If Succession helped teach striving bros everywhere how to sartorially approximate billionaire stealth wealth, The Morning Show has lately rendered a similar service to members of the opposite sex, with Jennifer Aniston—who plays the feisty media legend Alex Levy—leading the charge. The plot this season, which wraps tonight on Apple TV+, has veered a little Succession, too: in brief, legacy media is in trouble (surprise, surprise) and an enigmatic tech billionaire (played by Jon Hamm) swoops in to save it.
The Morning Show has always been an exploration of power, and the myriad ways it can be used and exploited. Season 3 found its main characters, Alex and Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), harnessing and manipulating their potential in new ways. Naturally, the clothes had to mirror that journey.
TMS is a rare series in which each lead exclusively works with her own dedicated costume designer. For Aniston, that woman is Debra McGuire. The two have collaborated on the A-lister's onscreen style for more than 30 years, since the Friends era. So who better suited to turn the famously low-key rich bitch star into a low-key rich bitch on TV?
If you have tuned into TMS since the beginning, you will have noticed the subtle evolution of Alex's style. As she has risen the ranks of the network, and become more confident about her role within it, her wardrobe has reflected that.
"In season 3 there's a power there that's much more genuine, and you notice it in her physicality. I did a lot where I actually show her body and her arms, and it's a metaphor for another layer being taken off," McGuire says. "It's way more powerful because there's no hiding behind anything anymore. She obviously has a lot more sense of herself."
That meant trading in the restrictive suits of season 1 and the Covid-era layers of season 2 for sumptuous Khaite knits, sleek Saint Laurent coats, Alexander McQueen dresses, and pencil skirts designed by McGuire. All, of course, in neutral stealth wealth palettes of black, navy, gray, and cream that whisper influence and money—lots of it—rather than scream it.
One can't help but see parallels between Alex's style and that of Aniston herself, who has long been a paragon of sotto voce eleganza, both on the red carpet and off. "The hardest thing is to separate Jennifer from Alex," McGuire says. "We really wanted to keep her look very Diane Sawyer from the old days, looking to great mentors in the news world who had really good flare, especially in the '70s, and trying to stay true to that classic East coast elegance. And that is a lot of who Jennifer is. She is a stealth wealth icon."
Shop Her Wardrobe
Leena Kim is an editor at Town & Country, where she covers travel, jewelry, education, weddings, and culture.
