What is ‘stealth wealth’ fashion made popular by Succession – and how do you wear it? Channel HBO’s billionaire dynasty with ‘plain luxury’ from Hermès, Tom Ford and Bottega Veneta

Apr 6 , 2023

Logan Roy (Brian Cox), Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) and Luka Mattson (Alexander Skarsgard) in a scene at Italy’s Lake Como from season three of hit series Succession. Photo: HBO Go

The rich and powerful Roy family sure know how to rock the stealth wealth look – the pared-back, logo-free, covertly elegant style donned by tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg in real life

Get the look yourself by shopping at Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s The Row, paying attention to little details, and investing in quality timepieces by Cartier or IWC

If you ever needed proof of the allure of stealth wealth dressing – the high art of quiet luxury – then you only needed to witness the snaking queues lining New York’s pavements when acolytes waited for up to five hours to get into The Row’s sample sale late last year.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s label is one of the ultimate brands for clothes that whisper impeccable taste, being practically monastic in the purity of its cuts and fabrics.

Creamy cashmere and precision tailoring, garments that swaddle and give the sense of a friction-free and air-conditioned life, have become the unlikely uniform of insider-y fashion folk and tech billionaires alike (think Mark Zuckerberg and his wardrobe of grey Brunello Cucinelli T-shirts).

Succession’s Logan Roy is often dressed disarmingly so the people around him underestimate the grandfatherly figure. Photo: HBO Go

In hit shows such as Succession, the billionaire media conglomerate-owning Roy family exemplify the subtle power of stealth wealth dressing.

As costume designer Michelle Matland explained ahead of the most recent third season, the clothes she dresses the family in – eldest son Kendall Roy’s nondescript cashmere Loro Piana baseball cap and Brunello Cucinelli tops, steely daughter Shiv Roy’s cashmere knits and wide-leg trousers – say much about who they are. Which is, people who have nothing to prove with what they wear.

“In the case of the Roys it is blood lineage directly to the money, right? They were born affluent. They’ve only ever known that. And so for them, the posture of wealth doesn’t really mean all that much,” she told Vogue Australia. “They are not attempting to have affectation in what they wear, as we see in Logan and [his children]. Although they obviously have extremely expensive tastes.

A look from Brunello Cucinelli’s spring/summer 2023 collection. Photo: Brunello Cucinelli

“It isn’t for anyone else, or anyone else’s knowledge, that they do it. They know nothing else. But they are not posturing their money … they’ve got nothing to prove.”

This is why Logan Roy, the family patriarch, is often seen in grey shawl cardigans – when not in bespoke suits by the famed Savile Row tailor Leonard Logsdail – and on the flipside, why Shiv Roy’s striving husband Tom Wambsgans sports clothes that are a touch too flashy. Or indeed puffy.

In one episode, Tom memorably wears an expensive Moncler puffer vest and the youngest and naughtiest Roy child, Roman, asks him if he has stuffed it with his “hopes and dreams”.