Inside The Wardrobes of ‘Industry’

A conversation with Laura Smith, the cult BBC/HBO show’s costume designer.

Nov 24, 2024

It’s a pretty big statement but I’m going to make it anyway: Industry might just be one of my favourite TV shows of all time.

For those who are yet to be hooked, it starts out as a show about a bunch of grads trying to make it in a Goldman-style investment bank in London, but over the seasons expands into the intersecting worlds of tech and politics (though finance remains at its heart). The writing is incredible, and the characters are so richly drawn and recognisable – I can’t begin to tell you how many versions of Yasmin and Rishi I’ve met in particular. It offers some of the smartest, most nuanced commentary on class I’ve ever seen on TV, and it’s probably the most accurate depiction of being a 20-something striver in London, whatever ‘industry’ you’re in.

When the third season of the show dropped, I knew I had to interview the costume designer, Laura Smith, for the newsletter. (I spoke to her season two predecessor for Mr Porter about the menswear looks a couple years back.) After all, it’s a TV show set in the corporate world, which means plenty of workwear inspo to feast on. Unsurprisingly, in a show that thrives on granular detail, every outfit is intentional and serves as an extension of the narrative. “Everything goes back to the script because a lot of the clues are there,” Laura tells me over the phone. “And it’s also about having a conversation with [the actors], because they know the character better than I do, and then [writers] Mickey [Down] and Konrad [Kay] might have another take. It’s melding all those things together.”

Below, Laura gives me her detailed style breakdown of four of the show’s leading women. Then at the end, I’ve thrown in a few Industry-inspired workwear picks for you to add to your own weekday wardrobe.

Necessary disclaimers: all images are courtesy of the BBC, and there are some season two / early season three spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet.

Harper

The lowdown: Harper Stern is the show’s anti-hero and one of my favourite TV characters ever. A woman of colour from a humble background in upstate New York, she lands a job at Pierpoint’s London branch in season one via rather dubious means but is eventually fired in season two. She’s smart, scrappy, selfish and unashamedly ambitious, with a very loose interpretation of the law.

This season, we find Harper, fresh from her Pierpoint firing, working as an executive assistant at Anna Gearing’s hedge fund, Future Dawn. She’s done the big chop and, as Laura explains, she’s ditched all the corporate clothes for a more laidback look that fits into her new surroundings. “Future Dawn has a very ‘consciously casual’ dress code and it was interesting going in a new direction with Harper, thinking about how she would look outside of the world of Pierpoint and where your hand would go to if suddenly all that was taken away.”

There’s a level of freedom in her new style, and the leather jacket she wears throughout reflects that. “In London, there’s been a culture of bankers not being especially welcome in certain clubs and pubs. We wanted to create looks that would work from day to night so she would kind of disappear into the city and be able to access some of the places that maybe she couldn’t before. There’s this idea that [banking] has rejected her, but she’s also rejected it, and she’s had months to reassemble a new identity.”

In early episodes of season three, Harper’s style is deliberately softer and more youthful in comparison to her Pierpoint days. “What she was wearing had to kind of mismatch any of the things that Eric might say she was. In the office, she would dress like a fairly fresh-out-of-university grad, but she’s got a couple of years on her so the wardrobe that’s just a little bit elevated. It’s not threatening and not someone that looks like they’re this dynamic presence that actually she is. [Eric] talks about Harper being a ‘wrecking ball’, and to the casual observer, you wouldn’t necessarily think that was the case.”

While Harper may wear her outsider status like a badge of honour at times, she’s also constantly observing and at times mimicking those around her. “Harper is processing all the time. She talks about it in season one a lot, and in season two. […] I really wanted to make sure that if Yasmin had a Cartier watch, then Harper had one at some point later in the season,” says Laura. “Otto [another old-money type] also had a Cartier Santos, so it was really important that Harper would take this cue from meeting him. It’s a badge of certainty – it says, ‘I can be here.’”

Yasmin

The lowdown: Yasmin-Kara Hanani is a West London rich girl who landed her job at Pierpoint through contacts of her publishing-magnate father (think Robert Maxwell meets Philip Green, but ten times worse). She spends three seasons rather clumsily trying to use her privilege and sex appeal to get ahead, but she usually finds herself being the one taken advantage of.

