Playboy Bunny

According to Hugh Hefner, the Bunny was inspired by Bunny's Tavern[4] in Urbana, Illinois.

Bunny's Tavern was named for its original owner, Bernard "Bunny" Fitzsimmons, who opened for business in 1936. Serving daily food specials for a mere thirty-five cents, as well as ten-cent draft beers, Bunny's catered to locals and University of Illinois students alike. One of those students (in the late 1940s) was Hugh Hefner.

Hefner 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.

Bunny's Tavern's usage of the outfit is considered a variant of showgirl costume.

Playboy Bunny waitresses at a Playboy Club, Brazil, 2009

The original Playboy Bunny was created by the mother of Ilse Taurins, a Latvian émigrée who was dating one of the Playboy Club co-founders at the time, Victor Lownes Ill. Ms. Taurins had suggested a costume modeled after the Playboy Magazine trademark: a rabbit or bunny. She had her mother, who was a seamstress, make up a prototype, which was then 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....

They wore corsets laced very tightly. It had to be at least two inches smaller than their normal waist

At first, the outfit was underwhelming, looking much like a one piece swimsuit, with a white yarn puff tail and a headband with bunny ears. However, Hefner reportedly saw promise in it and suggested modifications to make it more visually appealing, such as cutting the leg much higher on the hip, exposing more of the wearer's leg and sharpening the v-shape of the costume. 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, and adding a collar with bow tie and 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, one taupe toned over which was another pair in black.

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, and this contradicts the origin recounted in much earlier publications such as the books "Big Bunny" by Joe Goldberg (1967) and "The Bunny Years" by Kathryn Leigh Scott (1998).[5][6][7]

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).[8][9][10]

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.[15] 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".[16] 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.[17][18]

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."[19]

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, 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.[20] The last printed issue of the magazine, in 2018, featured the five Bunnies of the period on the cover.[21]

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).