The Business of Prestige TV Finance Bro Merch Is Booming

Tune into any given episode of HBO’s Succession and you’re bound to see at least one character wearing a vest—usually a quilted, understated model by Loro Piana, Paul Stuart, or Ralph Lauren, with a three-to-four-figure price tag. (Or, in the case of last night’s Scandinavian corporate-retreat bonanza, you’ll see dozens of them.) Nary, however, will you see any of Waystar Royco’s C-level execs sporting apparel embroidered with the name of the Roy family’s multinational media conglomerate, much less one constructed of a filmy polymer blend that also bears the co-branded logo of a pay television network. Surely any member of the Roy family would declare such ironic corporate merch to be NRPI-coded, best suited to those they deem “no real person involved.” Hell, youngest son Roman even got on his brother-in-law Tom’s case for wearing a conspicuous Moncler vest to the Argestes conference in season two: “Nice vest, Wambsgans. It’s so puffy. What’s it stuffed with? Your hopes and dreams?”

Nevertheless, HBO is currently offering up a whole bevy of Waystar-branded “corporate SWAG” on its webstore, including a $96.95 zippered fleece vest that the ecomm copy says is “perfect for unpredictable weather and even more unpredictable corporate mergers.” There are other cheeky Wall Streeter offerings, too: $96.95 could also get you a decanter set with four dishwasher-safe rocks glasses, though there’s also a $29.95 dad hat or a $36.95 leather-wrapped flask. Yet as many fans complained on Twitter when HBO previewed the merch last week, the joke gets lost when you slap an incongruous Succession HBO logo right next to the Waystar Royco emblem; to be sure, this “SWAG” is not so much for Waystar as for HBO’s number-one boy of a show. The top Twitter replies are cutting: “We need a new team on swag. Y’all are not serious people.”

On Industry, Eric Tao (Ken Leung) wears a purple Pierpoint & Co. hoodie to the office.Courtesy of HBO

But Succession is only one of many popular shows out now about people who make (or work for people who make) millions of dollars a year. HBO also has its sleeper hit Industry, which follows the rowdy young graduates working in the high-stakes environment of fictional London investment bank Pierpoint & Co. On the series, volatile star banker Eric Tao (played by Ken Leung) sometimes swaps out his suit for a bright purple Pierpoint sweatshirt at the office. The hoodie became such a fan favorite—apparently even the late designer and merch connoisseur Virgil Abloh coveted one—that HBO eventually put a version up for sale on its site, albeit with that pesky HBO show logo.

And then there’s Showtime’s long-running hit Billions, where some employees at the fictional hedge fund Axe Capital do, indeed, wear Axe Capital merch on a regular basis. “It’s almost a tribal thing,” the show’s costume designer Eric Daman told Vulture in 2019. “The Wall Street guys all wear these vests, and have such pride in being part of the firm that they’re with.” Sure enough, Showtime sells that vest, too.

“Dollar” Bill Stearn (Kelly AuCoin) rocks his Axe Capital fleece vest on Billions.Courtesy of Jeff Neumann for Showtime

Dollar Bill’s Axe Cap vest or Eric’s Pierpoint hoodie aside, the official prestige TV merch does not feel especially authentic to the shows’ one-percenter universes. For example, the brand on both the Succession and Billions fleece vests is Port Authority, a wholesale apparel retailer that also provides merchandise blanks for, among other institutions, the New York City Police Department. Not that it would necessarily be easy to make official merch with, say, Loro Piana, or even Patagonia, who put a kibosh on companies stitching logos onto its apparel a few years back, in an effort to distance itself from the legions of vest-clad tech and finance bros schlepping through Midtown. But in the spirit of making cheeky finance bro duds, there’s gotta be another option somewhere for an upgraded dupe.