Mariah Carey has revealed that it took “six grown men” to carry the train of the gold embellished dress she wears in her new Apple TV+ Christmas special.

The diva said the plunging dress with long sleeves and a thigh-high split weighed in at around 60 pounds and took 250 hours to bead.

In an appearance on ITV’s Lorraine on Friday to promote the special, Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues, she said: “You want to laugh? It required six grown men to carry the train of that dress to get me down the stairs.”

Lorraine then asked Carey if she “always” has half a dozen men helping her get around, to which the singer replied: “Sometimes it’s five, sometimes it’s six. It depends on the beading.”

Carey told Vogue in a separate interview that the gown is fully beaded, which took 250 hours to create.

She said: “Everybody was like, ‘Oh, she’s exaggerating’, until they held it for two seconds. The beading is not your average beading.

“The stones themselves were gigantic, but they still looked beautiful and shined. It was magnificent, but it hurt like a mother to wear it.”

Carey explained that the dress was “super tight” around the waist, which made if difficult “because you have to get your breath and sing”.

“But I’m used to that,” she added.

The songbird is often referred to as the “Queen of Christmas” and on Friday, her hit single “All I Want For Christmas Is You” became the first holiday single to ever receive the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Diamond Award.

Carey said in a statement that the “continued love for my song never ceases to amaze me and fill my heart with a multitude of emotions”.

“It blows my mind that ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ has endured different eras of the music industry,” she said. “The RIAA Diamond award?! Wowww! I’m so fortunate to have the greatest fans on Earth, my Lambily, who continue to support my legacy. I love you.”

Discussing why Christmas is such a joyful time of the year for her with Lorraine, Carey said it was about “more than just decorations and superficial stuff”.

“For me, some of the best moments – and I actually wrote about it in ‘Fall In Love With Christmas’, there’s a line that goes ‘And the candles glow, I’m awake but no one knows’.

“It’s me in my most private moments, just sitting in the house, looking at the decorations, it’s snowing outside, I’m by myself, everybody else is asleep,” she said.

“I get to take in what this year has been for me, how do I feel about it, how blessed do I feel to be able to do this at Christmas, because I grew up with nothing.”