When it comes to her Halloween costume, Heidi Klum has said she strives to be the most.
The most ostentatious? That would be 2023, when she dressed as a giant peacock, accompanied by Cirque du Soleil acrobats.
Most petrifying? When she went as the Greek mythological monster Medusa last year, complete with animatronic snakes and a reptile suit.
So when it came time to choose her costume for this year, her mind immediately went to “most gory”: her severed left hand.
Klum, the 53-year-old model and “Project Runway” host, spent about six hours transforming into the eight-foot hand, which was created by the Hollywood prosthetics designer and her longtime collaborator Mike Marino out of foam, latex, metal, nylon, plastic, silicone and spandex.
And in an interview at her 25th-anniversary Halloween party, Klum imagined what happened to her hand: “It just was one of those days. It was in the elevator, actually. The rest went down the chute,” she said as she posed for photos on the blue carpet, surrounded by half a dozen people in yellow hazmat suits.
When was the last time she went to the bathroom?
“It’s been a while,” she said, as a member of her team held a bottle of water with a straw to her mouth. “Maybe today will be the first day where I actually pee in my diapers. You never know.”
Klum’s late-night Halloween bash, held this year at the Cathédrale restaurant inside the Moxy Hotel in the East Village of Manhattan for about 450 guests, has become a coveted invitation.
Back in 2000, when she threw her first party at the Hudson Hotel, “there wasn’t really that one party that everyone was jonesing to go to and where they could also show their creativity,” said Klum, who fell in love with dressing up when she was a child in Cologne, Germany, at the country’s annual Karneval celebration. (Picture all the candy and costumes of Halloween, without the spooky vibes.)
Early on, she made costumes mandatory. (“If you don’t wear a costume, you don’t get in,” she said.) People were initially apprehensive, but year after year the guests’ looks “are also getting wilder and wilder, which I love,” said Klum, whose own elaborate costumes take months to design and then require her to sit for hours for the transformation. “It’s all about egging each other on, creatively. I think it’s beautiful.”
The crowd this year included the actors Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, dressed as the twins from the horror movie “The Shining”; the “Sex and the City” star Kyle MacLachlan, who went as the corrupt executive Cliff Vandercave from his 1994 movie “The Flintstones”; and the model Valentina Sampaio, who sported a lacy green bodysuit as the “Batman” supervillain Poison Ivy.
In a downstairs lounge bathed in soft, red light, guests sipped “Butterfinger-tini” cocktails — Butterfinger was a sponsor of the event — or grabbed cartons of Apothic Red wine from a cooler. On couches against a wall lined with cobwebs and protruding pairs of bloody hands, partygoers dressed as the Mad Hatter, Dorothy and Mario snacked on king-size Butterfingers from bowls as “Gangnam Style” played.
On the dance floor, under black birds and dangling netting, partygoers dressed as Kermit the Frog, Buddy the Elf and a pharaoh danced together to “Sexy and I Know It” as Questlove, in a No. 14 San Francisco 49ers jersey, manned the D.J. station.
Just after midnight, he cued up the Abba hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).” A sea of phones — and one light-up miniature parasol, glowing electric blue — hit the air.
See some of the costumes from the party below. Interviews have been edited and condensed.
Laura Abla
(As Madonna at the V.M.A.s in 2003, with Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears)
What are you dressed up as? I’m Madonna at the V.M.A.s in 2003, and this is Christina and Britney with me.
What was your inspiration? Madonna is an icon. But why have one icon when you can have three?
How long did it take? My team worked on it for two weeks, for around 16 hours a day. Today, it took six or seven hours.
Jeff Fowler and Ivette Gil
(As Ghosts of Versailles)
What are you dressed up as? We’re the ghosts of Versailles.
Why? We ate at this French restaurant, Pastis, that just opened in Palm Beach, where we’re from.
How long did it take you to put together? We started makeup at 5, and we finished at 9.
Where did you get your parasol, Ivette? I got this from my daughter’s communion. It has history.
I love that it lights up. I wanted people to walk in and know that we’re glowing ghosts.
Jennifer Kellogg
(As Various “Beetlejuice” Elements)
What are you dressed up as? I’m a “Beetlejuice” collage. I have the sand monster coming out of me, and I’m the woman who is the civil servant at the Afterlife Waiting Room, Miss Argentina.
Why Beetlejuice? Because my friend Eric Gorsuch, who’s a costumer, wanted to do it. We’re very good friends, and when I come to this party — I’ve been coming for nine years now — I trust him. So I told him, “Do whatever you want.”
How long did it take to put together? He put it together in hours. He’s that genius. But he thinks about it for months.
What’s your favorite part of the look? The sand monster.
Christoffer Adriansson and Alicia Karlsson
(As a Headless Couple)
What are you dressed up as? We’re an old Swedish couple who immigrated here in 1940 and lost our heads.
Why? We’re both from Sweden, and we love this country. It really is the land of opportunity.
How long did it take you to put together? A long time. We made the costumes. It’s papier-mâché and a lot of hand-sewing.
What was the most complicated part? The length of the arms, because we had to cut the trench coats to fit our armpits. And obviously now it’s hard to drink because we can’t see anything!
Alisha Haridasani Gupta contributed reporting.
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