The Heated Rivalry Costumes, Explained

As a fashion editor with an affinity for red lipstick and bizarro tights, athletic spectatorship is not exactly a pastime of mine. (The closest I get to watching sports is the “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” episode of Sex and the City.) But there is something about Crave’s Heated Rivalry—the viral queer hockey romance—that gets even the least athletically inclined viewer absolutely hooked. Key to this special sauce is Hanna Puley, costume designer for the show.

Below, Puley decodes the outfits worn by Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), from the fabricated Team Canada fleece to the saucy jersey logos. (Yes, the innuendos were intentional.) Enjoy!

Both boys are based on archetypes

“With Shane, I tried to represent what I perceive to be a Canadian style identity—which tends to be pretty conservative, reserved and practical,” Puley says, adding that she looked to Canadian hockey star Sidney Crosby for inspiration. “Shane really lives within the box of the hockey world, and also has a kind of boy-next-door thing.”

Notably, Shane doesn’t really think about his clothes. Instead, his loving-but-overbearing mom, Yuna—who is always looking to further his career and land new partnership deals—buys most of his clothes for him. Above all, he wants to make her proud. Puley points to one scene, where they wear similar linen shirts. “That was his way of showing up for his parents,” she says.

Ilya, on the other hand, is the bad boy whose style is more ostentatious. “He wears a lot of black as well as tighter, body-forward clothing and higher-end basics.” Think: BOSS, Diesel and Rick Owens loungewear. When he’s going out, his fashion leans flamboyant, as seen with his vintage leopard print Jean Paul Gaultier top. “It’s a bit of a Slavic way of dressing—there’s more play and peacocking,” she says. “There’s also a little more room for gender neutrality. I could see a woman wearing that John Paul Gautier shirt.”

They balance each other out

The show spans approximately 10 years, with time jumps charting Shane and Ilya’s growing romance. Communicating this timeline through clothes was based less on trends and more on where the characters were at the time of each meeting. They often offset each other: Shane wears light colours, while Ilya likes all black.

“They both end at the cottage, as very relaxed versions of themselves in comfortable clothes. And that, to me, is the biggest arc of all,” she says. “In the beginning you see them at the height of their public popularity—they’re out and about, they’re in the tabloids. But the journey that they go on in terms of their costuming goes from more external-facing to more internal-facing.”

The Team Canada fleece was an unintentional viral moment

When Shane wore a (fake) Team Canada fleece, it went viral, prompting think-pieces and recreations. “I would have never expected it to take off the way it has,” laughs Puley. “I wanted to make something as wearable as possible that represented Canadian identity clearly, but ultimately, to make something simple that would support the scene,” she says. “Shane is in the stands, and we have this contrast with Ilya, who’s in all black.”

And, yes, the hockey jersey logos were intentional

Perhaps the most viral aspect of the costumes was the rival team logos, which feature cheeky, suggestive imagery. How did they land on them? “As a team, we approached everything with a lot of levity—we just found the humour where we could in all of it,” says Puley, noting that the logos were done by graphic designer Stephen Crowhurst.

The team insignias became a sort of inside joke BTS, and an Easter egg for fans to figure out. “There’s so much innuendo in them, and I don’t know that it began with that intention, but it definitely grew to have that intention,” Puley laughs. “Inevitably, it just turned out that they were all really evocative and sexy. What more could we ask?”