Heidi Klum reveals the surprisingly complicated mechanics behind her giant Halloween costume

Heidi Klum has officially outdone herself again, and this year’s Halloween costume might be her most ambitious one yet.

She arrived at her 25th annual Halloween party on Saturday night looking like she’d stepped straight out of a horror film. Her costume was a gigantic severed hand, complete with blood, exposed tendons and some rather questionable-looking bits of bone.

Via Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

While we’ve come to expect some pretty outrageous outfits from Heidi over the years, the amount of work that went into this one is genuinely ridiculous.

According to VT, the costume took a whopping five months to create, while Heidi spent six hours getting into it on the day of the party.

It was designed and built by prosthetic makeup artist Mike Marino, who won an Emmy this year for his work on The Penguin. He’s collaborated with Heidi on several of her iconic Halloween looks, but even he admitted this year’s creation was particularly ambitious.

Pretty much every inch of the giant hand was painted by hand, including the veins underneath the skin, tiny knuckle creases and even the cuticles around its long red fingernails.

Creating the costume was only half the battle. Actually getting around in it was another challenge entirely.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Mike Marino (@prorenfx)

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Speaking to reporters, Heidi admitted that the sheer weight and size of the outfit made moving around particularly difficult.

“Hands down, the hardest thing is carrying it,” she said.

The mechanics behind the costume were just as complicated as its appearance. Speaking to Allure, Marino explained that the team had to incorporate “harnesses, mechanics, motion, fluid motion, not fluid like liquid, but stuff that moves sort of organically” to bring the giant hand to life.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Heidi Klum (@heidiklum)

Surprisingly, though, the costume wasn’t quite as heavy as it looked. Marino explained that the main structure was made using “super lightweight upholstery foam and latex”, weighing approximately eight to 10 pounds before adding the harnesses, straps and silicone elements.

Heidi was actually tucked inside the enormous hand, operating specific mechanisms herself to make its fingers and other parts move.

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Featured image via Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock, Instagram