Hunter King's Custom Party Dress in Holiday Touchdown Wasn't Finished Until an Hour Before Filming (Exclusive)

Hunter King’s perfectly shimmering formal dress Holiday Touchdown: The Chiefs’ Love Story — a festive film about a family of Chiefs superfans with a side of holiday romance — came right down to the wire.

Costume designer Keith Nielsen and his team worked until they had to shoot the scene, but he tells PEOPLE that making an “original” instead of buying a dress off the rack was exactly what needed to happen, because nothing in the stores felt quite right.

And King wholeheartedly agreed.

“We bought a bunch of different ones and we were like, ‘That’s cute or, that’s cute,’ but I didn’t want to do ‘cute,'” he told PEOPLE exclusively ahead of the movie’s premiere on the Hallmark Channel. “Then I almost jokingly said, ‘I’ve decided to do a Keith original,’ and Hunter said, ‘I want a Keith original.’

That was it.

However, due to the extremely short time frame, Nielsen had to get down to work and make the magic happen right away.

Custom dress by Keith Nielson.

Keith Nielson

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For the scene where Alana (King) and her budding lover Derrick (Tyler Hynes) go to the Chiefs party at Arrowhead Stadium, Alana needed a dress that was the perfect mix of holiday and Kansas City chic. Nielsen was inspired by an Alice + Olivia dress that featured a boned bodice, which he used as a starting point for Alan’s (King) design.

“I took the top of that piece and we edited the pattern a little bit,” he says. “The reason I liked that bone structure is because the outer bones reminded me of the seams on a football pad. Then we actually made a full tutu skirt.”

Nielson was careful about choosing the fabric because he says he didn’t want Alana to “disappear in a sea of ​​red” while she was at Arrowhead Stadium for this scene, so instead he found this perfect ombre red and gold effect.

“That dress wasn’t finished until an hour before we were ready to shoot, so it was very stressful,” he says. “It was so funny – I went to the office earlier that day and [my team was] like, ‘The shutter is in!’ Everyone was on guard because of this dress.”

Nielson paired it with gold SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker shoes that had a low heel, because after all, Alana is a “small town girl” and wouldn’t wear stilettos.

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Hunter King behind the scenes of the Holiday Touchdown.

Keith Nielson

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King’s wardrobe also included a wide variety of coats—appropriate for a Christmas movie set in the Midwest. One such option is the varsity jacket he wears at the end of the film. It was another custom piece Nielsen made, also in Chiefs colors. This one was predominantly red with golden yellow sleeves.

“I wanted to make a classic wool coat—a typical Hallmark movie coat, but then add a sportswear aspect without the branding,” Nielsen describes how he came up with the design.

But what’s most exciting about this particular piece is that Nielsen was able to take inspiration from a one-of-a-kind coat and use local Kansas City craftsmen to create a very limited edition coat for sale.

“It’s really for Kansas City super-fans,” Nielsen tells PEOPLE. “It’s super luxurious. I think it’s better than the original.”

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Hunter King and Tyler Hynes.

Joshua Haines/Hallmark Media

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But while King — like the rest of the cast — may have been walking around what looked like a winter landscape in a pile of coats that Nielsen had carefully chosen, the costume designer points out that the movie was shot in July, so it was actually pretty embarrassing for everyone to be so bundled up. .

“You’ll see some press stuff in there with Hunter walking down the field in a short-sleeved shirt, and that’s because we cut off all the sleeves to reduce the layers,” he says.

Nielsen, who has worked on a string of Hallmark Christmas movies (and is no stranger to shooting some of them in hot weather), says he’s learned a few “tricks” to combat the heat when dressing his stars.

“I ripped the linings off the jackets just to lighten the load,” he says. “We use a lot of ice packs, but the thing about ice packs is that you’re sweaty and wet. Then, of course, I always say, ‘We need a glove. It completes the look.’ ‘ Now your hand is sweating and you can’t put it on, but it’s all in fantasy.”

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Source: HIS Education