The Masked Singer UK’s costume designer has revealed that Dressed Crab is the heaviest costume, admitting that he’s amazed that the celebrity under the mask hasn’t collapsed on stage. Last night, the seven remaining stars of the ITV show – Bear, Bush, Dressed Crab, Kingfisher, Pufferfish, Snail and Wolf – performed in the hope of making it through to the next round before the elimination. Dressed Crab has been one of the standout performers since the beginning, previously astounding the audience with renditions of Lean On Me, Let’s Groove and Are You Gonna Go My Way.

During a recent conversation with Metro, costume designer Tim Simpson, who’s the creative director of Plunge Creations, spoke in further detail about the crustacean’s costume, which boasts ornate red ruffles from top to bottom in a flamenco dress-style. Tim confirmed that the character has the ‘heaviest’ of all of the costumes on this year’s series, weighing an impressive £14kg. For reference, that’s around the equivalent of a medium-sized dog, or several gallons of milk.

‘I would say Dressed Crab is the heaviest. It’s got a huge crinoline, which essentially comes up to your chest, which is a fairly excessive height for a crinoline frame to come up to,’ he shared. ‘It’s a big hoop frame, and then there’s lots and lots and lots of fabric in it. So yeah, I think Crab needs quite a bit of strength from the performer. ‘Even just the pincers with their movement, that’s a big, heavy thing to have on the end of your arm.’.

Haven’t not known which celebrity was hidden in Dressed Crab’s costume when it was being made, Tim added that whoever was under the mask was ‘giving it a lot of energy in order to both perform in it, sing in it and not collapse on stage’. ‘None of them collapse on stage, I’m always amazed,’ he said. ‘We still haven’t had a point where somebody’s actually turned around and gone, “I’m going to drop,”, because they’re hot and they’re restrictive and they’re weird and they’re claustrophobic and yet, the performers just soldier on.’.

In 2023, Tim revealed to Metro that Knitting – who turned out to be Steps singer Claire Richards – boasted the heaviest costume of the year. ‘It’s probably bordering on about 20 kilos. It’s a heavy thing. I think Knitting was the heaviest,’ the costume designer said at the time. On top of the weight, Tim revealed that just under 350 metres of wool was used to create Knitting. The previous series, the heavy Robobunny was ‘quite a formidable thing for the performer to wear’, aka Westlife’s Mark Feehily.

‘They’re not only dealing with a really big costume, where they can only see out past a bunny rabbit’s ears, they’re also trying to make sure that bunny rabbit comes alive and sings,’ Tim said, after explaining the puppet mechanism of the rabbit’s mouth moving during performances. ‘So I think Robobunny has the toughest call in the costumes overall. And they’re just absolutely rocking it.’.

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