if you wanna wear your status, u should probably consult a nepo baby first.
unpacking the intangible currency of wearable status via the baseball hats of Succession’s Kendall Roy & Industry’s Yasmin Kara-Hanani :)
The connection between baseball hats, status, and lore isn’t a new conversation. One may say it’s actually very been there, done that. So imagine my surprise when I ctrl-alt-deleted my original post for today because I couldn’t stop exploring this theme through the comparative lens of Succession’s Kendall Roy and Industry’s Yasmin Kara-Hanai following Industry’s season finale last night. As you may already know, these are two very different yet very glorious hbo nepo babies whose throughline, I’ve realized, is that their lore can be accurately summarized by their choice in baseball hats (plotlines aside). Hate to be this girl, but Kendall Roy became a Hat Boy in Season 3 of Succession, and Yasmin Kara-Hanani became a Hat Girl in Season 3 of Industry. I sincerely think I’m onto something, and am therefore subjecting you to a brief analysis of the significance of this finding.
Before we compare, we’re going to get a tad philosophical (I was raised by literature reviews, spare me). Consider this letter to be a subtle declaration of love to Bourdieu, who has explained that cultural capital is a form of status currency that is obtained and exchanged via products that communicate social status. The Birkin is always my example here because it’s a nearly ubiquitous yet nuanced symbol of status. I believe it’s the intangible elements - like the way repeated experiences are perceived as believable, thus authentic - that transform something elusive into something exclusive. This is what underpins the capital described in this letter, traded and commodified as an aspect of identity.
In this context, I’d say time is the most used example, and for good reason. You can’t buy more of it yet time has become heavily commodified. For those who can exist in a post-time universe without sacrificing the comforts awarded by playing by its rules (working hard, being sooo busy), you’ve taken the intangible (time), made it elusive (“having it all”), and have thus been stamped as exclusive (“so lucky”). Other intangibles on this pipeline include continuity (“we’ve been going for years”) and authenticity of experience (aka the ease around living it – “of course we do xyz” vs doing xyz because it seems like “the right thing to do” relative to your access and means). In this sense, I’d argue that these are all intangible luxuries. There is no “fake it until you make it” with time, continuity, and authenticity. It’s about the integration of access and capital into lifestyle that make all of these intangibles so compelling (and sellable – e.g., the old money-fication of 2023).
Which leads me to my favorite, tortured lil nepos. We’ll start with my princess, Ms. Yasmin Kara-Hanani. I’m not going to summarize the show or Yasmin, aside from saying if you don’t want industry, you need to. If you do, YKTFV. Yasmin is a complex, layered, international-core nepo baby moonlighting as a girl in finance, famously speaks 5 languages fluently, and is currently in the midst of a ruinous familial scandal. Kendall Roy is obviously Kendall Roy. The eldest boy who doesn’t get more than a bite of the pie. He always has something to prove, yet famously lacks “killer instinct” despite..well.. if you don’t know, watch the show.
To me, the story is not about how they adopted baseball hats as a personality trait amidst crisis, but about how their unique choice in hats serves as two very different forms of cultural currency. And while sooo different, each hat maintains the ability for both Yasmin and Kendall to singularly communicate status’ intangible signifiers that have imprinted on their unique construction of identity.
Kendall’s currency: financial capital – “F U bro. also btw i’m rich, too.”
Kendall was known for wearing a $500, logo-less, cashmere Loro Piana hat. Upon first glance, it seems so quiet and so discrete, but, really, that hat is only inaccessible to those who either don’t know what Loro Piana is, or can’t afford to own it. I think the tongue-in-cheek bit throughout Succession was the covert unpacking of a New Money, immigrant family’s relationship to status and belonging. Despite possessing ~60+ years of F U money, the Roy’s were still quietly conspicuous and largely committed to their brand of having a well-tailored rising and an unrefined sun/moon (e.g., The Roy’s vs. The Pearce’s). Kendall’s Loro Piana hat perfectly encapsulates his relationship with money: a bullhorn that solely communicated the prestige and legitimacy of his financial access/resources. Wealth was the only thing (outside of daddy’s approval) that seemed to drive him. This created the guardrails of Kendall’s life. The value of the hat is that it offered a covert token readable to everyone in his tax bracket, signaling his belonging. He used it to project control, refinement, and access to spaces where money talks (and where no one really cares about whether or not wealth whispers).
Yasmin’s currency: cultural capital – “and u matter because….??”
Bourdieu would have loooved Yasmin. Specifically, her “Cresta Run ‘09 St. Moritz” hat, which still makes my heart race. She’s what, 24? The optics are insane – whether or not the hat was always Yasmin’s or she found it lying around her house, one decadent piece of dated merch becomes an immortalized symbol of her childhood – an expression of ease around wealth that ultimately underpins an inherited form of status. A marker of her immersion within a world where inherited cultural capital is more valuable than Kendall’s financial one. Her hat trades on authenticity and continuity of experience, so while it probably cost $20 compared to Kendall’s $500, I’d argue that lil miss st. moritz matters more to those who know to care – communicating a level of depth of experience that can’t be bought (or taught). It’s priceless.
So, out of curiosity (there are no wrong answers here), if you had all the money in the world & life outcomes were net-positive, would you rather be….. a Kendall (straightforward & financially motivated)? Or a Yasmin (nuanced, elusive, and rooted in intangibility)?? I’m so obsessed with how our nepo babies and their baseball hats make for the perfect, Bourdieu-coded case study to unpack identity-driven cultural capital. It all comes down to how their hats codify continuity, authenticity, and status through their wearers.
I’m definitely **not** telling you to judge people on their baseball hats (and i’m not not saying it’s **not** my favorite game to play in the delta lounge), but maybe take this as a point of introspection and remembrance: what we wear is a universal language, and one's ability to translate is a silent form of currency. Our consumption and our identities are so intertwined that we may not always realize what we’re signaling, overtly and covertly, each time we leave the house. This isn’t to make anyone feel self-conscious, or like you’re in a fishbowl of your own design, but to feel empowered in your own authenticity of expression. There’s no good or bad, there just is; and in the case of Yasmin and Kendall, sometimes it all works out and other times it… doesn’t. A baseball hat may not change the course of their lives, but it offers insight into the intangible threads of identity and belonging that shape their worlds — through community, family, and geography.
Alright, do with that what you will! And until next time!!! (Friday lol)
TM x
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Great read. Did you catch Kendall’s hat in the finale in the “meal fit for a king” scene? It was for a members-only golf course on the island. Love the little details that went into wardrobing that character and the inevitable story behind each piece.
Incredible as per usual