NEW YORK (AP) – The tightly corseted Playboy Bunnies, with rabbit tails and ears, will soon be back in business in New York City.
Three decades after the original Playboy Club closed in Manhattan, an apparent victim of changing American tastes and views on women, a new one will debut later this year in a hotel a few blocks from Times Square.
The club on West 42nd Street “will be one of the most chic and sophisticated venues in the world,” promises Playboy Enterprises spokesman John Vlautin.
It will have a lounge, a restaurant, a game room and, of course, the Bunnies, though with updated outfits. Other Playboy clubs are already operating in London, the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and several places in India. Another is set to open in the spring in Shanghai. New York’s club will be in the Cachet Boutique New York Hotel, replacing the gay-themed Out Hotel, which closed last year.
If the club opens as scheduled, it will be in a city that began the year with hundreds of thousands of women taking to the streets to protest the presidency of Donald Trump, in part because of remarks he made that were perceived as chauvinistic.