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She loved the setting and the fact the show was centred on a modern Inuk woman, but the sea goddess Nuliajuq really caught Hanson’s attention. In the first episode, the deity appears underwater to main character Siaja (Anna Lambe) after the latter falls out of her husband’s boat during a seal hunt.

“And then later on (in Episode 7), Siaja turns around and there she is in the bathtub. And I just thought, ‘I love this so much. It’s so surprising and so unique and so original,’” Hanson said during a Zoom interview.

But Hanson didn’t realize until she worked on the costume sketches with her Inuk assistant designer, Keenan “Nooks” Lindell, how meaningful the goddess was to Inuit people.

“As I was doing research on Nuliajuq��… it made me quite emotional,” Lindell explained, “because it made me think how she was taken away from us��— that she was such a big part of Inuit culture and then, when Christianity came, they shunned her.

“When I was a kid, we didn’t hear about her. Or if we did, it was in whispered voices,” the 35-year-old added in a separate Zoom interview.��

The anecdote highlights how different the “North of North” job was from anything Hanson had ever done before — but also how rewarding.��

Hanson and her team spent eight weeks preparing outfits for dozens of cast members and background actors, a standard amount of time in the fast-paced world of TV costume design, but the work was split roughly 50-50 between pc28����(and other parts of southern Ontario) and the North. And that brought challenges unlike any Hanson had encountered in her four-decade-plus career.��

Because of the difficulty of transporting costumes between pc28����and Iqaluit by standard shipping methods, the team used what Lindell called the “Inuk Express,” which meant taking a costume to the airport, finding an Inuk person who was flying to Iqaluit and having someone meet them at the other end.

“I said, ‘We’re going to give our costume to somebody whose name we don’t know and say, could you deliver it?’” recalled Hanson.

“That’s how we got so many things there. See this grey hair?” she joked, pointing to her head.

In Iqaluit, the team’s truck supervisor, Natalie Ellis (who ensures costumes are correctly matched with actors), initially used her own hotel suite as a wardrobe room, filling it with clothing racks and sewing machines.��

“In order to go to bed, she had to move three or four racks. In order to use the shower, she had to move two racks,” Hanson said. And when Hanson and her assistant Alima Meyboom arrived, there was no place for the three of them to work. They eventually moved everything into a room that was being used for Zoom meetings.

As for the costumes themselves, the aim was to source as many items as possible from Inuit artists and artisans, but the tight deadlines��meant some things had to be borrowed rather than made from scratch, particularly one-of-a-kind clothing like the sealskin boots known as kamiks.

The kamiks “have to stay cool, so at the end of every day we would have to put them in the freezer and then, first thing in the morning, take them out of the freezer, which was definitely not normal on other sets,” said Lindell.

Lindell — whose only previous TV experience was on a small Inuktitut comedy series — played a key role in finding authentic items, and educating the rest of the team about Inuit fashion and culture.

“I already have a pretty big network of artists that I follow on Instagram, and there’s people here in town that I knew were amazing at sewing and making jewelry,” he said. “I would usually (be) the first one to reach out, asking if they’re available to make something for the show, which was usually the case because everybody was really excited about the show happening.”

Lindell initially turned down the “North of North” job because he didn’t sew, he believed other Inuit designers would be better at it than him and also because he was scared — until his partner talked him into it.

The job was overwhelming at first but, he said, “I learned a hundred new things every day from Debra and Alima and Elle (Wells, the background costume co-ordinator), and all the people on the costumes team” — including how to sew, a skill he has transferred to his own apparel business, .��

“I’m really proud of what we did,” he added. “Our Inuit fashion is so, so vibrant; it’s like a living thing, it’s always evolving, and I’m happy that it gets a spotlight on such a big stage.”

As for Hanson — who has family ties to the North through her late cousin, Robert Hanson, and his widow, Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, former commissioner of Nunavut — her first time working in the territory also made her proud.��

“We have some huge reparations to make and some apologies,” Hanson said, referring to colonization. But the “more people that go out there and realize how joyous (the Inuit) are and how they help each other (the better).”��“It’s amazing.”

Below, Hanson and Lindell share details of their favourite costumes.

