Jeremy Strong's Zuckerberg Wears Old Tees and Used Trainers
Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg in five-year-old T-shirts and secondhand trainers in The Social Reckoning. The film is the follow-up to The Social Network (2010), the first Aaron Sorkin film about Facebook. It picks up the story in 2019 to 2021. The Guardian
The Social Reckoning is a Columbia Pictures, the film studio, release with an original screenplay by Sorkin. Sony Pictures describes it as inspired by true events and centred on the whistleblower who started the social media reckoning. Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White star alongside Strong. Sony Pictures Motion Picture Association
Costume designer Susan Lyall dressed Strong for the role. The window was tight. Clothes made in 2025 would look wrong for 2019 to 2021, so every piece had to be dated correctly.
Lyall told how she hunted down a 2018 Nike Flyknit trainer in black anthracite on Grailed, the resale site for secondhand clothing. Nike, the sportswear group, no longer sells that exact shoe new. Buying used was the only way to put the right pair on screen.
The T-shirts and sweaters took more calls. Strong himself arranged contact with Brunello Cucinelli, the Italian knitwear house, to procure pieces from five to six years earlier. Those are the grey tops and soft knits associated with Zuckerberg, not current stock cut to a newer shape.
Lyall and Strong knew each other well before this job. They previously worked together on Molly's Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Lyall also has a recent costume credit on Jesse Armstrong's 2025 film Mountainhead, about four plutocrats.
The real wardrobe behind the fiction is plain by design. In 2014 Zuckerberg said he wore grey T-shirts to make as few decisions as possible. The film keeps that uniform, down to the colour and fit of a specific period.
What makes this stand out is the effort behind clothes meant to look like no effort at all. A grey T-shirt reads as simple on screen. Getting one that is exactly five years old took months of sourcing.
