Very few people are famous enough to host an annual party that assumes legendary status. Elton John with his now defunct White Tie and Tiara Ball is one. The author Jeffrey Archer and his shepherd’s pie and Krug dos of old is another. And so too is Heidi Klum with her annual Halloween bash. Indeed, her 2019 appearance as an alien was utterly gobsmacking.
“I spent ten hours in prosthetics and make-up,” the German supermodel says. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked better.”
However, it was the first Halloween party she threw, in 2000, that is the subject of renewed interest. It was themed, according to some papers, as a “hookers and pimps” affair. Photos of the night show Ghislaine Maxwell there too.
“Wait, who called my party a ‘hookers and pimps’ event?” asks Klum darkly when I raise it with her. “That is disturbing and quite rude. I never even have a theme for my parties. It’s just a Halloween event. I bet that was the tabloids. Secondly, I was wearing a traditional German dirndl, not dressed like a hooker.”
Oh dear. Klum up to this point has been very open and friendly but she does sound a bit put out. Anyway, at this party, at which traditional Bavarian outfits were showcased, the Duke of York and Maxwell were present.
“It was my very first party and I was very excited to meet a prince. To be honest, I had 50 friends there—but everyone else, I have no idea who invited them or him. Obviously you get more press when someone like that comes, so I was pleased, but others arranged it. And he was nice as far as I could tell from saying, ‘Hi, nice to meet you’.”
What do you feel about him now?
“It’s hard to know what to think. The story is still unfolding and I’m watching it just like you.”
Klum is at her home in Bel Air and we are talking on Zoom. Her children (daughters Leni, 17, and Lou, 12, and sons Henry, 16, and Johan, 15) are at school and she is about to head off to film an episode of Germany’s Next Top Model, which she hosts and on which she is also the lead judge. But we are here to discuss her new venture in which she mixes again with royalty, this time from the world of hip hop. Klum has recently recorded a song, Chai Tea with Heidi, with the rapper Snoop Dogg.
“I’m on the 17th season of my TV show and we needed a new theme song. Before we have had Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. This time someone said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ And so I thought which artist do I most admire in the world? Snoop Dogg! And I see him around the city, so I called him.”
Wait a sec. Klum was married to the British singer Seal for eight years (and he’s the father of her children) and is now hitched to Tom Kaulitz from the German rock band Tokio Hotel. Won’t they take it amiss that all the while Klum was a closet gangster-rap fan?
“Oh no. Tom wrote the song with his DJ partner and Snoop rapped on it. And Seal has the most amazing voice of all time. I mean that. I still think he has the most incredible voice.”
Has Seal given her any feedback?
“No, he hasn’t. The kids might have played him the song when they went over to stay with him at his place but… he hasn’t mentioned it.”
You have to admire Klum. She’s game for anything but comes across as remarkably unstarry. It possibly explains how she has survived in the world of modeling for so long.
She grew up near Cologne. Smiley, sporty and tall with what she still calls “child-bearing hips”, she won a contract in 1992 and found global stardom despite her “cheerleader” demeanor and body shape being out of tune with the listless, androgynous aesthetic of the time.
She recently appeared on the US chat show Ellen wearing a pink latex miniskirt. “I’ll still be wearing miniskirts when I’m 90,” she says. “But that one—I did make a small mistake in thinking I could easily sit down in it.”
Most viewers saw a middle-aged supermodel having fun. However, she does attract trolls. Klum is a former Victoria’s Secret “angel” with numerous fashion and TV interests behind her reputed multimillion-pound fortune. Forbes listed her 2020 earnings at $39.5 million. Some say she should be pushing the message that getting older is OK (Klum is 48), that the forever-young ideal can feel like a pressure to some women.
“That’s why I’ve had to turn the comments off on my social media,” she says. “Some people say mean things to me. Or else they say mean things to each other, which is in some ways worse. They are coming onto my platform and fighting among themselves and I don’t want to be the person fueling that hatred. I have an ‘If I don’t like something then move on’ type of outlook. The planet is big enough for everyone as long as you’re not hurting anybody. They should take their negativity elsewhere because I am definitely not trying to tell any woman they need to be this or that. That’s not me.”
She certainly carries off the vampy look in previews of her new video with Snoop Dogg (he gets to wear an enormous orange fur stole). “I know I don’t look 20 any more but inside, my spirit, my heart, my joy for life is the same. Sure there are jeans I can no longer get into.”
She’s not permanently committed to glamour, she says. Once work is done, she comes home, throws her bag down and puts a clip in her hair, all that changes. “Yes, the coiffed woman is Heidi but at home I put a clip in my bangs and become Helga, and that is the real me, more chilled and relaxed.”
Klum is certainly resilient. Her divorce from Seal was surprising since the pair went to the trouble of regularly renewing their vows. She then married Kaulitz, who is a big star in Germany and 16 years her junior.
“German men are the best,” she says, chuckling.
That might disappoint her British fans, I say.
“Oh there’s absolutely no problem with British men. The best thing I learnt from them is how to make a good cup of PG Tips.”
During lockdown, her husband worked in the home recording studio. Meanwhile, she swam 20 laps of her pool each morning, worked out in her home gym and tended vegetables in her patch at home. The four children, she says, did a lot of art in the garden.
The best weekends, she says, are spent hanging out in what she calls the “cute backyard” (Chez Klum is 11,000 sq ft set in four acres with a swimming pool overlooking LA), with a barbecue.
“I always wanted a big family and I got what I dreamt of. The best times are having all the children and all their friends over, plus Tom and my brother- in-law, and putting steak, chicken and corn on the cob on the fire. And then I go to the vegetable patch, which I love, and get things for a salad. But the best delicacy is sausage—it took me ages to find a place in LA that sells the good ones. But I found it! I found my perfect German sausage!”
As we end our conversation, Klum is off to see the final cut of her music video and, if the collaboration is successful, she is open to doing more.
But she is wary. Any parent of teenagers knows they can be the cruelest judges. “Teenagers—oh my god—they are totally honest. They have no filter. I can be having a good day and feeling positive and one of them will say, ‘Mum, you’re showing a bit of muffin top.’ They will always tell me if I’m going too far.”
Heidi Klum’s perfect weekend
Snoop or Jay-Z? Snoop
Cosy night in or night on the tiles? Cosy night in
Mini or maxi dress? Mini. I’ll be wearing one when I’m 90
Dancefloor or holding up the bar? Dancefloor
I couldn’t get through my weekend without… My family
