What are you dressing up as for Halloween this year? Something common, like a vampire? A zombie? Maybe just a mask? Are you even dressing up? Well, for GLSD senior Ethan Apple, it has become a tradition to dress up, and not in just any old store bought costume.

Ever since Ethan can remember he’s been making his own costumes. “I think I’ve always made them.” Ethan recalls. “I don’t like store bought costumes. I think they’re ugly.” Going all the way back to before he was in school, to his senior year of high school, he has never failed to make a creative costume.

The process is never easy though, sometimes taking months to create. His mom however is always there to help him. “I’ll work on the hair and how to do the makeup and stuff. My mom will usually work on if we have to sew anything and more of the detail work on the costume. And if I’m ever really indecisive and it’s the last minute, my mom will tell me what to do.” When asked how Ethan would start the process he told us, “Usually I’ll start at the beginning of the year, and I’ll just kind of Google random characters from movies. Usually we start with most of the pieces coming from Goodwill. It’s like if I’m not going to wear something more than once, whatever’s good and affordable usually works. And sometimes we’ll go to the Halloween store and see the costume I’m trying to do. Sometimes we’ll even buy pieces that go to the costume and basically make them better.”

“My favorite costume was the half-man half-woman one.” Ethan says. “We started on that one mid September. So for that costume we needed a way to have jewelry and a strapless dress. And so I kinda thought that they need to look like they don’t have clothes on all the time, and I knew I needed to look like that, too, so we kind of started off there.” Ethan remembers. “So we went to a dancers workshop and all we could find was a white crop top. So we died it with tee to make it skin colored and ended up using that. We even used that one for the witch doctor one, too.” Ethan also told us, “We like to reuse the things that we put in the wigs.”

Some of Ethan’s previous costumes have included the Pillsbury Doughboy, a vampire, a headless man, an Oompa Loompa, a witch doctor, the halfman halfwoman, and Ghost Rider. “For the Oompa Loompa we used a lot of orange face paint. Then we used baseball pants and just put balloons in them to make the hips look really big.” Ethan laughingly said.

And as expected, each year also comes with a lot of people wanting him to make them a costume. “People have asked, and we’ve tried, but already making one costume is a lot. Unless they live with me, I really can’t because it’s like it’s custom made to each person. So because of that, we’ve never actually gone through with it.” Ethan said.

But, believe it or not Ethan has never won the contest in the Halloween parade. “I never get a chance to go to the actual contest because I have to be in the parade for band, which is kind of sad.” And even though he’s never won in the Halloween parade, he’s clearly still winning “Best Costume” here at Latrobe.

And I still had to ask something he gets commonly asked every year. “What are you going to be this year?” “This year we’re going to do Edward Scissorhands. I really wanted to make the hands and just dull some butter knives, but my mom went ahead and ordered some scissor hands, which will probably look really dumb, so I’m probably going to try to make them anyway.”

A lot of kids don’t dress up for Halloween, especially seniors, so what inspires Ethan to keep doing this. “At first it was just because I didn’t want to be the one person in the marching band that didn’t have a costume. And I definitely didn’t want to be that one kid that just wore black and orange or wear a trash bag and go as white trash. But then one of the band parents saw my costume and always loved seeing it so I would do it for them. But now I do it because I have to beat last years.”

But, since this is Ethan’s last year in school it could also mean his last year dressing up. “I hope to keep doing this in the future, though.” Ethan says. “I might actually go to the contest once I graduate high school and hopefully win it.” Ethan told us excitedly. “And even though I’ve already settled on what I want to do, I thought about going into costume design. I’d like to keep doing costume design though, to just keep doing costumes.” And with the amazing start that he’s already had, I’m sure it won’t be hard to continue his excellent work in the future.