Westworld Television Series Auction

Iconic wardrobes worn by Dolores, Maeve and Man in Black adorn this April 27 event filled with memorable moments from the award-winning show!

DALLAS, Texas (April 8, 2024) — First, there was Westworld the November 1973 big-screen feature, written and directed by doctor-turned-novelist Michael Crichton and set in a theme park where humans did terrible things to cyborgs who weren’t supposed to mind until they did. The New York Times called it “a science-fiction melodrama about Doomsday in Disneyland.” Then there was Westworld, the HBO^® Original Series, which debuted in October 2016 and expanded the original film into a sprawling, acclaimed four-season series about humans who did terrible things to cyborgs and the cyborgs who really wanted them to stop. The Guardian called it “a seamless marriage of western and dystopian sci-fi corporate thriller” upon its debut.

Now comes Westworld the auction at Heritage, which takes place April 27. The event features more than 230 original costumes, props, set pieces and even vehicles from the series that garnered reams of accolades and dozens of awards — including nine Primetime Emmy^® Awards, among them a 2018 win for Thandiwe Newton as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

The series has ended, but for fans of Westworld, this event at Heritage echoes the words Anthony Hopkins’ Robert Ford spoke toward the close of Season One. “Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin never died,” said the man who helped create the wild Westworld. “They simply became music.” The art of Westworld lives on, too, in an event that allows fans to own significant moments from the series set in the dusty yesterday that asked pointed questions about the artificially intelligent tomorrow just around the corner.

“Westworld wasn’t just prestige programming — it was provocative, thrill-ride television in which a loyal fanbase invested time and emotion trying to figure out their way through the maze,” says Jax Strobel, Director Studio Relations, Entertainment. “It was a thrill to go through these meaningful costumes, props and set dressing from a show that meant so much to so many, and we’re delighted to share them with that audience.”

Chief among the auctions’ coveted costumes is the series’ most recognizable ensemble: the eight-piece outfit worn by Ed Harris’ “Man in Black,” the violent, vicious Westworld visitor who was eventually revealed to be William, a majority shareholder in Westworld creator Delos Inc. and the son-in-law of its namesake. The entire outfit is killer. But the hat alone is a significant, valuable and highly coveted piece.

Baron Hats, an acclaimed haberdashery for Hollywood productions for more than 50 years, crafted several of the show’s most iconic pieces — and continues to sell the Man in Black’s hat today. Says Baron on its website, “Our shop’s focus on traditional, timeless hat crafting techniques make Baron Hats a good partner for this series since the plot of Westworld focuses on an advanced people trying to reclaim the past in order to find their future.”

Thandiwe Newton’s fuchsia gown did as much to define her character Maeve Millay as any line of dialogue — since, after all, the color is meant to signify confidence, which Maeve had in abundance as she began to lead the revolution (or so she thought) of the hosts who’d grown increasingly self-aware.

Rounding out the holy trinity of costumes is the blue dress worn by Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores Abernathy, who began the series as a perpetually abused host in Westworld only to become, four seasons later, hosts and humans’ potential savior. Here, too, in a single lot are three iterations of the watercolor Dolores can be seen painting in the series’ first episode, “The Original” — including one that Wood partially painted while perched on the riverbank outside Sweetwater.

Dolores is represented throughout this sale by numerous pieces spanning the series’ entire run, including her turn as “Christine” at the beginning of Season Four. Nearly every character from the series has an outfit in this auction, from Aaron Paul’s work coveralls and leather jacket worn as Caleb to the bloody kimono Rinko Kikuchi wore during her turn as Akane. Even former Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch’s Giggles is here, with the illuminated ensemble that lit up Season Three’s premiere episode.

And then there is the character without a costume — or anything else.

He is a 3D-printed nude strapped to a ring, a host not yet dipped into the gooey tank, not yet covered with muscles, cartilage, skin, ligaments — a nobody not yet turned into a somebody. This is Westworld’s homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the body as a blank canvas awaiting its turn in the dip tank and those accompanying phony memories and manufactured organs. Those memories and personality traits are contained within the pearls and human-hybrid husks also available in this auction, where nothing has been forgotten.

That includes the sleek rides seen in Season Three, which took Westworld out of Westworld and transported the series into the real world, where humans, hosts and hybrids commingled to watch the world burn. Here’s the rideshare fit for six and four modified motorcycles, all roomy enough to carry the bounties of Westworld into the Forge and far beyond.

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Source/Images: Press Release