When you watch the hit USA show Mr. Robot, you can see that star Rami Malek puts every bit of his soul into his performance of hacker Elliot Alderson. (Those eyes! Those whispers! Those insane delusions! Swoon.) And, as it turns out, the Emmy-nominated actor even puts a little bit of his closet into the character, too. The ever-present black zip-up hoodie that he wears throughout the show is a piece from his own wardrobe, costume designer Catherine Marie Thomas tells PeopleStyle.

“It’s like the crown jewel,” says Thomas, who joined the series as costume designer for the second season.

And Malek has worn the same personal hoodie from B:Scott since the beginning. “It’s his personal one from the pilot,” she says. “It’s the one he loved more than anything on the planet. We keep telling him that the hoodie is going to fall apart and he’s going to have to wear another hoodie at some point! But he has a sort of sentimental attachment to it I think, which makes sense.”

It’s something Malek put some thought into going into filming the first season. “There’s just a level of callousness to the way he treats things like getting dressed,” he told Bloomberg. “He likely prefers a uniform because it’s one less thing to think about.”

“Could you imagine Elliot going shopping?” he said. (No. No, we can not.)

Therefore, Thomas and the entire costume department take special precautions in caring for the precious cover-up. “It doesn’t get cleaned as much because we keep telling him if it’s the only one, we can’t wash it all the time and it will fall apart. It’s already starting [to fall apart]. It has seen better days.”

Just in case anything happens to the Holy Hoodie, Thomas keeps plenty of backups on hand, many of which were made custom for the show. “We have a lot that look just like it,” she says. “And if there are scenes where he is in peril, he will wear a different one.”

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