Cirque du Soleil artisans spent more than 700 hours building a transforming pumpkin-and-jester costume for her circus-themed Las Vegas bash.
Megan Thee Stallion does not do Halloween halfway. For this year’s Hottieween, the annual bash she has turned into one of the season’s most anticipated nights, the Houston rapper teamed up with Cirque du Soleil on a costume that blurred the line between party look and full stage production.
The celebration landed in Las Vegas under a circus theme called Thee Circus Is Coming, and Megan arrived dressed for the part in a towering orange, black and white creation designed by Miodrag Guberinic, known to colleagues as Mio.
Inside the Cirque du Soleil Collaboration
Guberinic explained that the design pulled from several Cirque du Soleil productions and the dramatic wardrobes the company is famous for, then bent those influences into something whimsical that fit squarely inside Megan’s own universe.
The numbers behind it are staggering. A team of 23 artists poured more than 700 hours into the piece, working through more than 50 yards of fabric. The finished look included a voluminous skirt, a statement headpiece and multiple layers built to come off over the course of the evening.
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How the Pumpkin Skirt Came Together
Pumpkins were not a random choice. Guberinic noted that Megan has long worked pumpkin imagery into her Halloween posts on social media, so the team built the look around it. The result was a giant origami-style skirt made of 12 panels, each standing close to six feet tall, crafted from more than 400 square feet of custom-printed, hand-painted material.
Thirteen 3D-printed jester faces, designed to resemble eerie jack-o’-lanterns, decorated the skirt. At its center sat the main jester head, nicknamed Geronimo. One accordion-style sleeve alone required 120 individually patterned pieces, a detail that helps explain why the project ate up so many hours.
Megan Thee Stallion Asked for More Skin
When Megan first saw the mock-up at Guberinic’s New York studio, she could not contain herself. Gabriel Dubé-Dupuis, Cirque du Soleil’s creative director, recalled that she screamed the moment she walked into the room and started snapping photos and video of herself with the costume before the fitting had even begun, as giddy as a kid.
Still, the star known for confidently showing off her figure had one note. She wanted the look to be sexier and more revealing, Guberinic said, so the team opened up the design to show more skin.
She also wanted versatility. Rather than a costume that worked only for a grand entrance at the club, Megan pictured herself wearing it all night long while partying with guests, Dubé-Dupuis said. That vision shaped the final build, as more than 50 magnets allowed the skirt to separate into four sections, letting her shed pieces as the night went on.
Megan called the collaboration an amazing experience, praising the preparation, creativity and attention to detail behind it and saying it set the perfect tone for another unforgettable celebration.
Hottieween Caps a Banner Year
The costume arrived at the end of a year in which Megan has seemingly been everywhere. In March, she made her Broadway debut as Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, a role that led to her both performing and presenting at this year’s Tony Awards. In late October, she headlined the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, and last week she released a new EP, Tina Tuesday Freestyles.
For fans who have watched the Grammy winner build her career on her own terms, the Cirque partnership is another sign of how far her reach now extends, from hip-hop to Broadway to one of the most famous live entertainment companies in the world.
Horror, but Make It Hot Girl
Megan launched Hottieween in 2019, and the event has since been held in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and her hometown of Houston. Her past costumes have leaned into her love of genre film, including a talking flower from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Pinhead from Hellraiser, the anime hero Mirko from My Hero Academia and Greta from Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
She told Jennifer Hudson last year that she has always been drawn to scary movies, horror and thrillers, joking that she would have turned Freddy Krueger into a sexy version of the slasher if she could have figured out how. Her guiding idea, she explained, is to take horror and give it a hot girl twist.
The party also carries a purpose beyond the spectacle. A portion of the proceeds from this year’s Hottieween will benefit her Pete & Thomas Foundation.
Source: CNN
