the moral grayscale of harper stern's wardrobe
5 questions with 'industry' costume designer laura smith
This newsletter contains spoilers for Season 4 of Industry. All photo credit goes to HBO/BBC/Simon Ridgway/Bad Wolf Productions.
What is the first thing you would do after pulling off a $110M gamble?
The only time I smiled during last night’s Industry finale was seeing Sweetpea Golightly’s answer: ordering McDonald’s fries with caviar on them, and graduating from secondhand Prada to “actual fucking Prada.”
It was a brief flash of joy and levity in the season’s darkest episode yet. Everyone else took the plunge into the depths of desperation (Whitney applying wig glue in a seedy Best Western) and depravity (Yasmin completing her chilling transformation into Ghislaine Maxwell). These characters are so far gone in their soul rot that they’re numb to their private jets and luxury shopping sprees and hotel suites.
In contrast, something about Sweetpea being excited to celebrate with caviar-loaded fries felt so…normal. It almost felt like innocence—or whatever semblance of it could exist in the hellscape of this fictional world.
The destruction of Tender should feel like a massive achievement for Harper Stern, my favorite TV anti-hero. She has spent the season trying to land a financial short that would further cement her position as a top dog in this 1% elite society. But as Sweetpea and Kwabena hug and jump and scream giddily over the $110M windfall, Harper’s body language remains hardened. Her expression reads as relief more than happiness. She retreats to another room and cannot help but give Eric a call to relay the news. He does not pick up. Her face finally breaks into tears as she sits in a puddle of abandonment and loneliness, wearing last night’s club clothes.
“I don’t even know if she has hobbies,” Brendon Holder muses, as he analyzes Harper’s “empty ambition” in his recent newsletter. She might have fancier clothes and digs compared to previous seasons, but she still lives to work. Her passion is insider trading. Can you imagine Harper ever baking banana bread? Or reading a book for FUN??
By the end of Season 4, we can see those financial crime wheels turning in her head as she plots her next target, her next gamble, her next win.
Harper’s wardrobe is a masterful window into her character arc; I wrote about her corpcore evolution in past seasons here.
I’ve always found Harper’s wardrobe and presentation to be the most compelling out of all the Industry women, because she’s such a chameleon and keen observer of social codes. While Yasmin’s wardrobe is a predictable luxury fashion Substack dream blunt rotation (Bottega, MaxMara, The Row, etc.), Harper’s is a bit more unexpected. In this season, she wears Chanel and YSL bags, but also Nili Lotan barrel leg jeans and Completedworks earrings. And my personal favorite, a vintage Jean Paul Gaultier conical bra denim jacket!
To understand Harper’s sartorial psyche, I interviewed costume designer Laura Smith.
Our conversation is centered on this bespoke three-piece Savile Row suit that Smith designed for Harper. It epitomizes who she is at the start of the season. She wears it for her entrance scene, stepping out of a black car with a Hugo Boss coat draped over her shoulders and a new micro braid hairstyle, which Lauren Gordon points out is “one of the most expensive and labour-intensive braided styles available.” She oozes money and power.
Below, we discuss:
Why gray is Harper’s signature color and what it symbolizes
Why Season 4 Harper never wears button-down shirts or blouses
How Harper’s outfit repeating was inspired by Donna Karan’s 7 Easy Pieces
How Harper’s mentor/father figure Eric influenced her wardrobe choices
Interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Viv: Tell me about your design choices for Harper’s custom three-piece suit. The criss-cross neckline in particular is quite unexpected, and the fact that it’s sleeveless (as opposed to a traditional button-down shirt).
Laura: The suit for Harper came from something Mickey and Konrad scripted about the way Harper looks as she exits her car and we follow her through the halls of Mostyn Asset Management. (Serving cunt, basically.)
It had to read as a complete turn from where we met Harper at the start of Season 3. It was why it could not be a traditional button-down shirt. Harper has done shirts and blouses and they are packed in her past—they did not serve her. It had to be a look that took up space in a particular way. It had to feel light, taut and mobile.
It felt important talking with Myha’la to give the look a femininity, because we have rarely seen Harper in such elevated heels or in a skirt. We discussed her pragmatism, and working with the modular wardrobe of Donna Karan—the 7 easy pieces. This is something Harper may have been aware of in her own mother’s world.
It felt right to have the suit explode and break up and reform after Harper’s relationship with Mostyn Asset Management breaks apart.
Viv: This is a bespoke Savile Row suit, it’s a major status flex for Harper. To ground it in material terms, how much would a suit like this cost?
Laura: Anything from £8,000 ($10,700) to about £22,000 ($29,500). There are three tiers: ready to wear, made to measure and bespoke. This is the bespoke price bracket.
Viv: Was there a particular reason why you chose gray as her signature color? Harper wears a lot of gray suiting and silver jewelry in Season 4.
Laura: Yes—this silver grey is a tone we haven’t seen worn by any of the leads in this way. It cut through tonally in the world of Mostyn Asset Management and shine in the world of Al Mi’Raj Pierpoint. It felt like an understated but elegant tonal range for Harper. It made her visible and distinctive in moments like the Alpha Conference.
Viv: I interpreted the color as a metaphor for moral grayness and how Harper is always operating on the edge of legal vs. illegal. In their final argument, Yasmin justifies her choices to Harper with her worldview of “both, and”—to her, trafficking young girls is both “exploitation and opportunity,” Eric is both “a man and a monster.” Nothing is black and white, everything is gray.
Viv: I love that throughout the season, we see Harper wearing individual pieces of the suit, treating it like a modular part of her wardrobe. What was the intention behind these outfit repeat/remix moments?
Laura: It spoke to her pragmatism. It’s one less choice for Harper in a system of a multiplicity of choices, where each has to be right and well-timed. A suit like this also has a way of being worn and supporting the wearer. These clothes give confidence, but it also takes confidence to wear them. It’s a reinforcing feedback loop.
We took the block of the suit and translated it into the boucle tweed dress in episode 6. The intention in the story was that Harper was meant to do the CNN interview that Eric goes on to do. She is wearing a look that calls back to the skirt suit look we see at the opening.
Men’s relationship with their suiting is that they will often return to a favourite suit, often having two pairs of trousers made for one suit in a bespoke context. These are all things you gradually become aware of in this world.
Talking with Ken about Eric’s relationship to suiting, he felt it was like armour—it changes the way you stand. Transposing this into Harper’s world was also important in terms of the information a mentee takes from their mentor.
Viv: Did Myha’la end up keeping the 3-piece suit?
Laura: Yes!
xo viv
Thanks for being here. You can find me on IG and TT. My wardrobe pieces and recs are saved here—unless it’s vintage, of course ;) I may earn a small commission from purchases made through affiliate links.
I bought this 1956 Christian Dior original in a vintage shop in Greenwich Village for about $75 in 1980, had great fun in it and gave it to a thrift shop in Los Angeles in 1988. It sold (or one just like it) in 2002 at auction in London for $31,500 USD. Hey, you can’t hold on to everything!
Ooh this was excellent. Best part is I watched the finale and came straight here. The Prada line was my fav and I 100% would have missed it if not for your commentary!