Not the costume designer, the costume designer. Emmy nominee Michelle Matland, Bennington class of 1984, who dresses to kill—or at least to betray—the cast of Succession, everybody’s favorite family melodrama, and hands down the most stylish show on television.
When I reach Matland, she’s in a van, leaving a shoot. No sooner have we exchanged greetings than she says with a laugh, “I am almost 150% sure that I am not that [character].” (Her agent evidently forwarded her my email detailing my Judy Poovey theories and suspicions.)
I laugh back and point out that 150% is very, extremely sure. I ask her if she knew Tartt.
“I did know Donna,” she says.
I ask her if she, like Judy Poovey, was a costume-design major.
“The only costume-design major at Bennington at that time. There wasn’t really a costume design major when I got there. I certainly don’t know of anyone who went on to do costumes. [But] there were a lot of people who dabbled for sure.”
Matland was a dabbler, too—at first.
“I was always interested in clothing and costumes—for fun. It wasn’t a practical matter…. But everybody [at Bennington] I knew was in theater. So I would sit and play backgammon behind the scenes, waiting for them to wrap their sessions so we could all go to the little pub on campus.”
Then she got serious.
“I came out of Bennington, and I had no idea what I was going to do. When I got to New York, I was working as a waitress. My boyfriend at the time said, ‘You’ve got to come up with something. You can’t wait tables for the rest of your life.’ So I thought, Why don’t I try costumes? It never occurred to me that it couldn’t be done. So I went and worked at Juilliard in their costume shop as an intern for about $10 a week.”
Matland went from Juilliard to Saturday Night Live, where she worked under costume designer Melina Root; and then from Melina Root to Ann Roth, an industry legend. She’d stay with Roth for nearly three decades, assisting on such projects as The Talented Mr. Ripley, Julie & Julia, and HBO’s Mildred Pierce, before striking out on her own.
“Ann would hate me for saying it, but she truly is one of the last of a group of women who solidified what costumes were—really trying to help the director and the actor and the writers tell a story [through clothes].”
I read to Matland the descriptions of her and Loren Segan given to me by Smith and Feder Castenskiold.
She interrupts excitedly. “That is so freaky. That’s Loren! We were never, ever apart for one minute.… Bennington was so incredibly tiny that you created little families for yourself. So, for example, Donna had her family, who were all the ancient-Greek kids.” Matland goes quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “Who was that professor?”
I supply the name: Claude Fredericks, i.e., the “real” Julian Morrow—The Secret History’s brilliant but sinister ancient-Greek professor.
“Yeah, Claude Fredericks. I took professor Fredericks’s class in some—I don’t even remember what the class was, but I remember that Loren talked him out of failing me. Loren got him to give me an extension on a paper.”
After noting what a good friend Segan was, I continue reading Smith and Feder Castenskiold’s descriptions.
Matland is beyond excited, is borderline unnerved. “There’s no question about it: That’s us.… I mean, I was not a Jewish American princess. Loren was definitely a Jewish American princess.… I grew up in a small town in Virginia outside of D.C., moved to New York when I turned 13.… This is so crazy.” She trails off, then says with energy, “That is so crazy. You just gave me chills.”