Costume design is not a sewing contest.
I want to say something with care, because I understand why people are frustrated.
At this weekend’s Canadian Screen Awards, Hanna Puley won Best Costume Design for Heated Rivalry, specifically for the episode “I’ll Believe In Anything.” North of North, with costume design by Debra Hanson and deep collaboration with Inuk artist and consultant Keenan “Nooks” Lindell, was also nominated and, for many people, felt like the favourite in the category.
I’ll be honest: I also thought North of North should win.
The costume work on that show is extraordinary. It is visually rich, culturally specific, materially impressive, and full of garments that carry history, place, survival, beauty, humour, status, weather, intimacy, and identity all at once. Vogue’s feature on the show makes clear how much care went into the work: traditional Inuit outerwear such as amautis and qulittaqs, handmade kamik boots, Inuk designers and artists, fur work, beading, northern sourcing, and an effort to make the clothing both culturally grounded and contemporary.
That work deserves enormous respect.
But here is where I’m getting stuck: disappointment over one show losing should not become derision toward the designer who won.
Because Heated Rivalry also had successful costume design. Very successful costume design, actually. It just belongs to a category of costume work that audiences routinely undervalue: contemporary realism.
People often respond more immediately to costume design when they can see the labour. Period silhouettes. Corsetry. Embroidery. Fur. Beading. Armour. Fantasy. Historical reconstruction. Garments that announce, from across the room, “a costume department was here.”
And I understand that response. I’m from Saskatchewan. I know/know of more of the people involved in North of North. I know how rare and meaningful it is to see that kind of making, that kind of specificity, and that level of craft recognized. I am also a designer who can sew as well as I design, which is increasingly rare in this industry, and I have a huge amount of reverence for costume construction as a practice.
But handmade does not automatically mean better costume design.
More labour does not automatically mean clearer storytelling.
More visible craft does not automatically mean the costume is doing more for the scene.
Costume design is not simply the making of beautiful clothes. It is the construction of character, context, psychology, world, hierarchy, desire, concealment, transformation, and tension through what bodies wear.
Sometimes that means a handmade parka.
Sometimes that means a white fleece.
Sometimes that means a shirt travelling from one body to another and quietly doing narrative work the audience feels before they can articulate it.
One of the hardest things about contemporary costume design is that everyone thinks they understand it because everyone wears clothes. Viewers have lived through the trends. They remember the mall brands, the denim cuts, the athleticwear, the “wrong” shoes, the going-out tops, the aspirational basics, the quiet signals of class, sexuality, region, insecurity, masculinity, wealth, taste, denial, and belonging.
That makes the work harder, not easier.
With historical or fantasy design, the audience often accepts the world on its own terms. With contemporary design, the audience brings receipts. They bring memory. They bring personal taste. They bring, “I was there and nobody wore that,” or “my boyfriend dressed exactly like that,” or “that shirt tells me everything I need to know.”
Modern costume design has to survive recognition.
It has to feel invisible enough to be true and specific enough to be legible.
That is a brutal line to walk.
In Heated Rivalry, the costumes do a lot of quiet, precise storytelling. Hanna Puley has spoken about building Shane and Ilya’s wardrobes through contrast: Shane as restrained, modest, guarded, brand-safe, and uncomfortable with being seen; Ilya as more ostentatious, sensual, showy, athletic, and self-consciously stylish. GQ’s interview with Puley gets into how these choices shape the characters, from Shane’s controlled simplicity to Ilya’s louder designer pieces and that infamous leopard shirt.
That is costume design.
The fact that it looks like “just clothes” is not evidence that the design is absent. It may be evidence that the design is working.
A character like Shane cannot be over-designed without breaking the character. If he suddenly looks too editorial, too self-possessed, too beautifully styled, the tension collapses. His wardrobe has to hold his repression. It has to show a man trying to be acceptable before he is trying to be expressive. It has to make small shifts feel enormous.
Ilya, by contrast, can carry more visual appetite. His clothing can flirt, provoke, perform, peacock, mask, and expose him. His clothes are part of the erotic grammar of the show. They make him legible as someone who knows he is looked at, even when he is not fully free.
