‘Mountainhead’ Is ‘Succession’ but With Stealthier Costumes

LONDON — Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” is well versed in the lives of the extremely rich. And it shows in his new HBO film “Mountainhead,” another anthropology of wealth centered around four male friends stranded in a snowstorm against the backdrop of an ongoing financial crisis.

In typical Armstrong fashion, the characters are dressed in mostly beige or monochrome colors without a logo in sight — a signifier that for the rich, quiet luxury never dies.

“Their wealth is from their intellectual property and business acumen. It’s not inherited necessarily. All of these people have had privilege of some sort, but they might have just been people who were really clever and came and figured something out,” said costume designer Susan Lyall, who stayed far away from the usual suspects of quiet luxury such as Loro Piana and Brunello Cucuinelli for these characters.

She helped the cast find their footing in the right footwear, from Steve Carell as Randall in his Zegna zipper boots and Hoka trainers; Cory Michael Smith as Venis in his Salmon x Kith sneakers; Ramy Youssef as Jeff in Arc’teryx lace-up boots and Aether trainers, and Jason Schwartzman as Hugo Van Yalk in On trainers, ankle-length Uggs and Birkenstocks.

Each character is loosely based on the life of a billionaire savant, the same way that Armstrong’s “Succession” was a fictionalized account of Rupert Murdoch’s life.

Armstrong gave Lyall an extensive file that included books, interviews, podcasts, images and other documents for her to study people such as Peter Thiel, the former chief executive officer of PayPal; David O. Sacks, an investor in internet technology firms; Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, now X, and Jason Calacanis, an entrepreneur, angel investor and one of the hosts of the business and technology podcast “All-In” that Sacks is also on. She dove deep into the podcast and even took some notes.

“The clothing never really gets mentioned, but it’s the implication of their character,” she explained. “It was a very good source of research for me. One of the hosts, Chamath Palihapitiya, went to the inauguration of President Donald Trump and he showed pictures of all the things he wore. I couldn’t believe it. He had a Loro Piana jacket here and a Brunello Cucinelli there — he obviously really knew his stuff,” Lyall added.

But with the characters of “Mountainhead,” it’s less about being fashion-forward. 

Armstrong instructed the costume designer that he wanted Carell’s character to “push the boundaries slightly beyond the comfort level to raise a little bit of an eyebrow.” Case in point, he wears a red block sweater from the Japanese brand Cognomen in the film — a color that’s not in the Armstrong palette of neutrals.

The sweater quickly became an important part of “Mountainhead,” partly because it was an easy way for Armstrong to identify Carell and also because it adds to the character’s fixation on Roman history. The word cognomen is a third name, or nickname, given to an ancient Roman citizen, usually passed down from father to son.

Lyall initially tried to put Carell in a coat with the sweater, but the idea was rejected by Armstrong.

“These people are so rich they go from their office to a car to a plane to another car. It’s that level of wealth and wealthy people often don’t have coats on,” she explained.

The process of preparing the costumes for “Mountainhead” was different from what Lyall or any costume designer is used to — there was no sourcing or thrifting involved. Everything was box fresh and clean without being flashy. So instead, she shopped at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, Todd Snyder, Nordstrom and Re:Al, a store in TriBeCa.

For Youssef’s character, she reached out to the London-based jewelry brand Jagga to make custom bracelets for him based on images of Dorsey.

In working on a male-dominated film, Lyall embraced the challenge.

“I like to dress men more because I find the conventions are just more limited. And in a weird way, I like the parameters of the universe of men’s clothing — it’s limiting, but then you sort of hone in a little closer to what you want,” she said, adding that it was why she also enjoyed costuming the historical legal drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

Through the years, a lot of her work has centered around real people. In “Molly’s Game,” starring Jessica Chastain as Molly Bloom, who was dubbed the “Poker Princess” in the early 2000s, she had more than 92 costume changes for the actress.

“In my interview with Jesse [Armstrong], we spoke about ‘Molly’s Game’ because the characters in ‘Mountainhead’ are a pastiche of tech bros and venture capitalists. Some of the players in ‘Molly’s Game’ were inspired by someone in real life, but we didn’t recreate them verbatim,” she said.

The characters that Lyall works on have a humanity to them — they’re not ideas plucked from Hollywood film scripts.

One reason she became a costume designer was because of the “Cinderella” film from 1965.

“When the mice and the birds are helping make her dress, they’re singing the song that says: ‘There’s nothing to it, really’ and you just put a ribbon on it. I’m pretty sure that was one really lasting image for me,” she said.

Another film she loves is “Smithereens” from the early ‘80s for its “natural look.”

“We overdo a lot of things now, but the British film industry doesn’t overdo it,” said Lyall, pointing to her work on “Luther: The Fallen Sun,” which was shot in London in 2022. “I found with the hair, makeup and costumes — everything had a more natural look to it — the shirts are wrinkled, not everyone has their lipstick on and their hair is messy like it should be. That is something I really appreciate about the British film industry.”

In the stealth wealth world of “Mountainhead,” Lyall manages to make the characters aspirational without losing their nerdy edge, proving that not all tech moguls wear a menagerie of sheep, goats, bovines and vicuñas.