To celebrate the Digital release of HIM, costume designer Dominique Dawson provided us with an in-depth breakdown of her work on the film, accompanied by some exclusive images.
I’m Dominique Dawson. I’m the costume designer of HIM, and I just wanted to walk you through the process of creating this universe.
The name of the team is the Saviors, and we really wanted to create something that was fresh and new, something that we haven’t seen in a football team before in terms of color, in terms of design aesthetic of jerseys, and just having this kind of surreal edge.
We worked really hard to establish this color palette of rose gold and ox blood. Those were the basis of our uniforms, and it was not only intimidating but was definitely unfamiliar to us. Having things like a rose gold face mask that we had custom made by an artist in Berlin that resembles the face of a goat with this kind of candy paint burgundy ox blood helmet with the big Savior ‘S’ on it was so impactful and intimidating as well.
Some of the amazing characters that support the athletes are of course our super fans, and the biggest fan of all is called the Horned Fanatic. We have an illustration that we put together of this huge, cloaked man wearing a giant Saviors jersey, and we covered it with an actual goat hide that had been trimmed of all its hair. It almost has a translucent feel which resembles sports ponchos that fans wear when they’re in the stands and the weather gets pretty gruesome at times but they’re still devoted.
Then we took actual fur pieces, the darker browns of the goat, and made big shoulder pad additions so that they resembled the actual athletes. For our horned fanatic, we put football pads underneath all of this just to build him up and make him look that much more lethal. We topped it off with this vintage football helmet, which is made of all leather and has an entire face covering here. It has two sets of goat horns, which we had 3D printed and then hand painted each horn so that it would have a dynamic more realistic feel. That was attached as the final icing on the cake.
Lastly, we wanted to include all of the wear and tear that he’s been through, just like the players have, so we incorporated a lot of bandages over his hands and knuckles and around his wrists. His pants were almost like a leather waiter’s pants, which was very off-putting and he’s just bigger than life. The guy who played him is like 6’7”, so he’s very menacing. I think once all the layers were stacked on we still got this fan in psychosis but a very calculated personality.
In addition to that, there’s a bunch of supporting fans that are just mad for the Saviors. It’s almost like they just want to tear their hair out, they’re so crazy about them. There are these twin boys that are showcased with football masks. We sourced that from an ’80s, old school vintage Halloween mask that almost like a Garbage Pale Kid. It had this cheeky comedy element.
They were shirtless and their whole bodies were coated in white. They had a big S’s painted on their chest. It looked like it was almost in blood. And the guys are from the country, so one of them has overall shorts on and the other one just has denim shorts. They’re just like little minions that run around and wreak havoc on our main talent, Cam, which was played by Tyriq Withers.
These are just such jarring images for some who are so new to the league and new to this level of play and being brought into universe the universe of Zay, played by Marlon Wayans. Cam can’t quite tell, because of his head injury, if these fans are real or if he’s having visions of what the incident that happened to him, so we really wanted to teeter on that line of, could these possibly be hallucinations of his or are they in fact super fans that have snuck onto the compound?
Finally, we really looked at ownership of football teams. The personalities that buy teams are often quite grand, and they have their own rituals and formalities of how they conduct business. We really went out of our way to establish this very conservative upscale look for them, something that was a southern influence. There were suits mixed with cowboy hats.
In one of the final scenes, when Cam is coming to be initiated into the league, you see them with these disgusting pigskin masks, which we had so much fun working with an artist based out of LA, Matt Effects. Basically, I wanted the mask to feel like someone just skinned the face of a pig directly off and took that skin, hung it out to dry. Then we attached that to the vintage football helmet, so you could see all the sewing and the connecting of the leather and the skin combined.
The owners, the commissioner, all of these characters that are the higher ups of the Saviors team wore those masks during this ritualistic ceremony. There’s so much innuendo in terms of pig skins and us just looking at them as these gluttonous characters. I think, often times, a lot of owners and and commissioners are living this life that is very gluttonous and over the top, and they’ll stop at nothing to get what the team needs.
These are all very privileged individuals who have access to the most high-end designer pieces. We see Julia Fox‘s character in fabulous gowns and even a gown that is made out of all these intricate small pieces of mirror. She’s an entrepreneur and very self-absorbed, and she’s a part of the plan working with these owners to groom this character. We wanted her look to really scream seduction and power as well. There’s a strength in her femininity that lures him in.
All of those couture elements really helped further the stakes. It was great just being able to have that freedom because both [producer] Jordan Peele and our director, Justin Tipping, are so open-minded to taking risks and showing things that we don’t typically see in horror films.
I’m really proud of the work that we did on this project to show the level of injury that happens to athletes and how that can create psychosis. You have this incredible gift as an athlete and skill physically, but there seems to be very little attention paid to looking after the mental health of these players.
That’s where the fuzzy part starts to play in with our mascots. We had three mascots that kind of traveled the different eras of the team. We started out with Conquistador Larry, which is this gluttonous, pillaging, warrior character that’s basically in all armor. You see him with his silver conquistador hat that over time becomes politically incorrect.
They evolve into Tinsel Larry, which is the “razzle-dazzle, rose gold glitter monster” as we like to call it. He is repping the cowboy hat. He has these really dynamic gloves that we worked to build and create with an incredible artist from New Mexico named Chanupa. Over time that became politically incorrect as well, because we’re utilizing these Native American references and using them for mascot purposes, which is disrespectful.
The final mascot that they end up adopting is the Goat, which is a white furry, very abstract goat that we created with rose gold horns, these big rose gold eyes, and even rose gold hooves. He was built by an artist by the name of Spencer Hansen in Thailand. We would go back and forth on Zoom sharing images of what that character would look like.
We did this ombre dip of all of his fur, so he looked like he had the blood of the Saviors on his hands and on his feet. He’s the goat, and to me, he’s the trippiest. You can never get a read on him. They don’t have a mouth. Tinsel Larry doesn’t even have eyes. We did that on purpose to create this mystery and uncomfortability for the audience who hasn’t seen mascots of this nature before.
Even if you’re not a football fan, you can easily step into the world and begin to understand that this is a bizarre hierarchy. This is a world where men are easily bought, sold, traded, and disregarded. There is a fight within these characters. I tried to use fashion as a way to show how these men have to suit up and navigate through the business piece as well as the athletic piece of being a professional football player.
HIM is available on Digital now and will be released on SteelBook, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on November 11 via Universal.
Jordan Peele and Dominique Dawson at the ‘HIM’ Premiere
