From ET to Princess Fiona: Heidi Klum’s most unforgettable Halloween costumes at Heidiween
Just when you thought your Halloween costume couldn't get any better, Heidi Klum enters the chat.
For over two decades, the supermodel has hosted her star-studded celebrations in New York City, quickly earning a reputation as the ‘Queen of Halloween’ for her unrecognisable transformations.
Ahead of the 26th anniversary of Heidiween, Klum shared a series of sneak peeks on Instagram, asking fans: “What’s my costume?”
She also dropped a rather ominous hint during a chat with PEOPLE, teasing: “It goes very well with red wine. It’s very, very bloody.”
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Klum's annual party has a strict no-costume, no-entry rule, and that’s perhaps no surprise given the bar she sets each year…
Here's the full rundown on every costume she's donned for spooky season.
2025: Medusa
Klum put her own twist on the Greek mythology figure, with a dramatic look that took more than 15 people and six months to create.
“I wanted to explore the classic monsters of history, and reimagine one in a modern way,” she said to Vogue last year. “Medusa stood out to me as truly iconic - mysterious yet ferocious. The legend of her turning humans to stone has fascinated audiences for centuries.”
The intricate costume featured hand-painted green scales, extensive prosthetics, a custom split snake tongue and fangs, and a sculpted headpiece with mechanical snakes.
Klum’s husband, Tom Kaulitz, also appeared alongside her, painted head-to-toe in grey as a warrior turned to stone.
2024: E.T.
Klum’s 2024 costume was inspired by Steven Spielberg's 1982 science-fiction film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, recreating the scene where the alien attempts to disguise itself in human clothes.
Knowing that she ‘wanted to do something nostalgic’, Klum told Vogue: “It’s my favourite childhood movie of all time – I watched it a million times. It’s a movie that inspired me to dream and imagine the possibility of life beyond Earth.”
2023: Peacock
The Queen of Halloween went for a different approach in 2023 - recruiting a team of Cirque du Soleil acrobats to create a giant peacock ensemble.
"I was thinking a peacock because a peacock is kind of together with the feathers and then it opens up," Klum told ET. "I wanted to make an art performance out of it."
However, some fans were a little disappointed, claiming that it failed to live up to her outlandish costume from the year before (we’ll get to that…).
Kaulitz’s hilarious costume soon emerged as the un-egg-spected winner.
2022: Worm
Who could forget Klum’s disgustingly hyper-realistic earthworm costume? With only her eyes and mouth visible, it quickly became one of her most talked-about looks, given how downright bizarre it was.
Restricted by the prosthetics, Klum ended up lying on the floor of the event to answer questions from the press, accompanied by Kaulitz, who was (obviously) dressed as a bloodied fisherman.
“I like to do something unexpected, so I tried to think of a costume that is super absurd, but also very familiar,” Klum admitted to Vogue. “Because it is Halloween, you need the creepy factor, also a bit gross and disgusting.”
2019: Alien zombie
To mark the 20th anniversary of her annual Halloween bash, Klum sat in the window of the Amazon store on 34th Street in NYC so passersby could watch her 12-hour transformation into a gruesome alien-zombie.
In an interview with Vogue, Klum revealed: “The inspiration is Tokio Hotel, which is the band of my husband. They believe in aliens!”
2018: Princess Fiona
Klum ‘finally found her Shrek’ in 2018, morphing into Princess Fiona alongside boyfriend Tom Kaulitz as the big green ogre himself.
Admitting that she ‘kind of always wanted to be Fiona but never had the Shrek to do it with’, she gushed to ET: "I’ve done this many times, doing prosthetics and all of this stuff, so for him to go through this is pretty phenomenal.”
2017: ‘Thriller’ werewolf
The model paid tribute to the late Michael Jackson by dressing up as the werewolf from his legendary 1983 ‘Thriller’ video.
“It’s such a scary video. I think it also changed so much in our history, really - music videos as a whole,” Klum told Us Weekly.
Her seven-hour makeover was accompanied by a group of zombies, with Klum even performing the iconic dance routine before her party.
2016: Clones
Klum hit the red carpet of her 2016 party with five lookalikes in tow.
On the inspiration behind the idea, she said: “People always ask me, how do you do it all? You have four children, you travel around the world. You know, I have so many different jobs; I have three TV shows a year.
“So you know, I thought, I wish I could clone myself, sometimes. Wait a minute, light bulb, Halloween, and here we are.”
2015: Jessica Rabbit
Klum certainly did not disappoint as Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wearing full face and body prosthetics to recreate the character’s distinctive features.
“She is definitely an icon, and I always try to find someone people would recognise,” the model told Allure.
She even performed ‘Why Don't You Do Right?’, the song Jessica sings in the movie, at her Halloween party.
