How to Cosplay Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn

The time has nearly come for the release of the new Suicide Squad film on August 5th. It is already proving very popular in the land of Cosplay, with Margo Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Jared Leto’s Joker being favorites. Both characters are portrayed in a very different way to how they have been seen in the media before but many believe they now appear very modern rather than stuck in the past. This is the first time creators have totally gone away from the “traditional” Harlequin-type costume for Harley Quinn. Even in the Batman: Arkham series, she is still very much recognizable in a black and red leather ensemble.

I have put together this little guide as to how to get the best Harley Quinn cosplay outfit. While a lot of items can be bought commercially, I have also included ways of how to make them yourself for a more cost-effective costume.

Hair

If you’ve seen the trailers for the film (I guess you have otherwise you probably won’t be here) you will see that Harley Quinn has bleached blonde hair with pink and blue ends. If you don’t want to change your hair then, of course, you can buy a wig which already has all the color done for you. But if you want to make the change a bit more permanent, any good drug store will sell the hair bleach, and you can pick up semi-permanent hair dye or colored hairspray. In the past, I have used the Directions Semi-Permanent hair dye (used blue for a Sonic cosplay). Although they are in the UK, they do ship Worldwide, or you can find similar in your country.

Once you have made your hair into bunches and have the colors you want, make sure that you have a red and blue piece of ribbon to wrap around the hair ties. They go on the corresponding sides to the dye.

Makeup

The picture above shows perfectly how you should do your face makeup. Forgetting about the dark smudges, it clearly shows that you need to use a white foundation or face paint, bright red lipstick, red and blue eyeshadow, black eyeliner for top and bottom eyelids, black mascara, and an eyebrow pencil to make your eyebrows dark and defined. Don’t forget to smudge the eyeshadow!

On the image above you can also see that she has a black heart on her cheek bone. Also, she also has “ROTTEN” written on her right jaw line. Both of these can easily be done with a liquid eyeliner or sharp eye pencil.

Costume

Now to the interesting, and often most expensive, part — the clothes. Let’s start with her choker. Harley Quinn wears a white leather choker with the word “Puddin” in gold letters. Yes, there are many available on places like Ebay, but if you want to save your money, there are ways of making one yourself. All you need is a white foam sheet or a piece of wide white elastic and some velcro to do it up. The gold lettering can be done with a gold foam sheet. All these things would be available in your local hobby store.

Next, is her t-shirt. Once again, you can buy this already made from any good online retailer but what’s the fun in that huh? You need to get yourself a white t-shirt (preferably long sleeves), some red fabric paint, and either “Daddy’s Lil Monster” fabric transfer printed out or a black fabric pen. Now, using a Harley picture as a guideline, you need to mark out where the slogan is going to go and where you are going to paint the shirt red. There are two red lines on the sleeves as well so don’t forget that. Once that’s done and you’ve painted the top, you need to get rough and cut the collar of the shirt off, and the hem of the sleeves and make some holes in the belly part. Make it look a bit tatty. If you have it available, the right sleeve is slightly dyed blue. Many of the commercial shirts don’t have this, and I don’t think it is particularly necessary.

For Harley’s shorts, the easiest way to make them is to buy two pairs of matching shorts, one red and one blue. Unstitch each pair down the middle, so your shorts are now in half, and then take one of each color and sew them back together (please make sure you take one of each side rather than taking two left sections or 2 right).

The rest of the costume is relatively easy. She wears a black studded leather belt, black fishnet stockings with some holes and ladders in and white hi-heeled boots (although I’m sure that if you aren’t comfortable in heels, something like white Converse would also work well with the costume).

Baseball Bat

Harley’s weapon of choice is a baseball bat. You should easily be able to pick up foam or plastic prop baseball bat from somewhere like Ebay and then you just need to attack it with some Sharpie pens. A template for “Good Night” can be found on this website, and you can just use your imagination for the rest of the bat decoration. The diamonds have got to be on there, though. They are a Harley Quinn staple.

So, I hope I’ve given you enough information for you to go away and make your own Harley Quinn costume. Maybe you could wear it to The Suicide Squad premiere at your local movie theater? If you do make your outfit using this guide, be sure to tweet us a picture!