CMU School of Drama


Monday, November 01, 2021

The Secrets Behind Heidi Klum's Most Amazing Halloween Costumes

Allure: There's great joy in seeing experts in their element, thriving, like Serena Williams serving a ball with precision and force, Harry Styles going wild on stage, or Heidi Klum on Halloween.

4 comments:

Olivia Curry said...

Heidi Klum has probably THE most iconic celebrity Halloween costumes, and it’s not surprising to hear that they are all expensive and require a lot of time to get into and remove. While working at 5 a.m. doesn’t sound ideal, it’s good to hear that everyone has fun during the process. Klum makes the wearing of each costume look so effortless and fun but to hear that the Princess Fiona costume was around 15-20 pounds really shows how difficult it is to wear these costumes all night. The grotesque alien fembot costume looks especially tough to wear, knowing that it was a full silicone bodysuit (hello, sweat) plus she’s wearing super-high heels. I really appreciate her dedication to the holiday and I love that she provides something to look forward to on Halloween even for people that just enjoy staying in and looking at other people’s costumes. It’s sad to hear that her Halloween party is not happening this year, although I understand it’s for the safety and health of everyone involved.

Philip Winter said...

I honestly had no idea about Heidi Klum’s incredible Halloween costumes. The level of detail and effort she put into her costumes is honestly incredible, and I genuinely can’t imagine wearing that much silicone. Wearing any one of her costumes takes serious commitment and it is really impressive. As a costume designer I honestly never really thought much about prosthetic makeup, but Heidi Klum’s costumes have made me realize that this is definitely an area I need to expand my capabilities in. I’ve truly never worked with silicone or prosthetics, but clearly as seen by Heidi Klum’s costumes this can make or break a costume. The level of realism in the alien fembot costume especially impressed me, as it was quite repulsive to look at and typically people tend to go for more “sexy” costumes during Halloween. For me Halloween has surprisingly never been a very important holiday, but I love the enthusiasm that many people like Heidi Klum bring and its very inspiring to see the work she puts into dressing up.

Zachary Everett-Lane said...

Heidi Klum’s Halloween costumes are fantastic! I’d never seen any of them before, but I can see why they’re worth writing a whole article about. They’re all certainly very transformative. I’m glad this article paid tribute to the real stars of the show here: the costume designers and producers. Mike Marino was interviewed for the article, and mentioned the hard work of the make up artists who make all the magic happen. I thought the “Visible Woman” costume was especially astounding, for the way the costume and make up blended together seamlessly. Unfortunately not everyone can afford such expensive costumes! Her outfits are destroyed after she wears them, as they’ve basically been painted and glued on to her body. While this certainly doesn’t seem efficient, it works for one night of celebrations. Maybe if I’m rich and famous someday I’ll hire professional makeup artists to do the same for me.

Phoebe Huggett said...

One thing that stuck out to me was Marino not wanting to go into detail on how the costumes were often made or constructed and my question from that was mostly why, was it just a very lengthy answer that varied greatly by costume, I assume in many respects it did vary, or was it more of personally developed techniques that they did not want to share super openly? I’ve heard a couple times of people having their own way of making fake blood for instance that worked well, and other small things like that and those recipes and secrets seem to follow them around as they move and not always be super widespread. How much of the formulas we have for doing things have been around for a while? How many are made in house vs. by an outside company in terms of material, do those companies or those houses themselves innovate a ton or no?