Heidi Klum turned herself into a bloody, 8-foot replica of her own severed left hand for the 25th anniversary of her annual Halloween party on Saturday night in New York, topping off a quarter-century of increasingly elaborate transformations with maybe her most literal costume yet.
The supermodel and Project Runway host unveiled the look at her party at the Cathédrale restaurant, according to E! News, which reported the costume as a bloody severed hand built for the milestone 25th party. The New York Times described the finished piece as a gory, 8-foot version of Klum's own severed left hand, a scale that made it one of the more physically imposing costumes in her long history of Halloween stunts.
Klum told Vogue the costume was built as an exact replica of her hand using body scans, right down to the veins and muscle detail. Per Vogue, Klum said that she and her team even recreated her engagement ring and wedding band, as well as the small tattoo on her finger. The effect carried a personal touch: E! News reported that the recreated ring featured a green stone and that the finger tattoo read Tom, a nod to her husband, musician Tom Kaulitz, which Klum said she got on their wedding day.
Months of Prosthetic Work for a Six-Hour Transformation
The finished costume may have debuted in one night, but the work behind it stretched across months. E! News reported that it took Klum six hours to get into the costume on Halloween, even though her team had been building the prosthetics for months beforehand. Leading that effort was special-effects artist Mike Marino and his ProRenFX team, whom Vogue described as Klum's right-hand man on the project.
According to the Times, the idea for becoming a giant hand actually came to Klum the year before, while Marino was transforming her into Medusa for her 2025 party. That earlier Medusa look, with its green scales, forked tongue and moving snakes as described by Parade, reportedly took a full five months to assemble, per E! News's account of Klum's remarks.
A Quarter-Century of Costume Reinvention
Saturday's party marked the 25th year of Klum's Halloween tradition, according to Variety, a run that began in 2000 when Klum hosted her first-ever Halloween party, as the Hollywood Reporter has noted. Over the years her costumes have ranged from E.T. and Fiona from Shrek to Jessica Rabbit and the werewolf from Michael Jackson's Thriller, along with creature looks like a peacock, a worm and a butterfly, per Variety's rundown of her past looks.
The Hollywood Reporter has also reported that Klum has enlisted professional help, including Marino, since 2011, a shift that turned her party into an annual showcase of prosthetic artistry rather than a simple costume contest. Parade's retrospective on her most unrecognizable looks notes that in 2023 she arrived as a giant peacock with help from Cirque du Soleil performers, and in 2022 she went viral as an enormous earthworm while Kaulitz dressed as a fisherman. The pair also matched as E.T. in 2024, Parade reported, continuing the couple's occasional tradition of coordinated looks.
As detailed by FOX31 Denver, this year's severed-hand look left only Klum's eyes and mouth visible, with blood dripping from her mouth, and she was flanked by helpers dressed in blood-stained hazmat suits. The outlet reported that Klum said she thought she could fit her entire body inside her own left hand, and that carrying the finished costume was the hardest part of the night because of how heavy it was. Kaulitz did not attend this year's party because he was on tour, according to FOX31 Denver, though Klum said a little bit of Tom was with her all the same, referencing the hidden tattoo built into the costume.
