- [Voiceover] Dustin McLean, Claire Max, and Benjamin Martin
experts in the world of cosplay and DIY.
Masters of duct tape, cardboard, and hot glue.
Together they are the DIY Costume Squad!
- Hey everybody, it's Claire,
and on today's episode I'm going to use some
thrifted materials, some craft store supplies,
to show you guys how to make Leeloo Dallas'
orange suspender outfit from The Fifth Element.
So let's give it a shot.
All right, so this is the costume that I am making.
It consists of a white crop top and then she's also got
these orange, rubber suspenders, and a pair of
golden-ish pants which are really tight fitting,
kind of like leggings.
And then she's got this wide belt that kind of
sits slung over the hips.
I'm gonna start with the shirt.
I went to the thrift store and I found this top
for a $1.95, pretty great deal.
And I chose this one because it has, you can kind of see,
the same rib knit pattern that her top has.
I am going to put this on.
I'm gonna pin it up around my body so that I can
take it in a little bit,
and then I'm going to cut the sleeves short
and cut the body of it short.
I'm gonna fold it in half so I make sure that the
sleeve is the same on the other side.
It's time to take it over to the sewing machine
and give it a little bit of hemming.
If you do not have a sewing maching,
or you're not comfortable sewing, you could
stitch this by hand, you could glue it, you could tape it,
there are lots of other ways you could make it work
if you really had to, but because I have it,
I'm gonna use it. (machine whirs)
And the final step is to hem the sleeves.
I'm gonna do that with a zig-zag stitch on the machine
so that the fabric can still stretch.
Ta-da.
Now I'm gonna move on to the pants.
I got these leggings at a cheapo fabric store for
$5.99, and bonus, they are butt lifting.
All right, so I have my pants on now,
they are extremely comfortable, which is always a plus.
I'm gonna go ahead and add the lines using
a fabric tape, so this is a really flexible tape,
it's about $15 bucks for the roll.
Ah, tape is so sticky.
And I'm doing it while I have them on not only so
I can make sure the lines are in the right place,
but also because now they're stretched out.
If I were to put this one while they weren't stretched out,
and then try to stick my leg in there, it's not gonna work.
I decided once I took these off that they need
a little bit of help staying in place,
so I'm gonna add a little bit of hot glue.
(energetic, mysterious music)
All right, and the last step to this costume is to make
the infamous orange suspenders.
Her real suspenders in the movie are made out of
silicone rubber, but that takes a lot of
specialty materials, molding, casting,
it's expensive and complicated.
We're gonna skip all that and we're going to use
an old favorite of mine, this is craft foam.
It's usually in the children's section of the craft store.
This package of foam comes with about 10 sheets
and it was about five dollars.
I am going to take some measurements of myself,
and then I'm going to draw out a pattern on some
brown craft paper, I get this at the post office.
It's a few dollars per roll.
I'm gonna use my measurements and go ahead
and draw this bad boy out.
(laughs) Don't eat pins, cat.
So I'm using a thread spool or any round object
that's the right size to trace where the
hole shaped cut outs are going to go.
Hole shaped? (laughter)
(energetic, mysterious music)
All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and move on to the back.
(energetic, mysterious music)
Undercover cat producer.
Now I'm gonna tape both together and try it on.
Not half bad, it'll look better when it's not paper.
Let's get it transferred onto foam.
So these foam sheets, obviously, aren't big enough
to cut the whole piece out of.
We're gonna have to piece them together.
I have here my trusty X-Acto knife.
This is my preferred method of cutting foam rather than
scissors, because scissors can sometimes make
jagged lines that are really easy to see on foam.
(energetic, dramatic music)
So, it's a whole lot of cutting out circles
one by one, kind of tediously,
but once they're all done, I will be able to attach
all the pieces of the suspenders together.
(energetic, mysterious music)
All right, so here are my assembled suspenders,
and now we are ready to prep them for paint.
Sort of weird, like, "What is that?"
So I'm starting out with a gray primer,
because the foam is a few different colors
and I want an even base so the paint goes on evenly.
All right, so now that our primer is dry,
we're ready for the color, this is some flourescent orange,
and it was about five dollars.
(air hissing)
All right, so while that's drying, I'm going to make
another special, little, accessory, the multipass.
For this, I'm gonna have some help from my friend Dustin,
I think I hear him coming now.
- I've been hiding back here.
All right, multipass time.
- What do you have for me?
- First of all, I Photoshopped together just the graphics
and printed that out. - [Claire] Perfect.
- So that's ready to go, and then,
also just made a little template for you.
Just while I had the sizing.
I just looked at pictures online and stuff,
Went through my junk box and found some cool, little tidbits
a little piece of wire. - [Claire] Awesome.
- And the end of an old flashlight.
Got some yellow spray paint, and some glue,
and some wire cutters.
That's a full multipass packet ready to go.
I'll just be hanging out back here.
- Thank you so much, Dustin.
(energetic, suspenseful music)
So now that I have these pieces done,
I'm gonna take them outside and spray them with the
same gray primer that I used before.
So now I'm gonna use this little flashlight piece
that Dustin gave me.
I'm gonna take out the little, plastic lens
that's on the inside, and that is going to become
this little, yellow gem here.
(energetic, dramatic music)
Multipass.
All right, so now that we have the completed costume,
it's time to try the whole thing on.
The last few finishing touches are a belt.
I got this at Goodwill for four dollars,
And some boots which I already had.
(energetic, dramatic music)
This is the strangest outfit. (laughs)
All right, not bad for a day's work.
I know Leeloo doesn't have pink hair.
For now, let's go show the guys.
- Are you ready to check out Claire's Leeloo Dallas?
- Should be here any minute. - [Dustin] She's coming.
There we go, all right.
- Hey guys. - [Dustin] Looking awesome.
- That is awesome. - [Dustin] Nice wig too.
- Thank you, thanks to my friend Meredith for lending me
the very legit Leeloo wig.
- That is a proper wig, you could probably make your own.
You could just use the same spray paint
and chop one up, but this is looking great.
- What are the suspenders here?
- [Claire] They are made of craft foam.
- Nice, and you got your multipass.
- Got my multipass.
- I helped out a little on that one.
- Thanks Dustin.
- [Dustin] It functions too, right?
- It's totally functional.
I could get on board a spaceship with this.
- So how much did this cost?
- The whole thing was under 40 dollars,
which is pretty amazing.
- That's pretty awesome. - [Claire] Yeah.
All right, so, thank you guys so much for watching,
make sure you subscribe to Mashable.
Next week we have Ben making- - [Benjamin] Megaman.
- All right, Megaman.
- Make sure you check it out, make sure you leave
comments, if you have any suggestions for costumes
you wanna see us make, hit us up for sure.
- All right, guys, here we go. - [Claire] Okay.
- Costume Squad, away. - [Claire] Go.
- Away, team. - [Claire] Whoosh.
(energetic, suspenseful music)