Ilsa Taurins, who was dating Lownes at the time, looked at the magazine's logo and suggested, "Why not dress them as rabbits?" Even though Hef had initially rejected the idea, Taurins tinkered with a costume design and had her mother sew one together. A few days later she entered the half-finished Chicago Club in a satin bodice, fluffy tail and headband with ears, and a new sex symbol was born.
Hef was hands-on about the way his Bunnies looked -- he even trademarked their famous outfit. The suit itself showed just enough skin to be sexy but stay innocent, a visual symbol of Hef's "Look but don't touch" policy with the Bunnies, who were not allowed to date Playboy Club members (also called Keyholders) until 1975.
In 1962 Playboy hired French seamstress Renée Blot to perfect the suit. She took the original design and -- after input from Hef -- added a bow tie and shirtcuffs, reduced the size of the ears, cinched the waist and bumped up the cleavage size to a generous D-cup. The ultra-stiff cup, made from the same foam rubber as car seats, required some Bunnies to fill in the holes with everything from rolled-up socks to cut-up bunny tails. "All of us had to stuff our bras," says Kathryn Leigh Scott, author of The Bunny Years and three-year alumna of the New York Club. "There were very few of us who could simply zip themselves into that costume without any sort of padding."
Hugh Hefner surrounded by a dozen of the Chicago Playboy
Club's Bunnies in 1960. Photo by Don Bronstein
But the true art of the suit was in the details. "A lot of thought went into this costume," says Pat Lacey, Director of Playmate and Bunny Promotions for Playboy and a 13-year veteran of the L.A. Club. "There are so many things that people don't realize that were really thought out so that a Bunny could perform her job very easily and at the same time remain glamorous and graceful."
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