Celebrity4 min(s) read
Heidi Klum reveals one 'special' detail on Halloween costume described as her 'most gory yet'
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Heidi Klum has unveiled her 2026 Halloween costume and it is, by some distance, the most unsettling thing she has ever worn to her own party.
The self-proclaimed Queen of Halloween arrived at the 25th anniversary of her annual New York City bash on Saturday night as a giant severed hand.
Her entire body was inside a prosthetic recreation of a human hand, with her face visible near the bloodied wrist, surrounded by dangling ligaments, tendons, and exposed bone.
It took five months to build and roughly six hours to get into on the night.
She could barely walk in it, but she loved every second.
How the costume was made
The hand was designed and built by prosthetic makeup designer Mike Marino, who won an Emmy this year for his work on The Penguin.
Klum has collaborated with Marino on several of her annual costumes, but this one, by his own account, was on another level.
"This costume this year is one of the most elaborate costumes ever made," Marino said.
Every surface was hand-painted.
The palm lines, the veins running beneath the skin, the knuckle creases, the cuticles around the long red nails.
The top of the wrist ended in a gory assortment of tissue, bone, and severed tendons designed to make it look freshly cut from a body.
Klum said the idea came to her last year.
"I looked at my hand and I was thinking, 'How can I fit my body into this hand?'" she told E! News. "Boom, it could have been left hand, right hand."
She went with the left.
The detail that makes it personal
This is the part that separates it from a generic prosthetic prop.
The hand is not just any hand. It is a scaled-up replica of Klum's own left hand, and the details prove it.
On the ring finger sits an oversized version of her actual engagement ring and wedding band, the green stone ring she wears every day.
Beside it, tattooed onto the prosthetic finger in the same position as on her real hand, is the name 'Tom', a tribute to her husband Tom Kaulitz that she got on their wedding day.
"I got it on our wedding day," she told E! News, pointing at the tattoo on the giant prosthetic finger.
The thumb carries a ring too. The nails match her real manicure.
The palm lines were copied from her actual palm. It is her hand, blown up to the size of a human body, severed at the wrist, with her own face poking out of the gore.
"Everything is hand-painted," she said, before adding the line she had clearly been sitting on for months.
"Many hands doing this hand."
The party
The event was held at Cathédrale Restaurant at Moxy East Village in Manhattan.
It was the 25th time Klum has thrown her annual Halloween party, which has become one of the biggest celebrity events of the year in New York.
Over the past quarter century, she has turned up 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.
Her husband Tom Kaulitz has matched her every year, showing up as a fisherman, a stone knight, and various other characters who exist primarily to stand next to whatever Klum has decided to become.
The severed hand may be the hardest costume she has ever worn.
She told reporters on the blue carpet that the weight was significant and that moving around inside it was a challenge that went beyond anything she had attempted before.
"Hands down, the hardest thing is carrying it," she said.
She has now made two hand puns on the record.
The woman committed to the bit from concept to carpet and did not let go once.