Ahead of this weekend’s festivities, Pitt students are working to DIY certain parts of their 2026 Halloween costumes.
This Halloween, students are creating original pieces for costumes ranging from cartoon characters to recognizable memes. Many have found that repurposing pieces of clothing and crafting new ones has made their costumes more personal, allowing for stronger feelings of self-expression.
Will Lowell, a senior psychology major, will be going as his Star Trek fursona for Halloween. To create this costume, Lowell utilized his love for crocheting.
“I crocheted a full head, paws and a tail — it’s all freehand crochet, and it only took a total of about four weeks or so,” Lowell said.
Lowell began work on the costume in late July, in an effort to get it done before he was too busy with classes to work on it. The actual process required a lot of new techniques, according to Lowell.
“I bought a foam base of the head, and I was figuring out, in three-dimensional shape, how to crochet. I would take some notes randomly just to figure it out,” Lowell said. “I crocheted the fabric and then I glued it onto the foam after that.”
Lowell said he feels this costume perfectly encapsulates his personality and gives him an opportunity to show off his work.
“I just love to show it off and show my creativity with it,” Lowell said, “He’s a green dog, which I have green hair and I also just love dogs. Just everything about him — he’s handmade, crocheted, and I feel like it reflects a lot of my personality and interests with that.”
Mckenna Smith, a first-year biochemistry major, also took the opportunity to incorporate a hobby into her costume making this year, by styling a wig for her Misa Amane costume.
“I’ve styled many wigs in the past, and I used normal scissors to get the length right, then I used an eyebrow razor for the layers,” Smith said. “Synthetic hair holds styles by cooling rather than heating like human hair does, so to get the bangs and hairstyle to look right, I heat up the hair with my straightener then hold it into the shape I want as it cools down.”
Smith said she utilized Hillman’s Text & conText Lab to bind her own book for her costume.
“I began by choosing paper for the book and cutting it using a paper guillotine,” Smith said. “After that, I used a tool called a scoring bone to fold the sheets and organize them into groups of four called signatures. Next, I punctured each signature five times using a large needle and sewed them together with waxed thread.”
She decorated the book to resemble the Death Note that Misa carries by painting the name onto a book cover. The full costume took about a week and half to create, according to Smith.
Many students are doing multiple costumes this year, with a new costume for each day of festivities. Ally McAdams, a junior law and criminal justice major, is doing three different costumes this year — Catwoman, Toy Chica from “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and Fawn from “Tinkerbell.” Two of these costumes required McAdams to do some crafting.
“For Chica’s ‘Let’s Party’ bib, I got a T-shirt and I drew it all out with markers,” McAdams said. “Then for Catwoman, she wears a beanie with cat ears. I cut it and sewed it.”
These aspects of her costume took her “a couple of hours” because she had to handsew, according to McAdams.
Laura Wolf, a first-year psychology major, had to learn how to sew in order to create her costume.
“I’m doing the girl on the ‘Sorry for Party Rocking’ album cover, so I have to sew zebra print fabric onto fold over shorts,” Wolf said.
Lindsey Letran, a first-year public policy and economics major, has to DIY both an antennae for a butterfly costume and ears for a Paddington costume.
“I have my headbands, and then can glue pipe cleaner onto them, but they don’t have to look perfect because I guarantee you that it’s going to be in the dark anyways,” Letran said.
Ava Wahler, a first-year on the pre-physical therapy track, has invested close to $300 in her Frankie Stein, Poison Ivy and Lava Girl costumes this year. She bought most parts, but will have to create Lava Girl’s outfit herself.
“I have to put orange tape on a pink top and bottoms to make it look like lava,” Wahler said. “It’s mostly just trying to tape the orange in a way that looks like the broken lava.”
Karleigh Sage, a junior history and psychology major, found most aspects of her three costumes by thrifting.
“I’m trying to be very conscious of how I’m spending my money and going to thrift stores has been a big help because I’m not buying costumes, it’s just secondhand stuff,” Sage said.
Despite thrifting, Sage said she also has to DIY parts of her medieval princess costume, like the hennin, a large cone-like hat.
“I took a cardboard box, [bent] it at my will, and then I put paper around it and then I’m gonna put fabric around that, [and] a bunch of lace and little decorations on that,” Sage said.
Sage is excited to wear all three of her costumes, but her most anticipated is her costume based on the dog wearing a propeller hat meme.
“I just can’t wait to be flipping the little propeller and having a big lollipop on me,” Sage said. “That’s all I could dream of.”