The best show on TV right now, Industry Season 3 cold plunges viewers into a stressful (very stressful) world of reprehensible finance bros, midweek hedonism, sex, graphs, screens, money, screaming, cocaine and cortisol. For all of its frenetic pacing, part of what makes the series great is its attention to detail. Co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay cut their teeth on the floors of a faceless international finance institution, so they know what they’re talking about. Now into a much-lauded third season, if you can tear yourself away from watching loads of horrible people oscillate between trying their best to destroy each other and themselves, you’ll also notice that, much like the real world of finance, Industry Season 3’s watches tell their own kind of story.
“Some watches were scripted,” says Laura Smith, the costume designer who works alongside Down and Kay – watch fans in their own right – to create the outfits and accessories that appear on-screen. “At the start of the project, I did quite a bit of research, I walked around the city of London, through Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf and Mayfair and visited the coffee shops in the day and later in the evening and looked at what people wore. It’s something that I am always interested in on projects, accessories tell a huge story. On period projects there is a point when people transition from pockets to wrist watches. I wanted to find out how this change reads in watches now.”
“Mickey and Konrad have observed a good deal of this too,” adds Smith, “as they have direct experience so we discussed trends that they saw and patterns in how people chose pieces, what items were trends and which pieces persisted as items of desire. It’s something that is a huge tell on a character’s approach to their spending and how they present to their peers.”
Look closely and you’ll see that big fish, like the smug and unstable green energy startup boss Henry, played by Kit Harington, pairs his garish company merch with smartwatches and family heirlooms. Real wealth whispers, it doesn’t shout and all that. “Henry’s watch story was that he cycled through timepieces going from an Apple in the two episodes to an analogue whose story was that it was his father’s across the final four episodes,” says Smith. “He lands at analogue as this felt natural in line with his story.”
One of the challenges that comes with wanting to depict an accurate and appropriately ‘murky’ world, is that legacy Swiss watch brands aren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of being shown on the wrists of characters drinking, gambling, snorting unspecified white powders, or generally acting like a wrongun. Kay has spoken about having to cut a scene where two Patek Philippes were wrapped around a prosthetic penis, while the brilliantly self-sabotaging Rishi owns a Rolex that happens to disappear from view whenever he’s really up to no good.
“Rishi wears a Rolex Sea-Dweller 2001 that was meant to be purchased with his first compensation package and a TAG Heuer Connected in the show,” says Smith. “This felt right as he moves around in his story and moves through multiple worlds code switching as he goes. The date on his watch was important as it’s invested with the idea that it was bought to commemorate a moment in Rishi’s life at Pierpoint.”
Now one of HBO’s prestige Sunday night shows, with a vocal and growing online fandom, the production team is able to be increasingly ambitious with the watches featured. Brands are interested. Despite its old-world connotations, Cartier has been especially forward-thinking when it comes to primetime product placement, having their watches featured prominently in Succession, and now Industry. “Yasmin’s Tank Louis Cartier Large and Harper’s Cartier Tank Must, and Otto’s Cartier Santos Dumont XL spoke to another story between them,” says Smith. “We were really lucky and had amazing help from the brands we approached. These are amazing pieces of engineering, so it was great to be trusted with so many great pieces.”
“Eric and Adler’s Omega watches were also key pieces,” adds Smith. The explosive and endlessly-compelling Eric Tao wears a Speedmaster Professional, while Adler can be seen flashing a Seamaster from under his cuffs. Old Money aristos like Lord Norton appear wearing more deep cut pieces, like the Carl. F. Bucherer Manero Powerreserve, while new hire Ali El Mansour had multiple watches. “I wanted him to have a different watch every time we saw him, says Smith. “He wore a Montblanc, a Rado, and a Carl. F. Bucherer.”
“I read quite a bit before the show,” says Smith, “and I had read some of the novels that are set in this world, but a lot of these are about Wall Street and U.S banking workplaces, so the brands and the culture is subtly different and a different subtext applies.
"But there are elements that totally overlap and that is the value placed on timepieces.”
