30 artists, 9 months and a ‘humongous’ head: What went into Heidi Klum’s Halloween costume
For Mike Marino, the visionary behind Heidi Klum’s 2024 Halloween costume, Halloween is more like “war” than a holiday, he says in an interview with TODAY.com.
“You basically prepare for some sort of extreme challenge. It’s never easy,” he says, speaking from his apartment the day after the party. “But that’s what we do. I’m one of the luckiest people in the world.”
The prosthetics designer and owner of Prosthetic Renaissance has worked with Klum on some of the model’s most recent larger-than-life costumes, which she wears for her annual Halloween parties.
Marino and Klum collaborated on turning her into an elderly version of herself in 2013; Jessica Rabbit in 2015; the wolf from the “Thriller” music video in 2017; Princess Fiona from “Shrek” in 2018 and more.
Requiring a team of 30 artists and nine months of planning, this year’s costume — E.T. from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 movie — might have been the most daunting yet.
But Klum, he says, was up for the challenge. “She doesn’t wimp out. She really goes for it,” he says.
Klum had the idea for an E.T. costume in 2023, Marino says, but they had to delay the plan for a year due to Marino’s schedule. He was busy turning Colin Farrell into the Penguin for HBO’s “The Penguin.”
“As a 9 year old in Germany, E.T. introduced me to the idea that there’s life outside planet earth. So for the last year, we all put our heads together to figure out how to put my own stamp on such an iconic character,” she wrote on Instagram of her inspiration.
Klum and her husband, Tokio Hotel guitarist Tom Kaulitz, were two different versions of the friendly extra-terrestrial. Klum’s costume was pulled from the moment Gertie dresses the alien up in a woman’s clothes; Kaulitz was the more classic E.T.
The costume had an animatronic element, too, so when Klum was interviewed on the red carpet, E.T.’s face seemed to mouth along. That was in fact Marino listening to the interview and lip-synching the costume’s blinks, head moves and mouth openings to her interview from backstage.
“Everything was hard, I swear,” he says of the costume. “Every every second is like, a heart attack. I can’t sleep for months, going like, ‘God, did we do this thing right? How is this thing going to fit? How are we going to balance the head?’”
Ah, the head: Of every hard part, Marino says the “hardest part” was balancing E.T.’s head atop Klum and Kaulitz’s.
The married couple’s actual faces were in the neck of E.T. Then the costume’s heads rested atop their own. Marino and his team had a few challenges. For one, to make the alien’s proportions right — a skinny neck and large head — the head had to be “humongous.” But it also had to be as lightweight as possible.
The team used a lightweight carbon fiber to get the volume and the weight capped at around 4 pounds (though Klum’s wig was another 4 pounds). To keep Klum and Kaulitz from tipping over, they embedded a piece of steel inside the carbon fiber, which attached to straps on their backs.
“So when the head goes on and it’s screwed in, it doesn’t fall over,” he says.
Still, it wasn’t exactly comfortable: “Wear 4 pounds on top of your head for hours, it’s going to hurt.”
The entire process began in January by taking a full-body scan of Klum and Kaulitz, which Marino’s team then 3D printed.
Traditionally, Marino says he would have sculpted the costume in clay — but not this time. He digitally sculpted the costume in the computer, “down to every detail,” then 3D-printed it. From there, they cast the molds of those 3D renderings into foam latex. Through that process, they were able to get “immense detail” that is not normally possible through 3D printing.
The molds were fitted onto a spandex suit that had straps and harnesses. Klum and Kaulitz’s faces were constructed using a softer foam that allowed for facial expressions.
“There’s so many puzzle pieces together, and then it’s all airbrushed by expert painters who airbrush every single line and detail and vein in it,” he says.
The day before Halloween, the team started a fitting, running through checklists and making sure the costume was painted correctly.
“The crazy thing is, if I didn’t do that day, the Halloween day would be in another five hours long,” he says.
Halloween day started around 11:30 a.m., and by 9:30 p.m., Klum and Kaulitz arrived to the party at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York.
At the red carpet, Marino designed another visual effect to make it seem like E.T. was shorter than everyone else without Klum and Kaulitz having to kneel. E.T.’s feet were attached to their knees. They created a platform where everyone else looked tall, but Klum looked short.
“She was thrilled. She was moonwalking onto the stage as E.T. She was screaming with joy, but we had to get it off pretty quickly. They were sweating profusely. Their head was falling over,” he says.
After the runway, Klum and Kaulitz spend 30 minutes each unzipping the bulk of the costume — and in doing so, cut off months of work.
Now, Marino is awaiting a text from Klum with next year’s idea.
“I’m the only one not in a costume at the party, thankfully, because I’m so tired and burned out and I’m worrying about Heidi the whole time. Halloween, I love makeup, and I love characters, but I’m glad not to be in it,” he says.
