The Weeknd's Red Jacket: A Chronicle of the After Hours Look

The Weeknd's Red Jacket: A Chronicle of the After Hours Look

What follows is a dated chain of primary sources — running from the "Heartless" video (December 3, 2019) to Abel Tesfaye's own words in Billboard's oral history, where he says he said goodbye to the red-jacket character precisely at Super Bowl LV (February 7, 2021) — in which every stage of the look's visual evolution is tied to a specific release date and to statements from the artist himself and his team (tailor Fresh, creative director La Mar Taylor), rather than to a vague sense of a "creative era."

The Weeknd's Red Jacket: What the Look Means, In the Artist's Own Words

The Weeknd himself explained what the red jacket and the broken nose stood for: according to his words in a Variety interview (April 8, 2020) — referring to the videos and broadcasts released by that point, from "Heartless" through the After Hours short film and the Colbert and Kimmel performances — these videos and appearances are not a collection of separate looks but scenes from one continuous night. "All these videos are taking place in one night," he said. The character the artist plays (his real name is Abel Tesfaye) moves from an intact face to a broken nose, and then to a "post-surgery" prosthetic look, over the course of a cycle lasting roughly fourteen months — from December 2019 to February 2021. The costume for this character was made by a Hollywood tailor known as Fresh, and years later, in Billboard's oral history, the artist himself named Super Bowl LV as the day he said goodbye to this character. This is a separate, self-contained visual cycle tied to a single album: The Weeknd's next work, Dawn FM, released in January 2022, looks entirely different, although the artist himself describes it not as a break but as the second part of a single trilogy together with After Hours; the film Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) completes that trilogy. Below is the evolution of the look by date and primary source, episode by episode.

Heartless: Where the Red Jacket Suit First Appears On Screen

The single "Heartless" was released on November 27, 2019, and its official video, directed by Anton Tammi, followed on December 3, 2019. Wikipedia, citing news sources from that period, describes the video's visual nod to the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. According to Vulture's dated reconstruction, it is this video where the character's storyline begins. The red jacket already appears here: according to Billboard's oral history, tailor Fresh — to whom the artist described the concept through a list of reference films — first saw the finished suit on the set of "Heartless" and personally drove it to Las Vegas; manager Wassim Slaiby later said that in "Heartless" the character is only being "built" for the audience, ahead of the main storyline that begins in "Blinding Lights." The broken nose, however, does not yet appear in this video — the injury and bandage become part of the look starting with the next release.

Blinding Lights: Where the Blood and Broken Nose Come From

The "Blinding Lights" video was released on January 21, 2020, directed by Anton Tammi with Kenneth Taylor, and was filmed in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Wikipedia, citing Rolling Stone, quotes the phrase "the same garb as the previous video" — meaning the red jacket continues "Heartless" rather than debuting here. What is new in this video is the injury: the story opens with a scene of blood running down the character's face, then rewinds to show casino bouncers beating him and forcing him to flee through the city. It is with "Blinding Lights" that the broken nose becomes part of the look, and by the next public appearance — on Jimmy Kimmel Live! — a bandage across the bridge of the nose is added.

The Films The Weeknd Named As the Source of the Look

In the same Variety interview, the artist personally listed the cinematic references for the After Hours short film: Chinatown (the broken nose), Jacob's Ladder (the subway scene), The King of Comedy, Trouble Every Day, Possession, Dressed to Kill (the elevator scene), and Martin Scorsese's own 1985 film of the same name — which, in his words, was the only "direct" reference by title: "That was the only on the nose reference," he said, a pun, since "on the nose" also literally refers to the character's injured nose. Separately, Wikipedia, citing MTV News, notes visual parallels a journalist observed in the era's overall aesthetic with the films Joker and Casino. And in Billboard's oral history, creative director La Mar Taylor names his own list of the team's cinematic touchstones: Leaving Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Martin Scorsese's Casino — which, he said, were a nod to iconic Las Vegas cinema.

The After Hours Short Film: The Scene That Ties the Videos Into One Story

The After Hours short film, directed by Anton Tammi, was released on March 4, 2020. According to Variety's report on the release, the plot centers on the character's performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which spirals into a breakdown in the subway and ends with a couple being killed in an elevator. In his Variety interview, the artist himself describes the through-line of all the videos and broadcasts of this period as a single night for one character, without singling out the short film as a separate connecting link — but chronologically, it is precisely this short film that follows the "Heartless" and "Blinding Lights" videos and continues their storyline and aesthetic.

In Your Eyes and Too Late: How the Character's Body Changes

The "In Your Eyes" video was released on March 23, 2020, again directed by Anton Tammi, and its plot directly continues the short film: the same saxophonist, Wojtek Goral, who appeared in After Hours, is featured on screen. The "Too Late" video, which premiered on October 22, 2020, directed by Cliqua, became a direct sequel to "In Your Eyes": according to Wikipedia's description, bandaged women "transplant" the character's head onto a new body. The same source mentions that the artist had already talked about working on three After Hours-related videos at once, in a Rolling Stone interview back in September 2020.