2014: Butterfly
Klum dressed as a beautiful rainbow butterfly back in 2014, complete with massive wings, body paint, bulging insect eyes and antennae.
Explaining why she opted for the look, she told E! News: “Someone very special to my heart called me a schmetterling [German word for butterfly], so I wanted to be a butterfly this year.”
2013: Elderly woman
Klum took Halloween to another level in 2013 by transforming into an old woman - grey hair, wrinkles, age spots, varicose veins, the lot.
“I loved it for myself to see what I'm going to look like, but also because I was turning 40 and people were always saying, ‘Wow, you're already 40, you're really old now. When are you going to stop modeling? When are you going to stop doing what you're doing?’” she told ET. “I'm like, ‘40 is not old, people!”
Klum added that she wanted to challenge those comments and show people what old really looked like.
2012: Cleopatra
Klum postponed her event in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy hit the US just days before Halloween, wreaking havoc on the East Coast.
Her ‘Haunted Holiday Party’ then took place in December, with proceeds going to the American Red Cross' relief efforts.
Klum embodied ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra in a gold floor-length gown, a lavish headdress and her face covered in Swarovski crystals.
2011: Skinless body
2011 was a huge year for Klum as she took her annual celebrations to both Las Vegas and New York City, which (of course) meant two extravagant looks.
Klum pulled off (quite literally) another epic transformation at her first party in Vegas, turning herself into a cadaver.
"I was thinking how it would look if I had all my skin ripped off, and so… voila!" she told reporters on the red carpet.
2011: Ape
Klum and her then-husband Seal dressed in matching ape costumes for her Halloween party in the Big Apple.
2010: Alien transformer
Klum towered over guests in an eight-foot-tall red-and-purple robot getup, complete with built-in stilts, glittering skin and coloured contact lenses.
“I really wanted to be very tall and I was walking on stilts. I had to learn how to walk on stilts for a week and then again I did my own makeup and I had to match the suit again and put all that colour on and then had sparkles. I mean, I had sparkles for days,” she later told ET.
2009: Crow
Klum donned an all-black feather ensemble with wings, an oversized beak mask, and thigh-high boots.
However, she later admitted the costume was far from practical, making it difficult to talk, drink or even see.
2008: Kali
Klum’s Kali costume became one of her most controversial Halloween transformations after it prompted criticism from Hindu communities.
She later reflected on it, telling ET: “I love India. I love Indian people. I love their culture. For me, for example, it was more showing one of their goddess and by no means did I want to disrespect anybody and their religion.”
2007: Cat
Klum kept it relatively simple in 2007, slipping into a catsuit, along with some whiskers and fangs.
The star also wore a cheeky collar which read 'If Lost, Please Return to Seal', referring to her then-husband Seal.
2006: Forbidden Fruit
Klum dressed as the forbidden fruit from the biblical story of Adam and Eve for her seventh annual Halloween bash.
It was actually a highly creative design strategy as she was eight months pregnant at the time.
“I wanted to make sure nothing can hurt the baby,” the Project Runway host later admitted to PEOPLE.
2005: Vampire
The model went to the dark side, going full gothic vampire. The dramatic look featured a cinched black corset, sheer cape, patent thigh-highs, long fangs and a fake bleeding heart.
Klum even revealed that she had to sew five wigs together to create the voluminous ‘do.
2004: Red witch
Klum put an original spin on the classic Halloween costume, sporting a long wig, witch's hat and shredded red dress, complete with skeleton bones and laced knee-high boots.
She had reportedly planned to fly into her 2004 party on a harness, but ran into a mechanical hitch and ended up getting stuck mid-air.
2003: Alien
Klum turns things up a notch in 2003, head-to-toe in gold for an extraterrestrial-inspired look.
And, of course, she made a dramatic entrance in a spaceship, because what else would you expect?
2002: Betty Boop
This year, the TV star channelled Betty Boop in a strappy red dress, matching stilettos, long gloves and a black wig styled into the character's signature curls.
As well as the bold makeup and silver accessories, Klum completed the look with some fangs - it was Halloween after all!
2001: Lady Godiva
Klum paid tribute to the 11th-century English noblewoman by arriving at her 2001 party on horseback.
Reflecting on the look in 2019, she told Entertainment Tonight: “My costume was not the best. Some of the makeup that I did wasn't as great and some of the costumes obviously because I didn't know these people at the time and I was kind of doing it by myself as good as I could.”
2000: Zombie doll
Klum hosted her first-ever Halloween party in 2000, in what is now a relatively tame costume - something she described as a ‘traditional dirndl in patent leather with pigtails’.
Revealing where the idea came from in a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she said: “When I moved to America, I immediately fell in love with Halloween and the spookiness of it. All that was missing was a fantastic party. It felt like a real opportunity for me.”
Happy Heidiween!
Topics: Celebrity, Heidi Klum, Halloween
Lauren Wilkins