Who invented the Playboy Bunny?
Hugh Hefner invented the Playboy Bunny. Playboy magazine had run a pictorial article on Chicago’s Gaslight Club. In response to that article, over 3,000 readers letters flooded into the Playboy office asking how they could join this exclusive key club. Victor Lownes, a Playboy Executive suggested to Hefner that Playboy should open a night club of it’s own. Hefner immediately saw the commercial and promotional benefits. But also the personal ones: it is good for the ego to sit in your own nightclub as King Playboy. Plans for a Playboy Club were begun in 1959. But the beautiful Bunny was not yet born. Seeking to maximize on the image Playboy was most famous for, it’s Playmates, initial talk centred on dressing the Playboy Club’s hostesses in revealing negligees and calling them ‘Playmates’. But during a night-out, Victor Lownes’ then girlfriend, Ilse Taurins, suggested to Hefner the idea of dressing the hostesses in the image of the tuxedoed Playboy Rabbit character. This Raffles Rabbit
