We’ve gotta hand it to Heidi Klum and maybe even give her a round of applause, because she certainly had us wrapped around her finger teasing out her 2026 Halloween costume! Her Instagram followers had a lot of ideas about what the model might choose for her hotly anticipated costume, including the substance from The Substance, but she surprised pretty much everyone with the final reveal: a gory, bloody, extremely lifelike severed hand, complete with exposed bone shards at the wrist.
Yes, a giant hand, crafted to resemble her own down to her veins and her engagement and wedding rings, plus a vampy berry manicure! Klum’s face was almost hidden amidst the flesh, but it peeked out near the severed wrist, covered in prosthetics and makeup meant to resemble tissue and blood.
According to prosthetics designer Mike Marino, who frequently works with Klum on her costumes, a lot goes into bringing these costumes to life. Klum and her team started thinking about this year’s ensemble basically the minute Halloween 2025 ended. In the past, Klum has famously dressed as Medusa, a worm, the wig-wearing version of E.T., and a peacock, among many, many other beloved costumes—never the same thing twice! Plus. this was the 25th anniversary party, so the stakes were high (five). “Sometimes the most ordinary things can become the most extraordinary when you look at them a little differently,” Klum wrote on Instagram. “I wanted something unexpected, a little weird, a little creepy, and unlike anything I’d ever done before.” This was definitely that! No one expected her to go as a hand.
The hand costume needed a combination of harnesses,
The hand costume needed a combination of “harnesses, mechanics, motion, fluid motion—not fluid like liquid, but stuff that moves sort of organically,” Marino tells Allure. Despite the scale of the hand, it was actually pretty lightweight, Marino says, made of a “super lightweight upholstery foam and latex” that weighed about eight to 10 pounds, plus the harnesses, straps, and some silicone. Klum was inside pulling specific mechanisms to make the hand move. Marino describes the yearly costume process as “R&D experiments” with no instructions. To craft the gory but hilarious face, Marino first made sculptures. “I created two layers, one showing the muscle, organs, and fat, and another with a goofy expression that I thought would work well with the giant hand and give the whole thing a slightly comedic edge,” he shared on Instagram. “Like a mutant muppet.”
The team tries to do as much pre-work as possible, including fittings and pre-painting, says Marino. This year, the actual “getting ready” started around 3 p.m. eastern time on Halloween, and Klum made her debut late that night. “Miraculously, it always comes together, but somehow it always takes forever, even if it’s an easy thing,” Marino shares.
Klum didn’t wear the full costume all night; she eventually ditched the enormous hand but kept the face makeup intact. And if we know Klum, she’s already busy planning next year’s costume.
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