Nuliajuq, the sea goddess

“One of the first things we talked about was Nuliajuq’s costume because we knew it was gonna be a big one,” Lindell said. In a sense, it was the “return of Nuliajuq” and he knew it had to be “powerful.” They needed a garment sheer enough not to hide the goddess’s tattoos but that would stand up underwater (the meeting between Nuliajuq, portrayed by Tanya Tagak, and Siaja was shot in a tank in Toronto). Lindell came up with the idea of using seal intestine, which would be semi-transparent when wet and was used for��raincoats in the past, an example of Inuit ingenuity, he said. Hanson used that idea to find a fabric that mimicked the intestine.

Siaja’s ‘Bridgerton’ costume

There’s a fantasy sequence in Episode 6 in which Siaja runs across the tundra toward her love interest, Kuuk (Braeden Clarke). Her corseted dress, made of Indian silk bought from stores in Brampton, was based on an 1820s style, but with Inuit details, including a parka trimmed in pale grey fox fur with a flowing tail (akuk) and pointed hood (kukukpak). Her headpiece, or qaurutik, was made of copper wire by Lindell and decorated with��fish spine beads by��Alena Stevenson. The dress took Stratford Festival designer Jennie��Wonnacott��three days to make. It was flown to Iqaluit and used on camera the next day with only minor alternations. “The colours were taken off the landscape,” and photos of sunset and sunrise with “this blue and the most beautiful pinks on white,” Hanson said. Oh, and because Lambe was shooting the scene in very cold temperatures, heat packs were inserted in pockets built into her tights and undergarments.

Bun’s ‘kalikuk’

Keira Cooper, an Iqaluit native who’s new to acting, plays Bun, Siaja’s seven-year-old daughter, and had her own distinct and colourful costumes. This kalikuk, or top, was one of Hanson’s favourites. The design, showing children playing a game in which they jump between floating chunks of ice, is based on artwork by Lindell that Hanson spotted on the wall behind him during a Zoom call. Hanson used a scan of it for the resulting costume. “Even though that was made in the South and it was made by a southern designer, it was very, very much part of the community because of that sketch,” she said. “I think the little girl Bun’s costumes, in particular, were great fun.”

The earrings

This is the first time Hanson has ever worked on a show that had a separate budget for earrings. But they were an inevitable part of “North of North” given how much showrunners Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril love them. “Alethea‘s�� husband made her a cupboard for her earrings. She has the most amazing collection,” said Hanson. The costume team bought or borrowed earrings wherever they could. Even before the show started, Lindell said, “the first month was just me sending (photos of) earrings through Instagram and Facebook, like, ‘We should buy from her, we should buy from him.’”

The parkas

Parkas are a huge part of Inuit fashion, not only because of their cold-weather practicality but because each community has its own styles and colours that change every year, Lindell said. These different styles were combined in the show’s fictional town of Ice Cove. In cases where deadlines made it impossible to get homemade parkas done in time, Hanson’s team would buy commercial ones and add fur and other trim, which was the case for Siaja’s colourful parka in the first episode. They had to make three of them since Siaja spends part of the episode underwater. “You can tell somebody who’s wearing a southern parka because the fur’s wrong,” Hanson said, since it has to be wider and curved differently to keep faces warm in Arctic temperatures. Lindell’s favourite parka was one worn by Kuuk in the western style of Kugluktuk, Nunavut, where Aglok MacDonald is from. “The��men’s parkas are quite different from where I am (in Arviat) or in Iqaluit,” Lindell said. “They’re longer and more flamboyant.” Kuuk’s dark blue parka was trimmed with wolverine fur. “It looked really cool on him,” Lindell said.��

Ting’s hunting suit

Lindell’s cousin��Ceporah Mearns in Iqaluit��made this hunting outfit of naturally tanned sealskin pants and jacket for her husband and it fit actor Kelly William perfectly, so the team rented it. “It’s not like you could just buy this stuff,” said Lindell. Hanson noted that the hunting clothes made by Inuit women aren’t just about looks: the men “survived because those clothes protect them,” she said. Mind you, William, who plays Siaja’s husband, Ting, was wearing the suit in pc28����in the middle of summer, where the boating scenes were filmed, so the actor had to wear cold packs underneath. “It’s always really important to be concerned about the actor’s comfort as (much as) their beauty,” Hanson said. “Because if they’re uncomfortable in their clothes, they’re gonna be uncomfortable as that character.”

“North of North” can be streamed on CBC Gem, APTN lumi and Netflix.