Heidi Klum reveals the personal detail behind her 'most elaborate' Halloween costume yet
Heidi Klum arrived at her 25th annual Halloween party in New York City on Saturday night dressed as a giant severed hand.
Her face was visible just below the bloody wrist, surrounded by dangling ligaments and tendons, with a bit of exposed bone for good measure.
According to VT, the costume took five months to build, and it took Klum six hours to get into it on the day.
The detail that makes it personal is that the hand is a scaled-up replica of Klum’s own left hand. On the ring finger sits an oversized version of her actual engagement ring and wedding band, the green stone ring she wears every day.
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Beside it, in the same position as on her real hand, is the name ‘Tom’, tattooed onto the prosthetic finger as a tribute to her husband, Tom Kaulitz, which she got on their wedding day.
The palm lines were taken from her actual palm, the thumb wears a ring of its own and the nails match her real manicure.
It is Klum’s own hand, enlarged to the size of a body and severed at the wrist, with her face peeking out.
How does Heidi Klum make her Halloween costumes?
The idea came to Klum last year.
"I looked at my hand and I was thinking, 'How can I fit my body into this hand?' she said. "Boom, it could have been left hand, right hand."
She went with the left. Prosthetic makeup designer Mike Marino, who won an Emmy this year for his work on The Penguin, designed and built it.
Marino has worked with Klum on several of her annual costumes, but by his own account this one was on another level.
“This costume this year is one of the most elaborate costumes ever made,” he said.
Every surface was painted by hand, from the veins beneath the skin to the knuckle creases and the cuticles around the long red nails.
The wrist ended in a mix of tissue, bone and severed tendons designed to look freshly cut from a body. “Everything is hand-painted,” Klum said, adding: “Many hands doing this hand.”
Heidi Klum’s Halloween party costumes over the years
The party took place at Cathédrale Restaurant at Moxy East Village in Manhattan, marking the 25th time Klum has hosted it. It has become one of the biggest celebrity events of the year in New York.
Over those 25 years, the self-proclaimed Queen of Halloween has dressed as a worm, E.T., Medusa, a peacock, Princess Fiona from Shrek, Jessica Rabbit, a butterfly and a humanoid alien hybrid that required hours of prosthetics and exposed rubber intestines.
Kaulitz has matched her every year, appearing as a fisherman, a stone knight and various other characters.
The severed hand may be the hardest costume she has worn.
Klum told reporters on the blue carpet that the weight was significant and that moving around in it was a challenge beyond anything she had attempted before.
“Hands down, the hardest thing is carrying it,” she said.
Topics: Heidi Klum, Halloween, Fashion
Thomas Bamford