Heidi Klum turned herself into a giant, bloodied severed hand as she celebrated the 25th anniversary of her annual Halloween party in New York, maintaining a tradition that has made the model and television personality one of the season’s most recognisable figures.
Klum arrived at the event on Saturday, 31 October, in a costume designed to leave almost every part of her hidden. Her eyes and mouth were visible through the elaborate creation, while fake blood appeared to run from her mouth as she stuck out her tongue. Above her, the hand ended in a deliberately gruesome display of dangling ligaments and tendons.
A costume built around personal detail
The concept was not simply a generic horror prop. Klum said the idea came to her the previous year, after she considered whether she could make her own body part the basis for the costume. The finished design represented her left hand, complete with long red nails, a thumb ring, and both 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.’”
The effect was completed by a group of assistants dressed in blood-stained hazmat suits. Their presence added to the sense that Klum’s arrival was being treated as a strange, hazardous discovery rather than a conventional red-carpet appearance. It also underlined the scale of a costume that depended on more than make-up or clothing: Klum’s face, body and movement were all incorporated into the visual illusion.
- Event: Heidi Klum’s 25th annual Halloween party
- Date: Saturday, 31 October 2026
- Venue: Cathdrale Restaurant at Moxy East Village, New York
- Costume: A giant version of Klum’s own left hand
A quarter-century of theatrical arrivals
The anniversary gave this year’s entrance an added sense of occasion. Klum has hosted the Halloween gathering for 25 years, and the event has become closely associated with the expectation that she will appear in an unusually elaborate disguise. Rather than treating the costume as a small part of the evening, her arrival is presented as a central entertainment moment in its own right.
That approach was especially visible in 2022, when Klum went viral after arriving at the party on the end of a fishing line, enclosed in a costume depicting a slithering worm. The comparison helps explain why the severed hand attracted attention: both ideas turn the host’s arrival into a piece of visual theatre, with Klum largely surrendering her usual public image to the character she is portraying.
Guests join the annual spectacle
The New York event also drew a number of familiar faces. Actor Kyle MacLachlan arrived with his son, Callum MacLachlan, while Klum’s daughter Leni Klum was also photographed at the party. Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka were among the other arrivals recorded at the venue.
The photographs from the evening place the event at Cathdrale Restaurant at Moxy East Village, where the party marked both the Halloween weekend and the latest chapter in Klum’s long-running tradition. Details of the guests’ own costumes were not included, but their presence added to the high-profile character of an occasion that has become a fixture of celebrity Halloween coverage.
For Klum, the appeal of the annual event continues to rest on transformation. The severed hand was recognisably linked to her through its jewellery and manicure, yet it concealed her familiar silhouette almost completely. After 25 years of increasingly ambitious entrances, that balance between personal signature and total disguise remains the defining feature of her Halloween performance.
