Heated Rivalry’s Costume Designer Also Loves Ilya’s Leopard Shirt (And Shane’s Sexy Reading Glasses)
For a show whose most tantalizing scenes hinge on shirtlessness, the smash-hit Canadian series Heated Rivalry still manages to do plenty of storytelling through its clothing.
As more and more viewers have obsessed over the show since its November 28 premiere—it’s become a fixture among HBO Max’s top 10 shows in the US, and will begin streaming in the UK on January 10—it stands to reason that if the audience started watching for the six packs, they stayed for Shane Hollander’s hot-nerd reading glasses. You know, proverbially speaking.
Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max
In late December, I spoke with the show’s costume designer, Hanna Puley, about a menswear-adjacent plot point—a scene in which Shane admits to hiring a stylist. (The scene in question takes place in 2017, at the dawn of the tunnel-fit era. Travis Kelce would be proud.) Partially given the show’s shoestring budget, but mainly due to the fact that its characters are closeted pro-hockey players who are dressing for gyms and locker rooms, most of the clothes on the show aren’t especially flashy. Shane is, by design, a hapless dresser; even the most diehard Heated Rivalry fans have dunked on his frumpy duds. Meanwhile, Shane’s rival-turned-lover, Russian hockey phenom Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), boasts a new-money wardrobe of Rick Owens drop-crotch sweats and sexy Diesel tank tops.
Unsurprisingly, Puley had many other great insights to share about the show’s costuming philosophy. Read on for more of our conversation, in which the designer spilled on Ilya’s “Slavic man style,” Shane’s bookish eyewear, and those slyly suggestive team logos.
Hanna Puley: [Laughs] I know you mentioned the stylist point is the key because you guys are coming at it from more of a fashion angle, and that’s honestly not how I approach costume design. It’s not “fashion” to me. I wanted it to still feel like it was him, where it’s like the choices that were made were still him, and they’re kind of still boring, and they’re still very contained in this heteronormative mask that is so clearly the thing that he just feels comfortable in.
When we see that shift, that’s the only time we see him in patterns. It’s the only time that we see him in something that’s not a black suit. His general style for the whole show up to that point is tuxedos, athleticwear. His “hot” look is the white T-shirt [in episode four’s nightclub scene], where he just feels the best version of himself. I think that I kind of leaned on that because it feels so identifiable with a lot of men that I know. This is their version of looking the hottest way that they know how to.
Very true.
Totally, right? Literally, they feel so good in just a good white T-shirt. Playing that for Shane was a choice for sure, and I leaned on it a lot, but I think it makes it feel really grounded because it is so familiar with a lot of men.
Yeah. It’s almost like a big personal jump for Shane, that scene in Tampa, even though it’s just a tan jacket and a black tee.
It’s actually a [full] white suit! [With costuming,] we create a whole story world that does get seen, all the sandcastles that we build in film. It’s wild. Even all of Kip’s friends, that birthday scene where Scott’s looking in through the window [in episode three]… Everybody looks so good, and then you don’t see anything.
Yeah, the plight of the costume designer is so…
[Laughs] I truly think it’s like we’re building sandcastles that then just get washed away by the sea. Sometimes you get to enjoy them a little longer, but usually not really.
You can’t really see them—again, this is another sandcastle that we built—but we got him some leather slides and then lined them with fur and put these bejeweled clips on the front. We really went all out with Ilya because it feels like he’s the one who’s willing to take the risks. It’s just inherently in the culture a little bit more, I think. And also, he’s just out to provoke. The whole thing with the Jean Paul Gaultier shirt—I’ve been getting a lot of messaging regarding that too, because it’s such a statement piece. I don’t know that anyone else could pull that shirt off in the world besides Ilya. It’s just so identifiable and also metaphorical to me. If I can put in little things that speak to me visually [like] the sense of him being this skinned predatory cat. In that moment, he has no power. He just sees his love across [the room], and there’s nothing he can do. So you see this version of himself literally on his shirt, which is just skinned, lost all his power. But Ilya, yeah—I think one person made a little video about it, and it was the “Slavic fuckboy aesthetic” of the indoor slides, obviously the Adidas… It’s just funny how, to me, it was no question that it was going to be Adidas.
