The Bunny Hop: From Centerfold to High Fashion

Playboy Playmates, best known for their birthday suits and monthly monikers, are now getting attention for the clothes they have on. A few have appeared on runways and in fashion magazines, showing spring collections.

Just last week, 1993 Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith took a break from the legal battle with her dead husband’s family and hit the runway in New York for Lane Bryant lingerie and sportswear. Seven other Playmates were featured in W magazine’s January issue, dressed in all-white outfits from the spring collection of Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga. A few months earlier, 29 Playmates romped down the runway at designer Betsey Johnson’s fashion show.

Fashion, in its perpetual pursuit of something different, seems to have rediscovered Playboy, Playmates, the bunny logo and, of course, Hugh Hefner. In the last two years, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Esquire magazines have either profiled Hefner or featured his Playboy mansion in fashion shoots.

The Playboy logo is even enjoying renewed popularity on clothes and accessories worn by TV characters in “Will & Grace” and “Sex and the City.”

Though considered naughty and controversial even into the ‘80s, Playmates seem almost tame by today’s standards of sex and nudity in films and TV. Fashion advertising itself has pushed the limits with increasingly explicit sexual imagery that sometimes verges on soft porn.

Hefner, who turns 75 in April, attributes the resurgence of Playboy’s popularity and Playmate acceptance in part to the return in fashion of all things retro. The Playmates evoke a nostalgic sensuality of the past.

Finding closer-to-reality women, large-busted and curvy-hipped, was a priority for designer Johnson, who sought out the Playmates because she wanted a cross between Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe to model her sexy spring 2001 fashions.

“I wanted a people approach rather than model mannequins, who walk the same way and do the same thing,” Johnson said about her September “Pinup Calendar” theme show. “I wanted the sexy, happy girl-next-door. I wanted to celebrate women, loving their bodies as they love to share them.” One Playmate model even flashed her breasts at the high-fashion audience and cameras.

W’s use of the Playmates in the January layout identifying them by month and year was a deliberate move to show the clothes on a different kind of woman, according to the magazine’s creative director, Dennis Freedman.

“In doing this story, we are making no value judgments. The photos are very straightforward, without [sexual] gestures. We raised the stakes in this shoot to add another wrinkle into the mix of how you view these women and how you view these clothes,” he said.

James Gonis, manager of L.A.-based Playboy Models Inc./Playmate Promotions, says most calls for Playmates used to be for nude work.

Today, the modeling agency has an independent agent who receives casting breakdowns for films and advertisements and, in turn, sends these agencies pictures of Playmates. Gonis said that “the most common calls we get are for film work as featured extras and for music videos. It’s easier now for Playmates. Now a Playmate background might even be viewed as a benefit.”

“It’s a 180-degree difference from before,” Hefner said. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s, popular as we were, if you appeared as a Playboy model you wouldn’t get advertising contracts.”

Gonis said Playmates such as Smith (in the Guess ad campaign), Jenny McCarthy (in the MTV show “Singled Out”) and Pamela Anderson Lee (in “Baywatch”) helped to change the perception of Playmates in the film industry and society at large. They are no longer considered voiceless, dumb models who know only how to pose nude.

Playmate Brittany York (Miss October 1990), who appeared in the Johnson show, notices the changes. “Now when I go on auditions, people see that [I’m a Playmate], and they say, ‘Great.’ Before it was like, ‘Don’t bring her in. She’s dumb,’ ” York said. “Before women were like, ‘Stay away from my husband.’ Now they think it’s cool, and they wish they could have been able to [pose for Playboy too].”

For Kerissa Fare (Miss September 2000), who appeared in both the W photo feature and Johnson’s fashion show, all the attention and comments she’s been getting have been positive. Fare hopes to one day host a TV show.

“I haven’t gone to any auditions where I felt a negative vibe, “ Fare said. “I didn’t feel judged in any way like--’Oh, you’re a Playmate?’ ”