Succession’s Kendall Roy loves to psych himself up with some new clothes. Whenever the prodigal failson has a big thing coming up—a presentation, a performance, or some other new venture—he foremost wants to look the part. Ken bought Lanvin sneakers to impress a pair of arty start-up founders during his brief stint as a disruptive angel investor. He got a custom “L to the OG” baseball jersey made and wore it hidden under his suit until it was time for him to rap at his dad’s 50th-year-in-the-biz party in Dundee, Scotland. He wore two different Alessandro Michele-designed Gucci bomber jackets for his 40th birthday bash: first a red acetate bomber embroidered with green panthers, while he’s rehearsing his ill-fated Billy Joel cover, and then a dark green quilted jacket featuring a bedazzled UFO to the actual party. (Kendall also got worked up about someone else’s jacket during that episode, because his older brother Connor wouldn’t take his off at the party and it was ruining the vibes.)
This is very much something that actor Jeremy Strong, ever the steerer of Kendall’s ship, is keenly aware of, having collaborated closely with costume designer Michelle Matland to hone Kendall’s wardrobe throughout the show. “Those are all things that I do on my own because those details just feel really important to me, and so I take initiative in that area,” the actor said in his March GQ cover story. Strong has also admitted to wearing Kendall’s costumes in his actual life, while he’s filming or promoting the show.
Now, in the final season, Kendall and his other brother Roman have become the acting “CE-Bros” of the family media conglomerate Waystar Royco, and they still have much to prove. In a mad-dash move to block Alexander Skarsgård’s “very European” tech mogul Lukas Matsson from acquiring the company, they decide to nuke one of their late father’s final lukewarm ideas into a piping-hot, stock-boosting opportunity. When it comes time for the brothers to pitch the “cruise ship on land” meets “social media in real life” experience that is Living+ at a tech conference in LA, Kendall gets them some custom merch for the occasion: a pair of “co-CEO” Alpha Industries flight jackets complete with Waystar Studios, ATN News, and Brightstar Cruises patches. Picture it: Ken and Rome, suited up like Maverick and Goose, ready to take this damn ship to the moon.
Naturally, this was Jeremy Strong’s idea. “The first thing I did when I read the script was text the costume designer and the director from Norway and say, ‘I need a flight suit to wear for the product launch,’” Strong told Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz in a post-episode interview. Strong apparently read about how Elon Musk recruited action-movie costume designer Jose Fernandez to design SpaceX’s spacesuits, and wanted to channel his “Chief Twit” ego. (Funny enough, NASA and Axoim later recruited costume designer Esther Marquis, of the Apple TV+ science-fiction series For All Mankind, to do the same thing.)
“It’s like Tom Cruise on an aircraft carrier in Top Gun,” Strong said. “I made a Maverick jacket! That’s what Kendall wanted that moment to be.”