Public Appearances Beyond the Videos: From Colbert to Jingle Ball

The look did not live in the videos alone. According to Wikipedia, on December 5 and 6, 2019 — before the "Blinding Lights" video had even premiered — The Weeknd appeared on two consecutive episodes of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: on the first night he performed "Heartless" with a Joker-style number, and on the second, in the same suit, he performed "Blinding Lights." Next came Jimmy Kimmel Live! on January 22, 2020 (Vulture cites the adjacent date of January 23 — the sources disagree by a day); Saturday Night Live on March 7, now with gloves and a nose bandage; the release of the After Hours album on March 20 with the look on the cover (the cover itself had been revealed earlier, on February 18); the video for the closing track "Until I Bleed Out" on April 7; the MTV Video Music Awards on August 30; a Rolling Stone cover, "The Weeknd's Endless Summer," on September 18; the debut performance of "Save Your Tears" at the American Music Awards on November 22, 2020, in bandaged form (Vulture cites November 23 here — likely the date of an Instagram post rather than the ceremony itself); and the video for the "Blinding Lights" remix with Rosalía on December 4. On December 10, at Jingle Ball, The Weeknd, according to Vulture, took the stage without the jacket, gloves, or bandages: the outlet described it as having "ditched the suit, gloves, and bandages entirely."

The Face Changes: Save Your Tears and the Post-Surgery Makeup

The "Save Your Tears" video was released on January 5, 2021 — in place of the blood and bandages, the character's face now carries new makeup: a look resembling the aftermath of plastic surgery. According to Uproxx, the prosthetics for this look — four separate pieces, for each lip, for the nose with the brows and forehead, and for the cheeks and chin — were created by Mike Marino of Prosthetic Renaissance Makeup-FX, starting from a rough cast of the artist's altered face.

Super Bowl LV: A Givenchy Jacket On the Artist, Bandages On the Corps de Ballet

At the pre-Super Bowl press conference on February 4, 2021 (a Thursday, per The New York Times' account), The Weeknd appeared entirely in black, though a sequined version of the red jacket had already shown up in a Pepsi commercial for the upcoming show. The halftime show itself took place on February 7 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa: according to Wikipedia, citing The Hollywood Reporter, the artist performed in a crystal-embroidered red jacket, a black tie, and leather gloves. Wikipedia, citing Yahoo Life, names the house of Givenchy as the maker of the costume — though the article's own web address still contains the word "richfresh": the outlet corrected the piece after first crediting the costume to tailor Fresh, the same tailor who made the jacket for the music videos. Around the artist, in a maze-like set, a group of dancers moved in matching jackets but with bandaged faces, in keeping with the After Hours aesthetic. Jay-Z and Roc Nation oversaw the concept, Hamish Hamilton directed, and the production reportedly cost around seven million of the artist's own dollars, according to unconfirmed press figures. The show was prepared under pandemic conditions, with about 1,050 staff instead of the usual 2,000–3,000. At the February 4 press conference, looking around the room, The Weeknd remarked, "It's kind of empty" — according to the NYT report, he was referring to the sparsely filled press room, not the stadium: about 25,000 spectators were expected in the stands on game day, a little over a third of the arena's capacity.

Saying Goodbye to the Look: The Artist Himself Dates the Story's End to the Super Bowl

Vulture published its timeline of the look on February 5, before the show itself, then updated the piece on February 8, after Super Bowl LV, putting author Zoe Haylock's own verdict in the headline: "After Super Bowl LV, The Weeknd's Gotta Retire the Red Suit." That was the journalist's opinion, not a statement from the artist — but, as it turned out nearly a year later, it matched his own sense of things. In Billboard's oral history (November 2021), Tesfaye said plainly: "The day I said goodbye to the red jacket character was at the Super Bowl," and added, as the outlet paraphrased it, that the day had in a sense immortalized the character. He began signaling the change publicly as early as May 2021, eight months before the next album: talking to Variety, he compared the previous record to "after hours of the night" and said that "the dawn" was now arriving. That same summer, according to Wikipedia, he kept teasing the working title "The Dawn" in remarks at the Billboard Music Awards and the iHeartRadio Music Awards; on May 11, at the Brit Awards, his remote performance of "Save Your Tears" — remote because of pandemic-era travel restrictions between Canada and England — was done in a rain slicker, without the jacket, and on May 27, at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, he performed the same track as a duet with Ariana Grande, described by Wikipedia as wearing "an elegant black suit."

The visual language shifted on the album covers too: Dawn FM (January 7, 2022) arrived with an aged portrait by photographer Matilda Finn, without a single element of the red jacket. Even so, the artist himself describes the album not as a break but as the second part of a trilogy that began with After Hours and was completed by the film and album Hurry Up Tomorrow in 2025. He described the new concept this way: "Picture the album being like the listener is dead" — and, as the outlet paraphrased it, added that the listener seems to get stuck in a purgatory-like state. Wikipedia describes the Hurry Up Tomorrow aesthetic as shot on film and does not mention any elements of the red jacket — but it also does not address the question directly, so this source alone cannot support a conclusion that the look was permanently retired. Then in December 2023, according to Wikipedia, the suit returned as a historical symbol: in a playable skin for Fortnite Festival that included "the red suit seen in all the After Hours promotional material."