You don’t need to be able to understand frenetic financial jargon in order to enjoy Industry, the excellent HBO series that follows ambitious young traders and salespeople as they work their way up (as well as hook up and do drugs) at Pierpoint & Co, a fictitious London investment bank.
Currently in its second season, Industry primarily follows Harper Stern, a ruthless young American transplant with a crater-sized chip on her shoulder who’s assigned to the Cross Product Sales desk, and Yasmin Kara-Hanani, a glamorous publishing heiress determined to prove her worth in the professional world on her own terms.
Harper (Myha’la Herrold) and Yasmin (Marisa Abela) are the poles around which the show revolves, and their outfits, as well as the costuming that sheathes the rest of the show’s cast of fascinating characters, clearly communicate the true meaning of otherwise confusing scenes packed with baffling dialogue such as “Half a yard, done, four cents” and “You’re dead on RIF.”
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Yasmin, a true princess of the 1 percent, is unapologetically glamorous: wrapped in body-hugging Hermès or YSL, she glides around the trading floor like a Gen Z interpretation of Joan Holloway in Mad Men. She’s incredibly sharp and an excellent networker, but she’s also confident enough to play up her obvious beauty.
Harper, by contrast, is a shark-like manipulator and brilliant schemer who couldn’t care less about clothes. Her noncommittal jackets and slacks are unobtrusive and allow her to fly under the radar, where, largely unnoticed, she manages to pull off some incredibly shady maneuvers.
Colleen Morris-Glennon, “a tailor by trade,” she told The Daily Beast, stepped in as Industry’s costume designer for the second season after meticulously evaluating the first. “I just want the clothes to look as good as the script is,” Morris-Glennon said.
At the beginning of Season 2, we find the characters beginning to return to the office after extended COVID-19 isolation, and this long period of aesthetic hibernation played into how Morris-Glennon developed each character’s wardrobe.
“With Harper, we know why she didn’t want to go back [to the office] because of what she did at the end of Season 1,” Morris-Glennon said. (No spoilers, but just think epic betrayal.) “She would’ve definitely gotten new clothing going in, kind of like an armor. But she will never look amazingly put together because that’s not Harper, and I wanted to make sure that it was never too fashionable because that’s not Harper.”
“With Yasmin though, it was the total opposite,” Morris-Glennon told The Daily Beast. “Yasmin has grown up with, you know, her mom’s an artist and she’s grown up around art and she’s very cultured. So with her, I definitely wanted her look to be much more polished.”
In Season 1, despite being routinely bullied by undermining male colleagues, Yasmin was unafraid to dress provocatively. As she matures, she trades up tight pencil skirts for more professional-yet-glamorous brown suits and black wrap dresses. “She had no intention of taking the crap anymore,” Morris-Glennon told The Daily Beast. “She’s not trying to be necessarily so sexual as she was in the first season. She wanted to be a little bit more powerful.”
One fan favorite character is the inimitable Eric (Ken Leung, absolutely crushing it) who vacillates between being Harper’s mentor or sworn adversary, depending on the day. Eric is overall a “classic” dresser, Morris-Glennon says, but in season one, the show charted a viral moment when Eric appeared wearing a purple Pierpoint & Co hoodie that instantly stood out to the tastefully inclined.
It’s hard to pinpoint why exactly the hoodie resonated so deeply—maybe it’s as simple as a the appeal of clean design and a collective lust for corporate swag—but the garment had to make a reappearance in season 2: Eric is seen rocking the hoodie underneath an apron while barbecuing.
Rishi (Sagar Radia), Harper’s workplace frenemy, is the definition of new money: flashy labels, ostentatious watch, bright red sports car.
Watching the show, you’re struck by the intimate variations something so seemingly drab—dressing for a corporate environment—can actually contain. While everyone is technically wearing the same uniform (jackets, slacks, button-down shirts), color choice, accessories, hairstyles and branding subconsciously communicate a range of different character traits.
One rare “fashion moment” for Harper in season two is her appearance in a beautiful camel overcoat; both the garment’s light color and its level of sophistication is a departure for her. “I wanted her to have a piece of clothing that harkened back to the first season of what Yasmin looked like and what [Harper] learned from Yasmin, even though she wasn’t thinking about it,” Morris-Glennon said.
As for avid fans of Industry who want to incorporate its stick style lessons into their own fall wardrobes, Morris-Glennon has a word of advice: “For me, a coat is everything. It starts off your wardrobe. If it’s not so cold a day, you can have it with a T-shirt and jeans or a pencil skirt if you’re going to work. And then when it gets cold, you have your blazer, you have your layers.”
You heard her, traders: it’s time to invest (in the perfect cool weather overcoat).
