One of the most iconic symbols of the Playboy Club was its waitstaff: a throng of women known, and dressed, as Bunnies. Much like the clubs themselves, the magazine whose name they shared, and the man who created all of it, the outfits worn by the Playboy Bunnies were a blend of provocative and old-fashioned. Since its debut, the Bunny suit—a strapless bodysuit paired with rabbit ears and a fluffy tail—has become a cartoonish cliché of female sexuality, serving as a visual punchline in Bridget Jones’s Diary, Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, The House Bunny, and a host of other rom-coms. But the Bunny’s erotic allure was as much of a tease as the stuffing that so often filled out the D-cups of her costume. Her skimpy suit promised further revelations that never came; her cuddly demeanor concealed the Bunnies’ intensive training, strict disciplinary policies, and astronomical paychecks. And if feminists are still arguing over whether the Bunny suit was constricting or liberating, it’s because it was designed to be both.

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According to Kevin Jones, the curator of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) Museum, Hefner originally wanted the club’s waitresses to wear short, frilly nighties inspired by the Ziegfeld Follies girls—the sex symbols of his youth. But, as recounted in Kathryn Leigh Scott’s memoir The Bunny Years, Playmate Ilse Taurins—who was dating the company’s promotions director, Victor Lownes—pointed out that all those flimsy layers would be impractical for serving drinks and lighting cigarettes. It was her idea to dress the waitresses as distaff versions of the magazine’s masculine logo. The rabbit became a Bunny, and an icon was born (and quickly patented—a first for a service uniform).

The first prototype—a satin one-piece worn over a prefab Merry Widow corset and paired with rabbit ears and a fluffy tail—looked too much like a bathing suit. A few snips of the scissors raised the leg opening, elongating the legs, accentuating the crotch, and removing any resemblance to swimwear. Hefner himself insisted on adding the criss-cross lacing at the top of the leg, said Jones, who has a Bunny suit in his museum’s collection. Though the laces were purely decorative—they couldn’t be untied or loosened—they revealed that much more skin, and suggested the tantalizing possibility of a wardrobe malfunction. A rosette name tag at the right hipbone and dyed-to-match satin pumps completed the outfit. But it was the addition of a man’s tuxedo collar, bow tie, and cuffs in 1961 that pushed the Bunny suit into pop-culture legend.

“Everybody has this idea that [the club] was very sexually liberated,” Jones told me. In reality, it was pretty tame—a place for flirting at most. So were the Bunnies. The wife of one keyholder declared the average Bunny to be “so darn nice and respectable, you’d even let your brother marry her.” Nevertheless, the blend of overpriced cocktails and underdressed waitresses proved to be a winning formula. Clubs multiplied like rabbits; eventually, there would be more than 30 Playboy-branded clubs worldwide, in addition to casinos and resorts.