Heidi Klum's Giant Severed Hand Halloween Costume: Five to Six Hours to Put On

Klum came to her Halloween party at Cathédrale in New York as an oversized, bloody replica of her own left hand, CBS News reports. Only her eyes and mouth showed. Tendons and ligaments dangled from the top, and the nails were long and red.

The details were copied from her real hand: a thumb ring, her engagement ring and wedding band, and a tattoo of her husband Tom Kaulitz's name on the ring finger, according to CBS News, Euronews and the Associated Press.

"I looked at my hand and I thought, 'Hey, I think I could fit my body in this somehow,'" Klum told the Associated Press, as Euronews reported.

The idea came to her the year before, ahead of her 2025 Medusa look. Vogue reports that the special-effects artist Mike Marino told her he had to finish Medusa first.

Marino and his team at ProRenFX built it from body scans, Vogue reports. How long that took depends on the source: Marino told People about four months of building after a year of brainstorming, while British Vogue puts it at about six months with more than 15 people.

Putting the costume on took five to six hours, with helpers in blood-stained hazmat suits, CBS News reports. "Hands down, the hardest thing is carrying it," Klum said. "It's quite heavy."

Kaulitz was away on tour. Her daughter Leni came as Miss Piggy, and Kyle MacLachlan, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka were among the guests, Euronews reports.

The hand follows a run of increasingly elaborate looks: five lookalike "clones" of herself in 2016, a worm in 2022, a peacock, and Medusa last year, CBS News and Today report.