She wants Logan to put her on TV! And therefore will stop at nothing to protect him. Where the Roys see the Kardashians and think “peasants,” Kerry probably has them on the mood board for her life. Like Tom, her clothes are trendier and therefore more desperate than the Roy family’s, as exemplified in her white blouse with the ludicrously capacious cutout and her hot pink TV dress with an unnecessary dangly membrane. As an anchor, Kerry is that flailing little membrane, which is to say: completely disposable. She seems to compensate for her desperation and insecurity with a natural ability to truly terrify poseurs like Cousin Greg.
Cousin Greg’s Too-Playful Tie
Poor Cousin Greg doesn’t have a severe bone in his body yet attempts to project the severity that runs cold in the Roys’ blood with, well, slicked-back hair. His suits fit better in season four than they ever have in previous seasons, but that colorful dotted tie makes it clear that he still lags light years behind Logan — and probably even Tom! — in both money and corporate effectiveness. Would you take font tips from someone with that tie? No, because that is the tie of someone who used to dress up in character suits in amusement parks. Would someone wearing that tie even have the guts to critique, well, anything? When Greg tries to tell Kerry she can’t be an anchor by lying about focus groups — the closest he’s ever come to firing somebody — he absolutely withers when she says, “If this focus group isn’t real, I’m going to take you apart like a human string cheese.” His tie gave her that power.
Shiv’s Upgraded Gray Suit
After the sad brown suit from the season premiere, Shiv is ready to slay both divorcing Tom and running “Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker.” She has traded the muddy colors and drawstring waistband for a tailored gray Altuzarra suit with a confident belt and weighty chain link bracelet, like she’s a post-pandemic boss ordering workers back to the office. Undercutting her slick suit — and perhaps signifying her emotional vulnerability because hey, we’re here to overanalyze these things — was her sad cream cowl neck by Laffayette 148, on sale at Saks for a poor person’s $320.
Kendall’s Color-Changing Hoodie
Kendall’s hoodie had me riveted the entire episode, the way it changed color depending on the light, like an oil slick. At the beginning of the episode it looked gray, on the tarmac it looked gold, and in the dive bar it looked olive green. We could view this as a metaphor for Kendall’s shifting attitudes toward the sale and his dad, or just brutally overpriced athleisure indicative of his desire to be laid back when he’s about as laid back as the mere idea of a $1,400 hand-wash-only hoodie.
Connor’s Perfect Blue Three-Piece
Connor’s brilliant blue three-piece suit was as flawless as that s’mores-but-for-rich-people fancy pastry/cake thing on the table at the end of his rehearsal dinner. Whereas Logan has declared his desire not to be seen as “some piece of fucking set dressing,” Connor has no business ambitions greater than earning obscene amounts of passive income and has fully embraced that very role! When Logan tells the siblings in the karaoke bar, “You are not serious people,” his point is as evident in Kendall’s athluxury hoodie as it is in Connor’s too-beautiful suit.
Willa’s White Side-Tie Bridal Blazer
Of course if you’re marrying into the Roy family, your bridal trousseau must include a white business suit (hers is by Marella and appears to be sold out). The great revelation this episode is that she had a freak-out at the rehearsal dinner and might not be marrying Connor? Prompting Roman to tell him, “Just toss her another ten grand or a snow mobile and some teeth whitening vouchers.” We really need this wedding to go through — or almost go through — because we all need to see her wedding dress like we needed to see Kate Middleton’s in 2011. While we’ve seen Willa’s taste evolve over the course of the series from a tacky new money vibe to a more subdued cream blazer vibe, I don’t know that she’ll be able to restrain her vibe at the wedding. Like, I’m picturing Giambattista Valli couture. Kerry is obviously going to wear whatever the Ralph Lauren Collection-priced version of a floral Reformation dress is, and we all need to see that, too.
Alexander Skarsgård’s White Tank Top
This episode, we got to see the Roys mix with the common man, first at the “real bar with chicks and guys who work with their hands and grease and sweat from their hands and have blood in their hair” and then at the karaoke abomination. Dressed like the true common man is not Kendall in his ridiculous stealth wealth hoodie and $625 Loro Piana baseball hat, but Alexander Skarsgård in his tank top, which says neither stealth nor wealth. Provided that tank isn’t a New New Bottega creation that looks like cotton but is secretly leather, maybe the Roys and the rest of us had the wrong idea of stealth wealth all along. Maybe stealth wealth is really about having so much money that you don’t need any fashion at all. Just a phone, an arm chair, and a naughty snack.
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