the devil wears sezane
hbo industry's gen z corpcore evolution, explained.
Good morning!
I’ve been jotting down costume design notes from Industry since Season 3 aired. Today I finally watched the finale and decided to bang out this newsletter while all the corporate espionage leather jackets and van cleef nepo baby necklaces are fresh in my head.
This Industry fashion-focused newsletter will cover:
Harper and Yasmin’s style evolutions and character analyses
Similarities to Mad Men and Normal People
ID’d pieces of clothing from the show (with links)
Also, the best Industryhive writing on Substack is from
by Brendan Holder, he recently did an interview with the show’s creators.If you appreciate this kind of TV commentary & analysis, consider supporting with a paid subscription:
Industry reminds me of my first job—which incidentally, was my most corporate job. While most days as an entry-level consulting analyst were far more boring than the Pierpoint’s trading floor, there are little things the show gets so right about these hypercapitalist work environments and the archetypes that persist within them. The male manager with a short temper, the female manager who you will think be better but turns out to be even more iron-fisted, the fellow first-year girl you overhear crying in the bathroom stall. Sometimes bottles of liquor would be rolled down the hall, dim sum cart style, and everyone would be expected to take a shot.
And then there was the conundrum of building a corporate wardrobe from scratch. I remember the excitement of having a real adult paycheck for the first time and wanting to buy the “right things.” That’s how Everlane got me and every other 22-year old working girl in 2017. I’ve moved on from that world and its dress codes. I genuinely cannot imagine wtf I’d wear if I had to work a capital C corporate job again. For me, that’s the appeal in the observing the clothes of Industry: I can admire Harper’s tailored trousers and Yasmin’s rich bitch silk blouses from the distance of someone who doesn’t *need* to dress for a conservative office environment.
Clothes convey identity—especially in the heightened class consciousness of Industry—and each character’s arc can be understood through their clothing evolution. Let’s take a closer look. I focus on Harper and Yasmin in-depth, and feature a few honorable mentions from other characters.
Harper
In Seasons 1 and 2, we see Harper navigate the cutthroat dynamics at Pierpoint, a prestigious London investment bank. She gets fired and in Season 3, joins Future Dawn, an ESG-centric hedge fund that invests in “ethical” (lol) companies. While Pierpoint is mostly run by men in suits, FutureDawn’s top dogs are white women who do corpcore with a Scandi twist…think Toteme.
So how does Harper adjust her style to fit into the values of this new office? In short, she ditches her suits for sweaters.
Harper is an expert at picking up on the unspoken dress codes around her: