Canadian Oscar winner Shane Vieau made a splash not just by getting his trophy on Sunday — but also with his attire.
As Vieau accepted his Oscar alongside fellow Canadians Paul Austerberry and Jeffrey A. Melvin for best production design on "The Shape of Water," he had Twitter abuzz with comments on his outfit.
The set decorator, who hails from Dartmouth, N.S., was wearing sunglasses, a tuxedo jacket with sleeves that barely covered his elbows, and Adidas sneakers.
"I had the suit built from Harry Rosen as a custom-built and anyone who knows me (knows) I'm an Adidas guy, I always wear Adidas head to toe," Vieau said in a phone interview with The Canadian Press after the show.
"I live in a baseball cap but they wouldn't let me wear a baseball cap, so I wore the sneakers as my homage to Adidas."
"The Shape of Water" won four Oscars in total, including best picture for director Guillermo del Toro and Toronto producer J. Miles Dale.
Sally Hawkins stars as a mute janitor who falls for a captive and abused amphibian creature, played by Doug Jones.
Austerberry is credited for production design on the merman drama while Melvin and Vieau did the set decoration.
The trio also won in the same category at the recent British Academy Film Awards.
"It's a little bit surreal coming home with the BAFTA and the Oscar," Vieau said as he was en route to the Governors Ball.
"It was such an amazing thing for Guillermo because it was such a passion project for him, it was a very, very small film on a $20 million budget.
"Originally when he took it to Fox, it was going to be black and white and it was going to be a $16 million film and they gave him a little bit more money to do it in colour."
The film was shot in Hamilton and Toronto and had a largely Canadian crew.
"Everyone in Toronto worked very, very hard to get that film done, everyone did it for a very, very shoestring budget and so I think everyone felt a lot of ownership over the film," Vieau said.
"So I think when we won the film tonight, it was just a great homage to all the trades in Toronto.... We don't get a lot of accolades in Canada with respect to film, so this was a really, really great year because we got to do an amazing film by Guillermo."