That is not lesser work because the garments are contemporary.
That is not lesser work because the audience can imagine buying something similar.
That is not lesser work because the clothing is sometimes quiet.
And yes, even the travelling shirt matters.
A shared garment can do what dialogue cannot. It can mark intimacy. It can imply possession, comfort, memory, domesticity, longing, sex, secrecy, and emotional transfer. When clothing moves between bodies, the costume is not just dressing a character; it is carrying the relationship.
That is design.
I think part of the issue is that people often conflate costume design with costume making. They overlap, absolutely. Making is a profound craft. Construction matters. Textile knowledge matters. Fit matters. Handwork matters. Cultural technique matters. Material intelligence matters.
But design is the dramaturgy of clothing.
It is not only “how hard was this to make?”
It is also:
What does this tell us?
Who chose this, in the world of the story?
What does this person want us to believe about them?
What are they hiding?
What do they understand about themselves?
What do they misunderstand?
How does this garment behave in movement, in intimacy, in weather, in labour, in shame, in performance?
How does it change when the character changes?
How does it sit inside the visual world of the show?
By those standards, North of North and Heated Rivalry are both doing meaningful costume work. They are just solving different problems.
North of North is doing culturally specific world-building on a major platform. It is bringing Inuit fashion, northern making, contemporary Indigenous style, survival knowledge, beauty, and community authorship into a broad television context. Vogue describes the show’s costume approach as one that aimed to be culturally right, beautiful, modern, and character-driven, with contributions from Inuk artists and designers.
That is monumental work.
Heated Rivalry is doing something else: building a queer sports romance through the coded language of masculinity, athletic celebrity, repression, desire, class, branding, comfort, and visibility. It is using clothing to chart what can and cannot be said out loud. It is making contemporary menswear carry emotional stakes.
That is also real work.
You can believe North of North should have won without diminishing Heated Rivalry.
You can be disappointed in an awards outcome without insulting a designer.
You can advocate for Indigenous artistry, northern craft, and culturally specific costume work without pretending contemporary realism is easy.
And you can love handmade garments without reducing costume design to visible labour.
Awards are blunt instruments. They ask us to compare things that are often not trying to achieve the same goal. They flatten very different design challenges into one category, and then everyone online acts like there is one obvious moral answer.
There usually isn’t.
There is taste. There is context. There is politics. There is visibility. There is industry bias. There is craft. There is storytelling. There is campaigning. There is what people notice and what they have been taught not to notice.
The better conversation is not “how could this possibly win?”
The better conversation is “what kind of costume labour do we recognize, and what kind do we dismiss because it looks too much like life?”
Because that is the trap with contemporary design. When it fails, everyone notices. When it succeeds, people call it clothes.
So yes: I would have loved to see North of North win. I think its costume work is vital, beautiful, and culturally important. I want more people talking about Debra Hanson, Nooks Lindell, the Inuk artists and designers involved, the kamiks, the parkas, the beadwork, the northern specificity, and the astonishing fact that clothing on that show is not decorative — it is worldview.
But I also want people to extend professional respect to Hanna Puley.
Because Heated Rivalry’s costumes did exactly what costumes are supposed to do: they clarified character, deepened relationships, supported the world, moved story forward, and made the audience feel something.
That deserves recognition too.
Be frustrated. Be passionate. Argue for the work you love. Awards discourse is part of caring about the field.
But be precise.
Be generous.
And please be careful with how you talk about designers. Behind every “that didn’t deserve to win” is a person who did the work, solved the problems, read the scripts, built the world, fought the budget, dressed the bodies, served the story, and probably lost sleep over details most viewers will never consciously register.
Costume design is not always loud.
Sometimes it is spectacular.
Sometimes it is handmade.
Sometimes it is culturally monumental.
Sometimes it is a fleece, a pair of glasses, a slightly too-safe suit, a leopard shirt, or a garment that passes from one character to another and says, quietly: something has changed.
That is the work.
And the work deserves better than contempt.
Anamorphique 