Heidi Klum underwent a bloody transformation to become a giant, gruesome severed hand for her annual Halloween party in New York on Saturday, 25 years after she began hosting the much-anticipated event. Klum was unrecognizable, with only her eyes and mouth showing, blood dripping from her mouth as she stuck her tongue out. The top of the hand ended in a gory assortment of dangling ligaments and tendons. She had an ensemble of helpers in blood-stained hazmat suits. The idea came to her last year to be a giant hand — specifically her own left hand, with long red nails, a thumb ring, and her engagement ring and wedding band. “I looked at my hand and I thought, ‘Hey, I think I could fit my body in this somehow,’” Klum said. The supermodel-turned-TV personality went viral in 2022 when she arrived at the party on the end of a fishing line, encased in a slithering worm costume. In past years, Klum has come dressed as the Greek myth Medusa, a peacock, an 8-foot-tall (2.4-meter-tall) “Transformer,” a werewolf from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, a clone accompanied by several Klum-lookalikes, and Kali, the multiarmed Hindu goddess of death and destruction. Klum said it took about five to six hours to get into her hand costume this year, but making it took a lot longer. She posted hints on her Instagram earlier in the day as bloodied prosthetics were applied to her face. “Hands down, the hardest thing is carrying it,” Klum said. “It’s quite heavy.” Her husband, musician Tom Kaulitz, did not attend this year because he was on tour. But the details on her costume include a tattoo of his name on her ring finger, along with her palm lines and veins. “A little bit of Tom is with me,” she said. Jaimie Ding, The Associated Press
