Playboy Bunny

The founder and majority share holder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, has stated that the idea for the Playboy bunny was inspired by Bunny's Tavern in Urbana, Illinois. Bunny's Tavern was named after the original owner Bernard "Bunny" Fitzsimmons, who opened the restaurant publicly in 1936. Bunny's Tavern also employed the use of bunny outfits on its waitressing staff, in a variant of showgirl costume.

Bunny's tavern catered to locals and University of Illinois students with their low prices, featuring daily food specials for thirty-five cents and ten-cent draft beers. Hugh Hefner was a University of Illinois student who frequented Bunny's tavern in the late 1940s, and he formally acknowledged the origin of the Playboy Bunny in a letter to Bunny's Tavern, which is now framed and on public display in the bar.

Playboy Bunny waitresses at a Playboy Club, Brazil, 2009

The original Playboy Bunny costume was designed by the mother of Ilse Taurins, who was a Latvian émigrée. At the time, Ms Taurins was dating one of the Playboy Club co-founders, Victor Lownes III.

Ms. Taurins had suggested a costume modeled after the Playboy Magazine trademark, either a rabbit or bunny, and she had her seamstress mother make a costume prototype. The prototype was reviewed at a meeting attended by Playboy Club co-founders Hugh Hefner, Victor Lownes and Arnold Morton, as well as frequent Playboy illustrator LeRoy Neiman.

The outfits were not received well by the co-founders initially but Hefner advised that it could work once changes were made. The initial costume looked similar to a one piece swimsuit, with a white yarn puff tail and a headband with bunny ears, and Hefner suggested cutting the leg higher on the hip to expose more of the leg, and sharpening the v-shape of the costume. His suggested modifications were in an attempt to make the costumes more visually appealing, and the tightly-laced corsets added to the feminine appeal, cinching in the Bunnys' waits by at least two inches.

For mass production, the costume was manufactured for the Playboy Clubs by the Chicago-based Kabo Corset Company, and was based upon a "merry widow" style of corset within their line.

Later, in 1962, French fashion designer Renee Blot was retained to refine the design, and her revisions included making the ears smaller, adding a collar with bow tie & cuffs with rabbit-head cufflinks, and a satin rosette with the bunny's name, worn on the hip. The original costumes were made in 12 colours of rayon satin. Several years later, Playboy engaged a prominent manufacturer of lingerie and swimwear to create a modified bunny costume that used washable stretch knit fabrics, allowing for costumes in vibrant prints as well as solid colors. The standard stockings also evolved from fishnet material to a special sheer pantyhose style supplied by Danskin. Bunnies wore two pair of these sheer stockings, a black pair worn on top of a taupe toned pair.

Since 2013, a story has circulated attributing the original design of the Playboy bunny costume to New York fashion designer Zelda Wynn Valdes, however, there is no evidence to support this. This is also contradicted by recounts in much earlier publications such as "Big Bunny" by Joe Goldberg (1967) and "The Bunny Years" by Kathryn Leigh Scott (1998).[4][5][6]

The bunny costume became a powerful symbol of the Playboy Clubs, and it was also the first commercial uniform to be registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (U.S. trademark registration number 0762884).[7][8][9]

The treatment of Playboy Bunnies was exposed in a piece written by Gloria Steinem and reprinted in her 1983 book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.[14] The article featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. The article was published in 1963 in Show magazine as "A Bunny's Tale".[15] Steinem has maintained that she is proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the Bunnies and especially the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law.[16][17]

Clive James wrote of the "callous fatuity of the selection process" and observed that, "to make it as a Bunny, a girl need[ed] more than just looks. She need[ed] idiocy, too."[18]

The costume is popular in Japan, where it has lost much of its association with Playboy and is accordingly referred to simply as the "bunny suit" or "bunny girl outfit". It is commonly featured in manga and anime; notable examples of characters who have been depicted wearing it include Haruhi Suzumiya, Kallen Stadtfeld of Code Geass, Bulma of Dragon Ball, Haruko Haruhara of FLCL, and the unnamed protagonist of the Daicon III and Daicon IV Opening Animations. The outfit is alluded to in the title of the series Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, and the character Mai Sakurajima is seen wearing one in its first episode. The suit is also popularly depicted in anime and manga fan art and merchandise, even for characters who are never seen wearing it in official works. While bunny suits are most frequently worn by female characters, they are occasionally worn by male characters, usually for comic effect.

In Brazil, there are no Playboy Clubs, but Playboy's Brazilian division has Bunnies who attend its events. For most of the 2000s, the official Bunnies were currently three, and they were also Playmates—both separately, and together in the cover pictorial for the December 2008 edition.[19] The last printed issue of the magazine, in 2018, featured the five Bunnies of the period on the cover.[20]

Bunnies should not be confused with Playboy Playmates, women who appear in the centerfold pictorials of Playboy magazine, although a few Bunnies went on to become Playmates and vice versa (see below).