On Friday, Klum, the mannequin and host of “Challenge Runway,” reworked into Medusa, the highly effective monster from Greek mythology mentioned to immediately flip onlookers into stone. (Her husband, musician Tom Kaulitz, dressed as a warrior was stone.)
Yearly, Klum spends months making an attempt to outshine the array of different costumes she has worn to her annual Halloween bash, which has turn out to be one thing of a mainstay in New York Metropolis during the last quarter-century. In years previous, she has dressed as a worm, a peacock, a werewolf, an ogress and E.T., the endearing alien from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 movie. She has additionally dressed as a “clone” of herself and as an older model of herself.
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As Klum posed earlier than photographers, greater than a dozen animatronic snakes appeared to slither from her head, and her eyes glowed with reptilian contact lenses. Her physique was encased in a snake swimsuit with a virtually 8-foot tail, which housed a battery pack for the writhing snakes and a set of wheels so she might wriggle round. Her costume made it tough to sit down down and was so giant that she took up a lot of the blue carpet exterior the Arduous Rock Resort in midtown Manhattan.
Mike Marino, a Hollywood prosthetics designer and Klum’s longtime Halloween collaborator, mentioned her costume this 12 months was impressed by the snakelike, stop-motion Medusa from the 1981 film “Conflict of the Titans,” designed by Ray Harryhausen, the celebrated animator and special-effects creator.
The mannequin and TV persona Heidi Klum, in costume as Medusa for her annual Halloween get together, on the Arduous Rock Resort in New York on Friday, Oct. 1, 2025. Yearly, Klum spends months getting ready to outshine the array of different costumes she has worn to her annual Halloween bash, which has turn out to be one thing of a mainstay in New York Metropolis during the last quarter-century. (Nina Westervelt/The New York Instances)
“Please take a look at these enamel,” Klum mentioned the day earlier than her get together, highlighting razor-sharp acrylic enamel. “If I chunk somebody within the neck, I might really go for blood.”
“She’ll kill somebody with them,” added Marino, who not too long ago received an Emmy Award for the prosthetic make-up on the HBO Max sequence “The Penguin.”
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It took a number of dozen individuals to convey your complete costume collectively. A scaled masks and gloves coated her face, neck and arms so each inch of her pores and skin was hid; the tiny slivers that peeked by way of had been painted inexperienced. A 5-inch, cut up, reptile tongue frolicked of her mouth and was connected onto her actual tongue with a “suction cup gadget,” Marino mentioned. For it to work, Klum needed to make her personal tongue “as dry as attainable,” she mentioned.
The enamel and the tongue did make it cumbersome for Klum to eat a lot all through the night. “That’s why I do all of it now,” Klum mentioned, nibbling away at tagliatelle whereas Marino caught on her Medusa ears with glue hours earlier than she walked onto the pink carpet.
And, Marino mentioned, going to the lavatory can be “very tough” too. (Klum wore an grownup diaper below her swimsuit.)
Although the German-born mannequin and her elaborate costumes have turn out to be considerably synonymous with Halloween, earlier this 12 months she expanded her attain with a spin on Oktoberfest — her first “Heidi Fest” in Munich — and is now contemplating placing the Heidi contact on one more vacation: carnival.
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“We do the carnival large in Germany too,” she mentioned. “Individuals are normally like: ‘Actually? Carnival in Germany?’ However in February, we’ve a giant carnival. Let’s see.”
The mannequin and TV persona Heidi Klum, in costume as Medusa for her annual Halloween get together, with different friends together with her husband, Tom Kaulitz, middle, dressed as a warrior was stone, on the Arduous Rock Resort in New York on Friday, Oct. 1, 2025. Yearly, Klum spends months getting ready to outshine the array of different costumes she has worn to her annual Halloween bash, which has turn out to be one thing of a mainstay in New York Metropolis during the last quarter-century. (Nina Westervelt/The New York Instances)
Klum’s crew got here up with the concept of her dressing as Medusa about 4 months in the past, which in her world is extraordinarily late, she mentioned.
When she chosen the costume, Klum mentioned, she was not considering particularly about Medusa’s place in mythology as a feminine determine who, in some accounts, was sexually assaulted, reworked right into a monster and later beheaded. Classicist Mary Beard has known as Medusa “one of the potent historic symbols” of male overcome feminine energy.
“I’ve been enjoying with the concept of Medusa for some time, and I believed, ‘Let’s do Medusa proper,’” Klum mentioned. “She’s only a actually cool, scary, snake-woman.”
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Klum has already found out what she desires to be subsequent 12 months as a result of typically, inspiration simply hits “like this,” she mentioned, snapping her fingers, with out giving any hints.
