After all the £2,400 baseball caps and £5,250 leather jackets, who was expecting the fashion item to cause the biggest furore in the Succession finale to be an £11 T-shirt from the mass US retail chain Walmart? And yet, here we are.
The baby blue T-shirt with three stripes on its sleeves is worn by Roman Roy, played by Kieran Culkin, when he hides out at his mother’s beach house in Barbados. Social media was quick to identify it was actually a child’s T-shirt.
Throughout the four seasons, the show’s costume designer, Michelle Matland, has carefully curated each character’s look using what they wear to signify much more than just their wealth. Just as Peter’s precious cheese, which Roman licked all over, was identified as being Isle of Mull cheddar, the details have proven to be as enticing as the plotline.
That Roman reverts to an infantile state, tantrum et al, and does so while wearing a child’s T-shirt, is unlikely to have been accidental.
“It’s possible it was deliberately chosen to signify his defeated spirit and to foreshadow his career defeat,” says Amy Odell, author of the newsletter Back Row. “It’s also possible the costume team imagined him washing up at his mom’s house and just throwing on something he had lying around in a drawer there from a long time ago.”
Much has been written about the characters’ unbranded designer clothing – the show turned the neologism “stealth wealth” mainstream.
Matland uses high street brands in the same way she does luxury, as a discreet visual tool, symbolising a character’s place in the Roys’ moneyed world. As a corporate outsider, Gerry wears suits from Hobbs, while Willa wears dresses from Sandro, bought before she had access to Connor’s bank card. When Shiv is in her ostensibly liberal era, she wears jumpers from H&M and dresses from Ted Baker, not power blazers from Ralph Lauren.
In all likelihood, Roman probably last wore the T-shirt as a teenager which is why his frugal mother – her fridge features “sprouting potatoes and war time pickles” – has hung on to it.
Either way, in real life the T-shirt sold out within hours. Meanwhile, the £440 white cotton Loro Piana shirt that Kendall wears as Roman pours a kitchen cupboard concoction over his head remains widely available.