After a failed attempt in season two to switch over to wealth management which saw her in trouser suits and shirts buttoned to the collar, keen to be taken seriously, Yasmin is back in the slim-fitting pencil skirts and silky blouses. “Yasmin is essentially role-playing being a banker,” says Laura. “There was a point where some banks had dress codes where it had to be heels and a skirt, and in a way, her clothing most closely follows the more classically feminised banking dress […] Dressing like that gives you a certain level of power.”

Yasmin’s privileged background inevitably seeps through into her office wardrobe, but this season, Laura wanted to reflect that she was on shakier ground. “What we were doing was [finding] pieces that she would’ve bought as practical things and they would’ve sat in her wardrobe, and then this season, she’s gone to them because they’re well put together. It looks like you’re in control where you might be a complete mess, which she is. So she had a Smedley set and a D&G skirt, and then her sunglasses were from Linda Farrow. But also she’s had a massive life change, so her colours all become much more toned down in the season. She’s in a liminal space, so it was really working with those kinds of ideas.”

Yasmin’s most telling style moments occur in between home and the office. This season, she finds herself in the midst of a media storm, dodging the paparazzi and keen not to feed in the press’s depiction of her as a spoiled heiress. “But the thing is with Yasmin is that she can’t appear anonymous in any way, and lots of the confidence that comes with money, it gives you a different stance.” Even the baseball caps that she tries to hide behind are subtle markers of privilege. “They’re all from press launches and exclusive ski resorts and clubs. [Mickey and Konrad and I] had fun creating different versions of those and thinking of what would look real in her world.”

Sweetpea

The lowdown: A new addition to the Industry line-up, Sweetpea Gollightly is a confident, clever, very online grad who joins Pierpoint in season three and is committed to serving looks on the trading floor. Alongside her office job, she’s a proud ‘corporate girlie’ social-media influencer with a secret Only Fans account.

“For Sweetpea’s boards, I had Catherine Deneuve in Belle du Jour and also Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity,” says Laura. (Both films from the 1960s follow women who are in the business of sex work.) “Her style was quite playful but then it was also a nod to her having this dual life.”

Like Yasmin, Sweetpea is “performing” the role of a woman in banking, although with style choices that are bolder and more fashion-conscious. “We worked on ways of making her send up some of the rules. For example, she wears a pink contrast-coloured shirt, and she also has a two-piece gilet skirt suit. She’s making it her own and giving it a sort of Clueless vibe, which was fun to do.”

Thanks to funds from her online “extracurriculars”, Sweetpea can afford to be dripped out in big-name designers unlike her fellow grads – she references her Bottega shoes, and Laura picked out pieces from the likes of Valentino, such as her black-and-white dress in episode six. Additionally, Laura was just as intentional in what Sweetpea didn’t wear as was what she did. “Sweetpea is a very phone-based person, so it was no watch at all for her – ever. That was a very deliberate choice.”

Petra

The lowdown: American Petra Keonig is the most underrated character of the show in my opinion. She’s a straight-shooter and sly operator who’s high up at hedge fund Future Dawn and isn’t afraid to throw her boss-slash-frenemy, Anna Gearing, under the bus. She replaces Eric as Harper’s new manager and mentor when the ex-Pierpoint employee joins her firm.

Petra’s style is best understood in juxtaposition to someone like Pierpoint CFO Wilhemina, says Laura. Though she’s a fellow American in the City of London, Wilhemina is more entrenched in the Establishment and a public-facing figure in “a man’s world”. Petra, on the other hand, “is happier being in her world of quants and theory and statistics”. Her style also differs to fund manager Anna, who is “very West London, in LL Bean and LK Bennett. Petra is a bit more De Beauvoir Town and Islington.”

Laura took cues from the script around Petra’s background and ran with them. “She mentions that she used to work at Cern,” says Laura. “She’s a quantitative analyst and so her background could be in physics and she’s probably trained at somewhere like MIT. She could as much as anything have remained as a very fashionable scientist. It was really setting her up as a sort of out-there character in the world of finance.”

The overall result is cool, quiet luxury with strong, contemporary accents. She’s mostly in Joseph, says Laura, while her handbag is from the luxe British accessories brand Métier. For her watch, she opted for the sportier Omega, and for her glasses it was Italian eyewear brand LGR. Meanwhile, most of Petra’s fabulous statement jewellery came from Laura’s personal stash and Eclectica Vintage. “They were based on Swedish and Northern European jewellery, and it was this idea that she would have pieces that were unusually constructed but everyday that she would wear as sculptural items.”